🔵 By Keith David Houston. Photo by lauragrafie.
The United States of America has more people in its state, and Federal prisons than any other country in the world. In fact, it was recently reported by the US department of Justice and its Bureau of Justice statistics in 2022 that the state, and Federal prison systems had so many as 1.221.200 man and women in there which is shocking to think about. The staggering amount of men and women in state and Federal prisons is an absolute nightmare because most of them were too poor to pay for a good attorney and ended up with a public defender who was too lazy to do their hob, too inexperienced to properly represent them, or too incompetent to represent them. In the United States of America only the wealthy are afforded a chance for justice where the poor in state and federal criminal proceedings are denied equal protection of the laws.
The worst is yet to come! Once a poor man, or woman is convicted in a state, or federal court in the United States of America a very mind blowing thing happens! They are all “forced” to learn the law in a very short amount of time, or they lose their only opportunity to challenge their convictions which is completely unrealistic because it takes as long as eight years for an attorney to learn the law in a law school and years of being an attorney to get experience in the courts. As a result, most are unable to fight back at all since only those who are wealthy can hire attorneys to file their motions or petitions where the poor cannot.
Finally, the United States and Federal Systems for post conviction challenges is designed to fail leaving unknown numbers of poor men, and women to languish in prison in many cases for the rest of their lives without any hope when their convictions were the result of some type of illegal action by some ignorant attorney, a corrupt prosecutor or a corrupt judge. It is a tragedy of epic proportion and an example of how the United States of America treats its poor like yours truly who never had a chance to fight back to prove my innocence until I discovered new evidence. Unfortunately most men and women are not that lucky. And even I must risk it all like a gambled playing the odds to poor too pay an attorney to help me, and hoping that changes in the future since the only real chance anyone poor has is with the help of a good attorney!