Bob,

Thanks for your comments. It’s a pleasure to receive feedback from the author of that famous Reader Digest’s article on Willie Horton. And your work on environmentalism is exceptional -- especially the lecture you gave two years ago in NYC at an Objectivist Center conference.

I own and have read Criminal Justice?­, which, I regret to say, was, on the whole, unpersuasive.

1. You argue that the ER “punish[es] the crime victim.”

In letting the criminal go free, the court does not punish the victim. Punishment means infliction, and while the ER certainly horrifies the victim, it does not impose force on him. “What remarkable principles to have to be preaching to an Objectivist readership!”

2. “His [the victim’s] case is tossed out; he bears the residual harms of his criminal victimization, with no hearing, no retribution and no compensation. Thus he is subjected to a double injustice: both the original offense, and now the abdication of the very criminal justice system that's supposed to be working to secure justice for him.

All true and tragic -- and all necessary evils.

3. (“Check the stats acknowledged by Mr. Rick in his first footnote.)”

The stats in my first footnote are irrelevant to my argument, which is why I put them in a footnote. What’s more, I acknowledge contradictory numbers, though I found the first three more credible than those Edwin Meese cites.

4. “[L]et's suppose (as often occurs) that a ‘dirty cop’ breaks the rules to obtain real evidence of a real crime, and that the evidence is then excluded from the prosecution of the criminal, who goes free as a result. Who is actually punished by this? The dirty cop? Hell, no. He still collects his regular paycheck each week, and goes on his merry way.”

I agree that such cops should be held “personally accountable.” But I presume that if a court applies the exclusionary rule to an officer’s evidence, then Internal Affairs probably sanctions him.

5. We should “admit the valid evidence against the criminal into consideration...but then . . . go after those who violate the rules, in a separate civil or criminal proceeding.”

Admitting illegally obtained evidence is wrong -- not out of sympathy for the criminal, but because (1) when an officer does not obtain a warrant, it undermines the separation of powers, and (2) of bad-apple cops.

Finally, in post 1, Adam Reed questions my use of drug-dealers, pornographers, homosexuals and abortionists as the "least attractive practitioners" of a given right. I actually forget why I chose these people, but I think it related to the history of the exclusionary rule cases. On the other hand, I might have just gone with controversy to illustrate the point.

(Edited by Jonathan Rick on 6/03, 3:36am)