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Re: Hidden cameras to catch speeders
elandau@cais3.cais.com (Eric Landau) wrote:
>Our Constitution gives the accused in a criminal proceeding the absolute
>right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him [and] to have
>compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor." In other
>words, in this great country of ours someone accused of a crime cannot be
>convicted without being given the opportunity to confront his accuser and
>to force his accuser to testify to facts which may be in his favor. This
>has nothing to do with your opportunity to appear before a judge or
>magistrate or the Supreme Court; they are not your accusers.
>That's why, no matter how dead-to-rights a cop had you when he stopped
>you, the case will be thrown out summarily if he doesn't show up in
>court; a conviction without that opportunity to confront would be a
>direct violation of the Sixth Amendment.
>To say that when the evidence against you has been collected entirely by
>mechanical means, with no human being involved, "all avenues available to
>you had the violation been detected by an officer are still available" is
>truly specious. Can you cross-examine a camera? Can a machine be
>required to answer your questions truthfully, under oath? Can an
>electronic device be held in contempt of court, or prosecuted for
perjury?
I'm afraid you just don't a basic concept: not all evidence must
presented by a living human "witness". If evidence IS provided by a
witness, then of course you have certain rights, such as
cross-examination, etc.
Under your mistaken understanding, though, it would be impossible to
convict someone, for example, for most white-collar crimes (well, no one
actually SAW him sign that check/illegally transfer those funds/etc.); or
how about a bank surveillance camera recording someone breaking in? In
these cases, you cannot obviously cross-examine the fraudulent check or
the surveillance camera. Yet documents, videos, skid marks (ever try to
cross-examine a skid-mark or a blood stain??) are considered evidence.
Sorry if this comes as a suprise. It would be a sad day for justice if
only personally-presented evidence (in the form of cross-examinable
witnesses) counted.
This is a completely different subject than the original (also incorrect)
argument about "just cause". I suppose you couldn't refute my argument on
that issue, so you moved on to an equaly incorrect argument about
confronting the witness. Keep trying -- try another issue.
S. Pierre Paret
Washington, D.C. "Through Reason, or By Force."
spierre@aol.com
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