Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
His lawyers *couldn't* say "I object"
Author: Eric Kidd Posted: 12/22/1998; 12:17:30 PM Topic: DaveNet comments Msg #: 1633 (In response to 1627) Prev/Next: 1632 / 1634
You wrote:There are also people who are not in prison that probably would be if they didn?t have good lawyers. Lawyers that said, "Objection your honor, irrelevant."
Indeed. But Clinton's lawyers were never allowed to say that. Those juries you see on TV aren't *grand* juries. A regular jury exists to determine whether somebody is guilty. A grand jury's only purpose, though, is to decide whether or not somebody should be brought to trial in the first place.
A grand jury doesn't operate by the same rules as a regular one. Only one side gets to call witnesses. Only one side gets to ask questions. Only one side gets to have a lawyer. Only one side gets to say, "I object, your honor." The other side only gets to sit there and answer questions truthfully, with no lawyer, defense or ability to cross-examine any of the other witnesses.
Now, there's only two safegaurds against this process. One, a grand jury cannot find somebody guilty of something; they can only refer the charges to a regular jury. Two, grand jury testimony (being completely one-sided) is always kept strictly secret to avoid unfairly ruining the reputation of the accused.
Somebody on Ken Starr's staff broke those laws, and leaked damaging, one-sided tesitimony to the press. Out of all the abuses of the American legal system in this mess, I think that was the greatest.
People in power always seem to think the ends justify the means, and that you must do whatever is necessary to accomplish your noble goals. In making this decision, many people have brought great evils into the world.
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