Country Justice

[Jonathan Buhacoff]

Proposal:

In sparsely populated areas, where there are not enough people to have full-time judges and court staff, the people need a handbook containing the text of the Constitution, the rights, the principles of justice, and the essential elements of a fair trial and due process. Such a handbook needs to be officially endorsed and distributed nationally to all rural areas and to all outposts in the wilderness.

If an appeal is made to a higher court located in an urban area, that court must apply the facts and evidence to the procedures outlined in the country justice handbook to determine whether the appeal has merit.

Intent:

It is important to recognize the difficult conditions in rural and wild areas and to provide guidance for people who need to uphold justice in those areas. Even full-time judges and attorneys in the largest urban areas sometimes get things wrong, which is why it’s important to have an appeals process.

Both the people charged with implementing justice and the people observing it need to know the essentials in order to do it appropriately and to object and protest when it is not done appropriately.

An urban appeals court must apply the standards and procedures in the country justice handbook to the appeal so it does not undermine the country justice. A verdict should only be overturned or remanded on appeal if the country justice did not implement the standards and procedures outlined in the country justice handbook.

Discussion:

This proposal recognizes that people want to do the right thing and with limited resources they do the best they can.

People in living in rural areas or the wilderness are trying to survive, and implementing a fully functional justice system to process criminal activity is not feasible. There may not be the time or the money or the people to everything. The handbook should contain the essentials so that when it is followed the people will accept the results. An appeal should focus on whether those essentials were implemented as described in the handbook, and not on whether a different outcome would have happened in an urban area.

Criminals who want the full system of justice and law enforcement as implemented in urban areas should commit their crimes in urban areas and not in rural areas or the wilderness.

The government should not fault people living in rural areas or the wilderness for having less resources to implement a justice system. The state government needs to support the local government. If there’s a need to do something differently, the state government should send the people and the money to do it differently.

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