When Our Adversarial Justice System Fails
BY CHLOE NAGUIB
In January 2014, Criminal Court Judge Paul S. Biebel of Illinois granted Nicole Harris, convicted for the murder of her son Jaquari, a Certificate of Innocence. In 2005, Jaquari accidentally strangled himself to death with an elastic band while playing in his bedroom. His six-year-old brother witnessed the accident, but was deemed unfit to testify on behalf of his mother’s innocence due to his belief in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. This assessment about his inability to testify was later deemed arbitrary by the Seventh Circuit court, which reversed the decision and released Jaquari’s mother, but only after she had already served eight years in prison.
Harris’ wrongful conviction demonstrates a widespread problem within our justice system— the high number of wrongful convictions. A study by Marvin Zalman, professor at Wayne State University, tallied the wrongful convictions in the United States and found that approximately 2,000 innocent people go to prison and 3,000 more receive felony sentences each year. Furthermore, many other individuals can be over-punished in our current system due to errors in accounting for environmental factors when assessing culpability.
Such flaws in our courts give rise to the question of whether inaccurate sentencing is an immutable part of any justice system, or if reforms are necessary to diminish the number of wrongful convictions. The United States currently utilizes an adversarial system of justice, but perhaps it should consider adopting a new system more similar to the inquisitorial, which is commonly utilized in Europe and many other countries around the world.
While the systems differ in many ways, the inquisitorial system places a larger emphasis on finding truth and has fewer regulations on evidence in comparison to the adversarial system. In the adversarial system, both parties present their cases with evidence, with the judge acting as a passive decision maker who just evaluates the arguments presented.
Some aspects of the inquisitorial system make it specifically more prone to accuracy than the United States’ adversarial system. An innate characteristic of the adversarial system is competition—both the prosecutor and defendant hope to come out victorious at the end of the trial. Many assume this is a positive characteristic, as the truth will eventually come out due to the attorneys’ incentive to reveal facts about the opponent that will push the trial in their favor. However, the focus on winning makes lawyers more prone to twisting the law in their clients favor, instead of attempting to accurately describe the events of the crime. This results in a more clouded depiction of the case for the judge to evaluate, increasing the likelihood of inaccurate punishment. The inquisitorial system would solve this problem since the attorneys play a smaller role in the courtroom and function simply as individuals who guide the judge’s questions to witnesses. The system is focused less on winning the trial, therefore lessening an attorney’s incentive to spin the story in favor of his or her client.
Another key manner in which the two systems differ is in the judge’s level of involvement. In the adversarial system, the judge sits as a passive bystander that sees the trial play out and then adjudicates the case at the end. His or her knowledge of the case is limited to the information presented in the trial, making it harder for him or her to ensure desert. Take, for example, a case in which there isn’t enough evidence to prove one party guilty. If that party did commit the crime, the party would get off on a technicality since the judge wouldn’t have enough information to adjudicate the trial. In the inquisitorial system, the judge plays a more active role in the investigation and analysis of evidence. This makes judges more prone to accurate assessments of culpability since they can look for evidence necessary to fill in gaps in the story in order to gain a more coherent picture of what occurred. This means that judges will also stop dismissing cases based on a lack of evidence as frequently, ensuring that the guilty are held responsible for their crimes. Furthermore, this ability creates an opportunity for more objective decision-making, since judges get to interpret and analyze evidence themselves instead of just deciding amongst the arguments made by lawyers.
These aspects make the inquisitorial system more prone to accurate adjudication of punishment. However, it’s unlikely that the United States will enact a complete overhaul of the judicial system in favor of the inquisitorial. As society starts to develop a greater awareness of wrongful convictions like that of Nicole Harris, the most feasible solution for it to advocate for would be reform. Perhaps reform will entail completely new methods of justice, but more than likely will look to aspects of other justice systems, such as the inquisitorial, that have proven to help judges more accurately adjudicate trials.