Seahawks' Rocky Bernard arrested in Seattle - CBSSports.com Message Boards

Seahawks' Rocky Bernard arrested in Seattle -
Ahawkolypse Now Reputation:98 Level:Superstar Since:Mar 2, 2008
	April 23, 2008 11:29 am Score: 82
	Jessum: I just posted on another thread about you being Yoda and then I read your last post here. Wow, now I'm really thinking your Yoda. And you've given us another glimpse into your truly cryptic existence. As far as the winds of justice go..............that would be nice. Remember though, man is just man, regardless of profession. However, some are held to higher standards than others. Unfortunately there are some crooked cops, prosecutors, judges, priests, and yes football players. Imagine that. Every profession is a microcosm of society. You're going to have good and bad in all. Unfortunately, the bad get the media. There are over 1700 players in the NFL, counting practice squad guys, and what we hear most is the bad in all of it. The reality is that most of the guys are good guys, that do a lot of good for their community. As far as crooked cops etc. etc., I don't think there are as many as people believe. I hate most cop movies because there's always at least one crooked cop in them. It's not that way in real life, but it does sell ads and tix to the theatre. Personally, I don't know a dirty cop. I know they exist, I just don't know any myself. As far as prisons go, I've seen some really bad things done to innocent people. I think prison is too good a place for some of those criminals. Sometimes I wish we could go back to "An eye for an eye" type of justice. Now that would be a wind of change wouldn't it??
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Seahawks' Rocky Bernard arrested in Seattle -
jessumcanuck Reputation:99 Level:Superstar Since:Dec 27, 2006
	April 23, 2008 2:51 pm Score: 95
	Ahawkolypse Now: "Unfortunately there are some crooked cops, prosecutors, judges, priests, and yes football players." I don't think I'm talking about the 'crooked ones' so much as the 'criminally negligent ones'. We live in a very selfish culture. People think that their own hopes, dreams, career aspirations and so forth outweigh all other consequences. Prosecutors who talk themselves into attitudes of 'no other option but guilty' and manipulate evidence to the contrary to protect that view don't do so because they're crooked. They do it because they only see a case to be won and nothing else. They simply don't care about the fate of the person who is accused of the crime. "As far as crooked cops etc. etc., I don't think there are as many as people believe" Who knows how many crooked cops there are out there. Whatever the number I would expect that they would mostly be confined to very urban districts where graft is an easy game to play. But again I don't think we're talking about crooked cops as much as we're talking about stupid cops. The worst kind of cop shows are the ones that present you with a whole lot of geniuses walking around connecting dots. Come on people, this is a blue collar job that requires the employment of massive numbers of ordinary men and women. Police departments aren't filled with Harvard graduates as CSI shows would have you think. But I'm not really talking about the stupidity that goes along with the inevitable jealousies or laziness or whatever that impede good investigation techniques either. That's definitely always going to be a problem in any line of work. I'm talking about cops who think they're a lot smarter than they are and who solve cases in their minds without any practical evidence at all. Then they proceed to coerce confessions out of poor slobs who are much dumber than they are. This kind of activity is just far too common to be tolerable. False confessions are very damaging and the number of overturned convictions where coerced confessions are proven just has to tell you that we are looking at the tip of a very large iceberg. There's a flip side to that coin as well. It involves very expensive hot shot lawyers like Johnny Cochran who spin CSI tales in front of juries and convince them that 'any' mistake in collecting evidence is concrete proof of some kind of police conspiracy. Again I say, "get real people". Who does any kind of job without making errors? YOU try to secure an crime scene and then go around picking up bits of hair and fiber without screwing up one single time. That trial really made me angry. It epitomized late 20th century comic book justice. I think you have to take the attitude that your neighborhood cop is just an ordinary, law abiding schmo like the rest of us, trying to do as good a job as he can do. It's the police techniques and the courts that need refining. As long as we're going to rely on modern forensics and demand high conviction rates as a consequence we really need to force ourselves to understand that all of these microscopic bits and pieces are very circumstantial. Ordinary police investigation techniques have to keep up in that kind of an environment. You need guidelines to dissuade the stupid and better protection for the innocent, in and out of court. Not the sort of protections that guys like O.J. Simpson or John Gotti enjoy. People like that are already swimming in protection. We need to protect that poor uneducated slob who pumps gas at your local market. Look at this. You've really got me going here. Not a football comment for miles. So, do you think Alexander will get picked up by someone or not?
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Seahawks' Rocky Bernard arrested in Seattle -
Ahawkolypse Now Reputation:98 Level:Superstar Since:Mar 2, 2008
	April 24, 2008 1:05 am Score: 82
	Yes Alexander will get picked up, but who cares. Let's get back to the point at hand. I appreciate your point of view but it appears to be a very bleeding heart liberal point of view. I'm totally cool with just agreeing to disagree, because in the end, we can argue 'till we collapse and it won't make a drop of difference. You mentioned coerced confessions and overturned convictions and that fact that there are a large number of them. Hmmm, really?? I'm not familiar with any, though I'm sure there might be a White Buffalo here and there. I for one would never confess to something I didn't do unless it would save somebody I wanted, or had to protect. I think a coerced confession is a very very rare occurance. In fact, to confess means to admit guilt for some type of sin or wrong you've committed. Therefore you really can't confess to something you didn't do. That would be a lie, and a lie in a criminal investigation is called perjury, a whole separate crime. (OK, I'm starting to make fun a little.) I don't have any stats to go by but I do know form personal experience that the average joe schmo does have plenty of protection, at the tax payers expense. I've had several cases, complete with legal confessions, where the bad guy gets away on some legal mumbo jumbo loophole. I almost quit several years ago because of it. Personally, I've lost faith in justice because of instances like that and now the only thing that keeps me going is trying to do the right thing and trying to get others to do that as well. And maybe, just maybe, convince them to be responsible for their actions. Something that happens very rarely anymore. Which brings us all the way back to Mr. Rocky Bernard. If he screwed up, he should just admit it, pay the price, ask forgiveness, and get back to sacking QB's. If he didn't hit that girl, well she should be held accountable just as well. There, I've stepped off my soap box. Let's get back to football. Go Hawks and God Bless Hawk Nation!!!!
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Seahawks' Rocky Bernard arrested in Seattle -
jessumcanuck Reputation:99 Level:Superstar Since:Dec 27, 2006
	April 25, 2008 1:00 pm Score: 95
	I've been pondering whether it would be wise to respond to this but then I thought, "what the heck?". Ahawkolypse Now: " I appreciate your point of view but it appears to be a very bleeding heart liberal point of view." Bleeding heart liberal??? Friend, you cut me to the quick. I'll have you know that I was voted least likely to be a bleeding heart liberal by my high school senior class. A bleeding heart liberal is someone who, when presented with a problem, proceeds to appoint committees, initiate leaflet campaigns, print t-shirts, flood the airwaves with tv ads, smile for the camera and then run for office. They do nothing. Well, they do something. They spend shiploads of cash in an effort to convince you that they are wonderful people. If you really want to fix a problem then there is only one way to proceed. Lots of hard work. That means plenty of thankless effort and gutsy initiative by people who are empowered to do so. No photo ops. No campaign material. Just lots of inevitably angry constituents who feel stepped on because you've closed their favorite loopholes. People who really want to make a difference are not people who have an inclination for popularity contests. So what's the problem. Well the problem is that law books are rigid things, carved in stone and human activity is dynamic and unpredictable. Very smart people have the ability to manipulate that dichotomy to their advantage. People of low or ordinary intelligence haven't. The more you amend those law books to account for previously unforeseen anomalies in human activity the more complex they become. Hence the more opportunity for smart people sophistry. Man, this is going to be a book. I have to stop this. Here's as good a bottom line as I can come up with. Our justice system (your country's and mine) is antiquated. It's based on nineteenth century principals while simultaneously being besot by over complicated legislation and forensic science. The jury system is no longer adequate. Legal professionals are powerless in areas where they should have power and have too much power in areas where they shouldn't. It not only needs to be fixed, it needs to be completely overhauled. If it makes you feel any better I am just as much in favor of the empowerment of the police as I am with reigning in investigative short cuts. Both ends of that spectrum are badly out of tune and need serious attention. " You mentioned coerced confessions and overturned convictions and that fact that there are a large number of them. Hmmm, really?? I'm not familiar with any," Then you haven't been paying attention. Just in the past few years there have been hundreds of overturned capital convictions based solely on recent advances in dna fingerprinting in both Canada and the US. I'm sure the same thing has been happening overseas as well but I couldn't really say. Moreover, so many of these cases involve confessions that a Senate investigation was opened to study interrogation methods. There was a bill pending buy I don't know if it passed, failed to pass or is still being amended or what goes. I looked for statistics but I couldn't find anything that lays everything out in a nice chart or something similar. What you could do is type the query "overturned convictions" and "dna" into google. After you do that duck because you are going to be deluged by a cascade of news articles, legal documents and essays. Then try some different variations on the query. I guarantee you that you'll never run out of reading material.
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