Guest Writer – Hester Prynne

John Baker, a retired Louisiana State University law professor stated, there is “no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime”. Criminal defendants consistently plead “guilty” to “reduced” charges rather than face the draconian sentences accompanying convictions, even wrongful ones. The threat of outrageously high sentences, often in crimes without a victim save possibly the defendant him/herself, and the exorbitant costs of defense attorneys, plus the incalculable collateral cost to reputation, family,  often result in guilty pleas where no guilt exists.

The Justice Department compiled a list of approximately 300,000 criminal offenses gathered among 50 titles and 23 pages of federal law. Years ago, when the laws of the United States were codified as the United States Code in 1925, all of the titles combined occupied a single volume,
3.65 inches in width. The current US Code, the codified general statutes, are now contained in 356 volumes and take up 55 feet of shelf space. This does not include the 1,400 page list of the other public laws that have not been codified. This process was addressed in a 2017 speech by Supreme Court Justice Alito, who stated that in 2016 alone, the executive branch added 97,000 pages of new regulations.

The path of a new statute is such that Congress enacts a broadly worded mandate that few can disagree with and then hands it off to some department or agency to create a hard policy. That new policy is promulgated as a regulation that “interprets a statute”. The Supreme Court later defers to that interpretation. Justice Alito said that this is a massive shift of lawmaking from elected representatives to unelected bureaucrats. It’s much easier to issue a regulation than to pass a statute. And there has been an enormous increase in regulations.

This process is known as the U.S. Code Classification. According to recent congressional testimony, the number of federal regulations carrying criminal penalties may be as many as 300,000. The question is, can you, or anyone, even find an accurate number of criminal laws? With over 300,000 criminal laws on the books that apply to you and to me, can we really pretend to understand the charges against us and pretend to believe that we know if we’re doing something that’s against those codes? When asked if we understand the nature of the charges against us, the only honest and true answer is, NO, of course not!

In the book “Three Felonies a Day” by defense lawyer and civil libertarian Harvey Silvergate, he expertly explains the insane expansion of the federal statutes which in vague and broadly sweeping verbage, define as “criminal”, practices no rational citizen would have thought illegal; making every American vulnerable to out of control tyrannical prosecution. These rogue prosecutors use criminal codes to prosecute law-abiding citizens whose conduct is at best covered by extremely vague and broad statutes, left up for interpretation- sometimes to an equally compromised judge, who is supposed to be the law speaking, but is himself beholden to special financial and political interests.
Think of the “right” and indeed, obligation. to “petition the gov for a redress of grievances” as it relates to Jan 6 POW’s many of whom are still imprisoned PRETRIAL 1,000 days and counting. The reason is their right to due process is suspended – as is habeas corpus (a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, especially to secure the person’s release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention.)- is because their constitutionally protected “rights” are suspended.

The DOJ has a 97% rate of successful conviction. The USA has THE highest rate of per capita incarceration in the world, imprisoning more men/women for drug related “crimes” than all natures of “crimes” combined, in all of the European Union nations combined. Let that sink in ladies and gentlemen. Statistics and facts aside, does your common sense resonate with the idea that Americans are the most criminal in the world? Or does it give you a check in your soul, by which you know that you know that something just “ain’t right” with the American Justice System.