The soldier that killed 300 of your vietnamese civs got 4 years only, US is sooo just.
That is a pathetic attempt to insult me and to poke US in the eye. You get Fs for both. So here is your education...
What does William Calley of the famous My Lai Massacre and O. J. Simpson of the Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman murders have in common?
Let us lay aside that question for now and get to what make up a 'fair trial', according to US standards, which by the way, are far superior to your Pakistan.
Under the umbrella of what is a 'fair trial'...
1- The accused must be allowed to become the defendant.
- In the many dictatorships of the world, including the ME, those accused often became those executed or those convicted by mobs and beaten to near death, like how many Christians are charged with Quran desecration and the mob took 'justice'. Am sure you can find some examples in your Pakistan for that.
2- The defendant must have access to the law.
- In the many dictatorships in the world, including the ME, the defendants are not allowed access to the law. He is often tried in a 'kangaroo' court and his living through that mockery of justice is more to intimidate and suppress political opposition than about any alleged 'crime' he may have committed.
- Technically speaking, putting the defendant in a law library satisfy the letter of this principle, but hardly the spirit because the law is usually vast, difficult in language, and bewildering in maneuverings. That is why we have a class of people called 'officers of the court'. A sub-group of this class is tasked to assist the defendant in exploiting the law to his advantage. We know them as defense 'attorneys' or 'lawyers'. The corollary to this is that -- not only does the defendant have access to the law via his attorney, he must also be allowed to chose his attorney. It is only under extraordinary circumstances, such as poverty or found to be mentally incompetent, will the government step in and provide an attorney. But even then, the povertous defendant can dismiss his government appointed attorney if he feels the attorney is less than satisfactory. He may be wrong in that assessment, but the important thing is that he has the freedom to do so.
3- There must be no secret evidences.
- What this mean is that both the prosecution and the defense must submit items that they believe are evidences to the judge and to each other for review. This is to allow either side to challenge the validity of any item to prevent abuses of the court, especially by the government, for extra-legal purposes. It also prevent or at least discourages any attempt to present items as evidences that would mislead and/or confuse the jury, if it is a trial by jury.
- This does not mean the trial itself cannot be made secret from the public due to reasons such as national security or that the case itself has become too famous in the public realm for the trial to be conducted with any order and integrity. But inside the trial, all evidences are open for both prosecution and defense to present and be challenged. Hence, no secret evidences.
4- The defendant must be allowed to face his accuser.
- This is to prevent abuses by the government. If it is the government itself who is the accuser, then the defendant must be allowed to face specific agents of the government who through their duties presented the government with evidences that led the government to believe there was a crime. The government usually present itself as 'The People Of The State of California' or 'The United States Of America' versus so and so. But no matter what, the defendant must be allowed to face those who formulated evidences and created charges.
There are many more items that also are under the umbrella of what is a 'fair trial', such as a 'grand jury' or 'mistrial' or 'prosecutorial misconduct', but those four items are the usually invoked. There are also many lesser known laws created to support those four but listing them would make your head explode.
So what does William Calley and O. J. Simpson have in common? Both men received fair trials and both verdicts were unpopular, of which lead us to the shocker for
YOU: The concept and execution of a fair trial is independent of the jury verdict, which may not be to your liking.
This is what make your post revealing of your ignorance and misconception on what is a 'fair trial'. You falsely believes that a 'fair trial' automatically produces a verdict that has unanimous approval, in and out of the courtroom.
It is now public admission that the jury in the O. J. Simpson murder trial ignored evidences and acquitted Simpson based upon racial solidarity -- black. That has nothing to do with the overwhelming truth that Simpson received a fair trial.
It was Presidential (Nixon) intervention that had William Calley served barely four years of house arrest. The jury of Calley's peers were six Army officers and five of them served in Viet Nam. They convicted him and the sentence was life imprisonment. The Presidential intervention was extraordinary and still ridiculed to this day. So as far as Calley's trial was concerned, it was a fair trial based upon the above four items, the jury's composition was appropriate, and his sentence was also appropriate.
So would Edward Snowden receive a fair trial in the letter and spirit of the above four items? Absolutely. And there will be no Presidential intervention. The verdicts from the Calley and Simpson trials are extraordinary but it is the trials and countless other trials throughout the US everyday that made other countries studied US and adopted many American methods at executing trials. If you are ever charged of a crime, your odds of being acquitted (not innocent) is better in the US than in your Pakistan.
You bet we are a just country. Your fellow Pakistanis living in the US can correlate for you.
