"74 percent of the convicted didn’t possess any drugs at the time of their arrest"
Whats the solution here?
This is an embarassing failure of the justice system and all involved. Why is it so acceptable for them to do such a bad job?
Whats the solution here?
This is an embarassing failure of the justice system and all involved. Why is it so acceptable for them to do such a bad job?
In this case, it seems like a decent lawyer would be able to hear out the woman's story, and say something like "Hey, the lab will confirm the substance, so if you're really innocent, you should hold on, because a felony charge will ruin your life a lot longer than sitting in jail awaiting trial would." Instead, I'm guessing the lawyer had ten minutes to spend on this case before he had to move on to the next one, so he can't really do more than push the plea deal and move along, and there's no significant incentive for him to do more anyway. In fact, he'd probably get canned if he stopped to take appropriate time with each client, because then he wouldn't have time to even get to all of them.
This way, the police can still do their job (although a certifiable training should be required and regulated for the field tests), while having an AGILE turnaround on immediate test verification analysis - which should be done by a court laboratory technician within days of initial arrest.