Alumni Magazine Spring 2010 - Green Meadow Waldorf School

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Four for the LawCriminal Justice:At Home and AbroadRose Rivera ’99Since the spring of 2009, I havehad two internships in criminaljustice. The first placed mein the office of the PublicDefender of Chicago, Illinois.The second took me to theInternational Criminal Court inThe Hague, Netherlands.As an intern with the CookCounty Public Defender ofChicago in the spring of2009, I discovered someof the challenges facingdefense counsel in the urbancourtroom. I witnessed theprosecution of a homelessman for stealing several sticksof deodorant and of a drugaddict for the theft of packetsof Kool Aid. The majorityof my clients were youngAfrican-American men whomthe state had undoubtedlyfailed. They were individualswho had grown up in poverty,received a sub-standardeducation and lacked asupportive family settingsince birth. A great numberwere mentally ill. What rolehad justice played in theirlives up until now?On many occasions, I sat withdefendants as they struggledover the choice of forcing thestate to prove its case, andtherefore risking a sentenceof twenty, forty or more yearsAround 90% of criminalcases in the United Statesend in guilty pleas asopposed to trials.Thisprocedural injustice hasbecome necessary in thename of efficiency.in prison, or agreeing toplead guilty in exchange for arelatively minor sentence, oftwo, four or perhaps six years. 1Around 90% of criminal casesin the United States end inguilty pleas, as opposed totrials. 2 This procedural injusticehas become necessary in thename of efficiency becauseof the sheer quantity ofindividuals the criminal justicesystem sweeps through itsdoors on a daily basis.In October 2009, I begana six-month internship atthe International CriminalCourt (ICC) with the DefenseSupport Section in The Hague,Netherlands. The work herediffers greatly from that of theCook County Public Defender’sOffice. The ICC does not sufferfrom the overwhelming numberof defendants and the resultingneed for efficiency that theCook County Courthousedoes. Here, the ICC Prosecutoris pursuing only four situations:Uganda, the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo, theCentral African Republic andDarfur, Sudan.The most recent newsout of the ICC is that thePre-Trial Chamber in theDarfur situation refused theProsecutor’s request to confirmcharges against Bahar IdrissAbu Garda, a military leaderaccused of killing AfricanUnion Peacekeepers, forwant of evidence. While thisdecision came as a blow tothe Prosecutor, the event alsomarks a triumph for proceduraljustice. In other words, the PretrialChamber has shown thatit is not a rubber stamp for theProsecutor, and the Prosecutormust not take lightly his duty14 | Alumni Magazine
Four for the Lawto prove, with evidence ofcriminal activity, that chargesare warranted.Despite this triumph ofprocedural justice, the ICCis not immune to criticism.The ICC is limited greatly inits quest for justice by thepolitical reality that surroundsit. For example, all four ofthe situations currently beingprosecuted come from Africa.Africa is certainly not the onlyplace in the world where warcrimes are being committedand ought to be prosecuted.Therefore, the ICC’s limitedprosecutions at this timerepresent an imbalance in theICC’s response to the world’sconflicts. 3While the crime of militaryaggression is recognized as animportant crime in internationallaw and is included in the RomeStatute (the Statute of theICC), to date, the ICC has notbeen empowered to prosecutemilitary leaders for the crimeof aggression. When theRome Statute was negotiated,individual state parties couldnot come to agreement on sobasic a matter as a definitionfor the crime of aggression,nor could they agree on whatconditions would permit theICC to exercise jurisdictionover such a crime. Everystate believes that the wars itconducts are just. Coming toan international agreementover the circumstances underwhich military aggression isillegal has proved elusive. Thefailure of the Rome Statute todefine the crime of aggressionis just one example of thedifficult political reality withinwhich the ICC operates andthe challenges it must face indefining justice.The ICC is a young institutionand will have time to growand meet these challenges byexpanding its prosecutions tobe more representative of theworld’s conflicts and, maybe,by one day prosecuting militaryaggression. Even so, we willhave to ask the questions,whose military aggression arewe prosecuting, and why?The question of justice andfairness necessarily involves anexamination of the questions;who made the law, who willbe prosecuted and why thesecrimes and not others?There is a misconception thatjustice is perfect, that it canbalance good and bad andthat it makes all things right.The reality is that the questionof what is just is a difficultone to resolve. Our complexsystem of laws synthesizes amyriad of objectives, somewholly unrelated to justice.Within this framework, itis often easy to forget thatone side of the scale mustnecessarily go down in orderfor the other side to balanceup. Whether the scales ofjustice are equally balanceddepends entirely on one’sperspective. These are thelessons I have learned whileworking in the criminal justicesystem for the last year. qRose Riveragraduatedfrom GreenMeadow in1999 andfrom EarlhamCollege in 2003. She spent 2003-04 in Florence, Arizona, workingas a paralegal with the FlorenceImmigrant and Refugee RightsProject, a non-profit that provideslegal services to detained,indigent immigrants. From2004-06, she worked in Chicagoas a Bilingual Crisis Counselorat Trilogy, Inc, a communitymental health center. In 2006-09,she attended DePaul UniversityCollege of Law and graduatedcum laude with a certificate inInternational & ComparativeLaw. Rose is currently workingas a paid intern with theDefense Support Section of theInternational Criminal Court. Atthe end of her internship, sheplans to return home to Chicago.1. While the US Supreme Court has held that a defendant may not receive a higher sentence for exercising hisconstitutional right to a jury, there is little doubt that defendants in many courtrooms of the Cook County CriminalCourthouse receive significantly lighter sentences by agreeing to plead guilty. Ne i l P. Co h e n , e t a l., CriminalPro c e d u re: Th e Po s t -In v e s t i g a t i v e Pr o c e s s , Ca s e s, a n d Ma t e r i a l s 360 (3rd ed. 2008). The Supreme Court justified suchoutcomes in Brady v. United States, where it held that those who plead guilty may receive lighter sentences thanthose who do not accept responsibility for their actions and instead expend government resources in the form of atrial. 397 U.S. 742 (1979).2. Na n c y Am o u r y Co m b s , Gu i l t y Pl e a s in In t e r n a t i on a l Criminal La w: Co n s t r u c t in g a Re s t o r a t i v e Ju s t ic e Approach 4 (2007).3. Many excuse the situation, stating that of the four cases being prosecuted, three were self-referred to the ICC bythe countries themselves and the other, Sudan, was referred to the ICC by the UN Security Council As a world court,the ICC has the responsibility to appear impartial as regards the prosecutions it pursues, and as such, bears theresponsibility to correct this situation in the future.Spring 2010 | 15
Page 1: ContentsAlumni MagazineSpring 2010F
Page 4 and 5: Community NewsSchool NewsGreen Mead
Page 7 and 8: Teacher Feature: Changing of the Gu
Page 9 and 10: Teacher Feature: Changing of the Gu
Page 11: Teacher Feature: Changing of the Gu
Page 15: Four for the LawA Reasonable Person
Page 23 and 24: WashingtonWhat we think of as “no
Page 25 and 26: GJustice for Conflict and Post-Conf
Page 31 and 32: To truly know the world,look deeply

Alumni Magazine Spring 2010 - Green Meadow Waldorf School

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