Point of View May 16, 2024 – Hour 2 : Reforming Criminal Justice

[00:00:00] Point of View Audio

[00:00:04] Criminal justice something we have talked about on numerous occasions.

[00:00:25] I'm holding a booklet that we did five years ago

[00:00:27] on a biblical point of view on criminal justice

[00:00:30] and of course when that is updated,

[00:00:32] I will include this book as well,

[00:00:34] Reforming Criminal Justice, A Christian Proposal

[00:00:37] written by Matthew T. Martins.

[00:00:39] We have information about him on our website at pointofview.net.

[00:00:43] He is a trial lawyer and partner in an international law firm.

[00:00:47] He graduated first in his class from the University of North Carolina School of Law, first in

[00:00:51] his class at Dallas Theological Seminary.

[00:00:54] In the 28 years of practice, he has been practicing criminal law.

[00:00:59] Might just mention that he has served in the past as a law clerk to Chief Justice William

[00:01:04] Rehnquist, been involved in other aspects of that as well.

[00:01:07] We have all the bio available to you.

[00:01:10] This book, which came out in the fall, was named by the Gospel Coalition as the 2023

[00:01:16] Book of the Year.

[00:01:17] Of course, it is by a first-time author.

[00:01:20] So Matthew, it is a delight to have you on the program.

[00:01:23] First of all, thank you for writing the book and thank you for giving us an hour to talk

[00:01:26] about it.

[00:01:27] Well, thanks so much for having me.

[00:01:29] I'm looking forward to it.

[00:01:30] Let's, if we can, get into the issue of justice.

[00:01:34] I remember in the days when I used to be speaking on college campuses, lots of times they were

[00:01:38] talking about John Rawls, the theory of justice who you mentioned.

[00:01:42] You of course quote, and I have quoted people like Chuck Colson and Daniel Van Ness, and

[00:01:49] you quote a variety of other individuals, not the least of which is somebody we talked

[00:01:53] about just a few minutes ago, and that is Martin Luther King Jr.

[00:01:57] But trying to get a proper understanding of justice, I think, is key to the rest of your

[00:02:02] book, isn't it?

[00:02:04] I think that's right.

[00:02:05] I think that's why you have to answer what justice is in order to figure out whether

[00:02:08] we're accomplishing it with our system today.

[00:02:11] And so give us a little bit of a look at the extent, because there have been different

[00:02:15] people writing about that over the years, Christians and non-Christians, but it seems

[00:02:20] to me that it is certainly about fairness, but it's about a lot more than that, isn't

[00:02:25] it?

[00:02:26] Well, I don't even know that I would frame it in terms of fairness.

[00:02:29] I think that what you have to start with is, and probably the best place to start is with

[00:02:34] St. Augustine, who defined justice as giving to each and every man his due.

[00:02:41] So giving people what they're owed, what they are due to them, what is due to them as humans.

[00:02:48] And what I argue from scripture is that what is due to our fellow man is love, that we

[00:02:53] see that in Romans 13 where Paul says, owe no man anything except the love that we constantly

[00:03:00] owe people.

[00:03:01] And so I think when you put that together, giving every man his due and Paul's recognition

[00:03:07] of what people are due is our love.

[00:03:09] You see that in Jesus' command to love our neighbors as ourselves.

[00:03:12] That justice is giving to everyone our love.

[00:03:14] Now, of course, you have to rightly define love and that's its own discussion, but I

[00:03:18] think that's the best way to think about justice.

[00:03:21] Your first chapter talks about the gospel and social justice, and there's where sometimes

[00:03:24] people go off a little bit.

[00:03:26] You quote from Carl Henry talking about social injustice, Timothy Keller.

[00:03:30] Tim Keller, when he was alive, has been on this talking about justice.

[00:03:33] And we have, of course, the idea that the official teaching of the Catholic Church is

[00:03:37] social justice.

[00:03:38] But what do you mean since, of course, that is going to be really key as well to talking

[00:03:43] about how we apply, first of all, the gospel to social justice?

[00:03:49] And then your second chapter really talks about criminal justice as social justice.

[00:03:54] Can you explain that for us?

[00:03:55] Sure.

[00:03:57] Social justice is a term that's long been used in the Christian tradition.

[00:04:01] It's obviously in more recent times taken on meaning that's related to progressive politics,

[00:04:08] and I'm certainly not using that sense of the word when I'm referring to it.

[00:04:13] I'm simply using in my book the phrase social justice in the way that Christians, as you

[00:04:18] mentioned like Carl Henry and Tim Keller and many others, the Catholic social teaching

[00:04:22] have used it, which means to organize society in a way that is just.

[00:04:27] Whether you want to call that social justice or societal justice or justice in the way

[00:04:31] we organize society, that's the idea I'm trying to get at there.

[00:04:35] And one of the ways in which we organize society to try to achieve justice is through the criminal

[00:04:41] justice system.

[00:04:42] That should be the goal is to organize society in a way that's just both to the criminally

[00:04:47] accused and to the criminally victimized.

[00:04:49] Let's talk about the role of government because when we talk about social justice, sometimes

[00:04:52] we are thinking about that peer to peer.

[00:04:55] In other words, I want to treat you in a gracious way.

[00:04:58] Of course, it's the golden rule.

[00:05:00] I would treat you the way I'd like to be treated.

[00:05:03] But when we talk about the criminal justice system, we're talking about a system and we're

[00:05:07] talking about the government.

[00:05:08] That takes us to Romans 13, one to seven and other passages.

[00:05:12] Can you help us understand how that interacts with this idea of social justice?

[00:05:17] I think you hit the nail on the head.

[00:05:19] There's two different senses in which we can be just or unjust to other people.

[00:05:24] I could be just to you in our one-on-one interactions.

[00:05:27] I could treat you kindly.

[00:05:29] I could not steal from you.

[00:05:31] I could defend your life if the situation arose.

[00:05:35] Those would be acts of individual justice just between in a one-on-one sense between

[00:05:40] me and you.

[00:05:41] But there's also a sense of justice in that we can organize society in a way that is just

[00:05:46] to our fellow members of society.

[00:05:48] So it would be unjust for me to steal money from you.

[00:05:53] It would also be unjust for me to implement laws that allowed me to steal money from you

[00:05:59] without consequence.

[00:06:02] It would be wrong for me to try to kill someone else.

[00:06:04] It would also be wrong, as our society does unfortunately, to pass laws that allow people

[00:06:10] to kill other people in the abortion context, for example.

[00:06:14] So we can have one-on-one acts of justice or injustice toward each other.

[00:06:18] We can also organize our society so that our government either promotes justice or promotes

[00:06:24] injustice as the case may be.

[00:06:28] Criminal justice, again, is one of the ways in which we organize society to on a societal

[00:06:32] level or systemic level act justly or unjustly.

[00:06:35] Again, we're talking about the book Reforming Criminal Justice, A Christian Proposal.

[00:06:39] It's written by Matthew T. Martins and forwarded by our good friend Derwin Gray.

[00:06:45] I first met him when he was a student at Southern Evangelical Seminary after he finished his

[00:06:49] NFL career and has a forward there.

[00:06:52] And really kind of a who's who of individuals that have endorsed this book.

[00:06:56] And as I mentioned just a few minutes ago, the Gospel Coalition picked it as its 2023

[00:07:02] Book of the Year.

[00:07:03] The first section really is where we are at the moment talking about kind of a Christian

[00:07:07] ethic on criminal justice.

[00:07:10] But don't worry, we are also going to get into the American criminal justice system,

[00:07:14] some of its successes, many of its flaws.

[00:07:18] But we've talked about this idea of criminal justice and social justice, but there's another

[00:07:23] issue in addition to government, and that is, who's my neighbor?

[00:07:28] That is a question that goes all the way back to Genesis.

[00:07:31] It certainly is the story that Jesus tells as well about the Good Samaritan.

[00:07:38] But you felt the need to cover that issue as well about my neighbors.

[00:07:42] Can you explain that?

[00:07:43] Well, I think there's a tendency in all of us just like there was with the lawyer who

[00:07:49] interacted with Jesus in Luke 10 to try to limit the scope of our obligation to others.

[00:07:55] There's some people who it's easy to love and some people it's hard to love.

[00:07:59] That's what the lawyer was really reflecting about his heart when he said, who is my neighbor?

[00:08:05] After Jesus affirmed his obligation to love his neighbor as ourselves.

[00:08:08] We want to shrink the neighborhood of obligation to love.

[00:08:13] And that I think is seen in the criminal justice system with regard to the criminally accused.

[00:08:18] It's easy and understandably so to love those and feel a great deal of empathy and sympathy

[00:08:23] for those who've been criminally victimized, but not so much for those who have been criminally

[00:08:27] accused.

[00:08:29] We can see ourselves perhaps as people who could be crime victims, but less so as people

[00:08:34] who could be accused rightly or wrongly.

[00:08:37] Right?

[00:08:38] Let's take a break.

[00:08:39] We're continuing our conversation in just a few minutes with reforming criminal justice

[00:08:43] and Christian proposal.

[00:08:44] We'll be back right after this.

[00:08:58] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:04] Is crime on the rise?

[00:09:06] Most Americans think so.

[00:09:07] A Gallup survey found that nearly all Republicans and a majority of Democrats thought crime

[00:09:12] was increasing.

[00:09:13] A recent Rasmussen survey found that most likely voters say violent crime in the U.S.

[00:09:18] is getting worse.

[00:09:19] But the media cites statistics arguing that crime is decreasing.

[00:09:23] That is why John Lott took the time to investigate the difference in perception about crime statistics.

[00:09:29] He concludes that Americans aren't mistaken.

[00:09:32] The country has two measures of crime.

[00:09:34] The FBI uniform crime reporting programs count the number of crimes reported to the

[00:09:39] police each year.

[00:09:40] The Bureau of Justice Statistics produces a national crime victimization survey and asks

[00:09:45] Americans whether they've been victims of crime.

[00:09:48] Two measures differ significantly.

[00:09:50] One reason for the divergence is due to the fact that many police departments, especially

[00:09:54] in cities like New York and Los Angeles, don't report crime data to the FBI.

[00:09:58] But there's another reason for the difference.

[00:10:01] Many Americans are less likely to report a crime.

[00:10:04] Arrest rates are plummeting.

[00:10:05] Why report a crime to the police if you don't believe the criminal will be caught and punished?

[00:10:10] Arrest rates for property crimes, for example, have dropped sharply.

[00:10:13] FBI data for 2022 shows only 12 percent of reported property crimes in all cities resulted

[00:10:19] in an arrest.

[00:10:20] In cities with more than one million people, that percentage drops to 4.5 percent.

[00:10:26] Arrest rates for violent crime are also dropping significantly.

[00:10:29] And for cities with more than a million people, only 8.4 percent of violent crimes resulted

[00:10:34] in an arrest.

[00:10:36] Crime is not decreasing.

[00:10:37] Only the reporting of crime is decreasing.

[00:10:40] I'm Kirby Anderson and that's my point of view.

[00:10:47] For a free copy of Kirby's booklet, A Biblical View on Socialism, go to viewpoints.info slash

[00:10:53] socialism.

[00:10:54] That's viewpoints.info slash socialism.

[00:10:59] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth.

[00:11:04] Talking about reforming criminal justice, a Christian proposal.

[00:11:08] Matthew Martin's with us and we've been talking about some of the kind of Christian foundations

[00:11:12] and we're going to apply those, of course, to the American criminal justice system.

[00:11:16] One of those is this idea of due process or what you might call procedural fairness.

[00:11:22] And of course when we get into the American criminal justice system, there have been concerns

[00:11:27] about that.

[00:11:28] But it does seem to me that as Christians, we should be about fairness, about having a

[00:11:33] procedure that is impartial, where there is an opportunity for all the evidence to be

[00:11:40] presented.

[00:11:41] And it does seem to me that that grows out of a desire to treat other people as you would

[00:11:46] like to be treated in a sense that really goes back to the golden rule as well, doesn't

[00:11:50] it?

[00:11:51] I think it does.

[00:11:53] I think it serves more than that, but it's certainly part of treating other people like

[00:11:56] you'd like to be treated.

[00:11:58] I've often seen that people have particular views of the criminal justice system until

[00:12:03] a friend, neighbor, relative, family member of theirs is implicated, experiences it and

[00:12:08] then all of a sudden the views change.

[00:12:10] And it shouldn't take that for us to want and desire fairness for our fellow humans.

[00:12:15] And again, when you talk about fairness, that gets into an issue of impartiality.

[00:12:20] In each one of these, I might just mention that you give some actual law cases.

[00:12:25] If you have ever been in a law school class, and most of us have not, but I've been able

[00:12:30] to sit in on some occasionally, you recognize that oftentimes it is case law that illustrates

[00:12:35] a poor principle.

[00:12:37] And that is part of it as well.

[00:12:39] The impartiality, the issue of accuracy, those are really key foundational principles, which

[00:12:47] is why I really appreciate the fact that you not only pulled from your legal background

[00:12:51] but your theological expertise.

[00:12:54] Because if we're going to think about this biblically, we have to apply both of those

[00:12:57] principles simultaneously to the criminal justice system, don't we?

[00:13:02] That's absolutely right.

[00:13:03] I mentioned earlier that justice is given to everyone they're due and what they're due

[00:13:09] is our love, but then we have to answer the question, what does it mean to love other people

[00:13:13] in the context of the criminal justice system?

[00:13:16] It's interesting in the gospels when Jesus refers back to that passage or in his interaction

[00:13:21] with various lawyers and law teachers, what he's referencing is Leviticus 19.18, a passage

[00:13:31] that begins a few verses earlier, do no injustice in court but love your neighbor as yourself.

[00:13:37] What it means to love our neighbors as ourselves was rooted in the idea of doing legal justice

[00:13:43] to our neighbors.

[00:13:44] And what I argue is most fundamentally the way we love our neighbors in court, both the

[00:13:48] accused and the victimized, is by judging their cases accurately, which as you noted

[00:13:52] depends on due process.

[00:13:53] It depends on impartiality.

[00:13:54] If we don't have a process that surfaces and tests the evidence, if we don't have a fact

[00:13:59] finder who's unbiased, we're not going to get accurate results and that doesn't do anybody

[00:14:04] any good.

[00:14:05] One of the other aspects of giving people their due is proportionality, which is one

[00:14:11] of your other chapters, and that is the punishment fits the crime.

[00:14:16] The argument you could make against a vigilante spirit is multifold, but one of those is sometimes

[00:14:24] an individual that quote takes the law in his or her own hands does not actually practice

[00:14:30] what you call proportionality.

[00:14:33] And there is a tendency sometimes for people to overreact and we have a judicial system,

[00:14:39] not unlike our legal system where it takes a long time to make a law so that many eyes

[00:14:45] are able to look at that particular piece of legislation and evaluate the possible implications

[00:14:51] of that.

[00:14:52] Likewise, in a court of law, you want to have enough time to evaluate and maybe even

[00:14:59] cool down some of the passions to begin to recognize that you do want to give to people

[00:15:05] what they're due, but there's a proportionality in terms of everything from policing to prosecuting

[00:15:13] in the criminal justice system, isn't there?

[00:15:15] That's absolutely right.

[00:15:17] I mean, we're not good judges of a cause when we were the ones wronged.

[00:15:24] We see things from our perspective and only our perspective, which may or may not be an

[00:15:28] accurate perspective.

[00:15:30] And I think your point about having cooler heads and time to cool down, I think you see

[00:15:35] that reflected in Proverbs where the writer says that he who is first in his own cause

[00:15:41] seems just, but then his neighbor comes and searches him out.

[00:15:45] And I think that that's capturing this idea that everybody feels like they're right when

[00:15:49] they're wronged.

[00:15:50] And if you listen to their side of it, they'll sound compelling, but their side isn't the

[00:15:54] only side.

[00:15:55] And so we need unbiased decision makers who decide cases according to a process, who hear

[00:16:01] both sides and then punish proportionally, which again, when I'm wronged, and you see

[00:16:06] this with your children, right?

[00:16:08] One of them hits the other and the other doesn't try to hit back proportionally.

[00:16:11] They try to hit back harder.

[00:16:13] And I think that's a tendency in all of us is not to respond proportionally, but disproportionately.

[00:16:18] But Scripture wants proportionate punishment.

[00:16:21] And again, I might just mention that what we've been going through is kind of that first

[00:16:25] section.

[00:16:26] And again, for an author who has spent 160 pages writing this to cover it in less than

[00:16:31] two segments probably is a little difficult, but I wanted to move on to the part that I

[00:16:36] want a lot of people to hear.

[00:16:38] And that is, let's take some of those biblical principles, we'll surface some others as we

[00:16:42] go along at looking at the American criminal justice system.

[00:16:46] And you begin by really reminding us of our history and our history, of course, goes all

[00:16:51] the way back to the colonies, all the way through some, obviously some dark times in

[00:16:56] American history, all the way up to the present.

[00:16:59] But what should we begin to think about when we look at criminal justice over the last

[00:17:04] 200 plus years here in America?

[00:17:06] Well, I think I would make two points.

[00:17:09] One, it was revolutionary in what it achieved, quite literally revolutionary.

[00:17:14] I mean, people think of the Revolutionary War that gave birth to our country as being

[00:17:18] fought over tea taxes and the Tea Party in Boston Harbor.

[00:17:22] But when you read the Declaration of Independence, one of the grievances that the colonists list

[00:17:27] against King George III is the fact that he was denying them jury trials in criminal cases.

[00:17:33] And there's actually a very interesting story behind what gave rise to that grievance.

[00:17:38] And so the Constitution enshrines some principles of justice that I think are very much aligned

[00:17:44] with Christian ethics.

[00:17:46] And we're revolutionary, not only in a sense of coming out of a Revolutionary War, but

[00:17:52] we're revolutionary in the history of the world, providing us with rights as Americans that

[00:17:57] few other people have ever had.

[00:18:00] And yet at the same time, what American history shows us is that the criminal justice system,

[00:18:05] if we are not careful in following those procedures, can be used for great evil.

[00:18:11] And the justice system has been used both for great good, but also to oppress particular

[00:18:16] people, disfavor groups in our society over time.

[00:18:21] People have concerns about that even today, about how the justice system is being used.

[00:18:24] And I think the takeaway from that is that if we don't adhere to those principles and

[00:18:29] enshrine them in our Constitution that are derived from Scripture itself, if we don't

[00:18:37] adhere to them for everybody, they won't be there when we might need them.

[00:18:42] And again, you do go into all the, of course, difficult aspects.

[00:18:46] We, of course, in the previous hour talked about Jim Crow laws and all sorts of issues

[00:18:50] of segregation and the rest and other ways in which those have been used.

[00:18:54] But that brings us to the obvious question.

[00:18:56] If we're going to be talking about reforming the criminal justice system, we need to talk

[00:19:00] about crime.

[00:19:01] And I love how you start that chapter.

[00:19:03] Let's state the obvious.

[00:19:04] You only end up as a defendant in a criminal justice system if you're accused of a crime.

[00:19:09] And it does seem to me that the reason we actually prosecute people for crime is because

[00:19:15] we believe that people have a moral conscience, they have value judgments, and they have violated

[00:19:23] those.

[00:19:24] So an individual that would be like a robot and doesn't know any better is obviously going

[00:19:29] to be treated very differently.

[00:19:31] And we do have some people that don't have mental capacity.

[00:19:34] But the criminal justice system is based upon the idea that we're created in God's image

[00:19:38] and we make choices, correct?

[00:19:40] That's absolutely right.

[00:19:42] I mean, it would make no sense to punish someone for something they couldn't control.

[00:19:46] And so underlying the whole idea of having a criminal justice system and punishing people

[00:19:51] and holding them accountable is a belief that people do, as a general rule, have the mental

[00:19:56] ability and the rational ability and the moral ability to make good and bad decisions and

[00:20:01] conform their conduct to those decisions, hopefully about what is good.

[00:20:05] And that when they don't, that they'll be held accountable.

[00:20:08] So you're right.

[00:20:09] The whole idea of having a justice system is premised on a belief about human nature

[00:20:13] that is a very Christian belief.

[00:20:16] Let's take a break.

[00:20:17] When we come back, we're going to get into all the controversial issues.

[00:20:19] What about plea bargaining?

[00:20:21] What about jury selection?

[00:20:23] What about evidence, exculpatory evidence?

[00:20:27] What about witnesses, sentencing, even the death penalty?

[00:20:29] We're going to get into all different aspects of reforming criminal justice.

[00:20:35] And that is the title of this book.

[00:20:36] It is Reforming Criminal Justice, a Christian Proposal.

[00:20:40] If you would like to know more about this book, of course there is a way in which you

[00:20:43] can order it through his website.

[00:20:46] It's Matthew-Martins.com.

[00:20:48] You don't even have to know how to spell that because it's on our website.

[00:20:51] There's a place where you can ask questions.

[00:20:53] There is a place where you can order the book.

[00:20:55] There's a place where if you wanted to have him come and speak.

[00:20:58] And of course it already has a list of places where he has been speaking in the past.

[00:21:03] And you can follow those along and where you might want to have him in the future to address

[00:21:08] this issue.

[00:21:09] It's a very important book.

[00:21:10] And as I've said before, if you are in the legal profession, I think it's a must-have

[00:21:15] book.

[00:21:16] There are probably no individuals in your sphere of influence, perhaps in your church

[00:21:19] that are lawyers that would benefit from such a well-written book.

[00:21:23] So that's why we're talking about it today here on Point of View.

[00:21:25] Let's take a break.

[00:21:26] We'll continue our conversation on criminal justice right after this.

[00:21:32] In 19th century London, two towering historical figures did battle, not with guns and bombs

[00:21:38] but words and ideas.

[00:21:41] London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism, and legendary Baptist preacher

[00:21:47] Charles Spurgeon.

[00:21:49] London was in many ways the center of the world economically, militarily, and intellectually.

[00:21:56] Marx sought to destroy religion, the family, and everything the Bible supports.

[00:22:01] Spurgeon stood against him, warning of socialism's dangers.

[00:22:05] Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth.

[00:22:09] It is truth for all of life.

[00:22:12] Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today?

[00:22:17] Get the light you need on today's most pressing issues delivered to your inbox when you sign

[00:22:22] up for the Viewpoints Commentary at pointofview.net.

[00:22:28] Every weekday in less than two minutes, you'll learn how to be a person of light to stand

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[00:22:36] It's free, so visit pointofview.net slash sign up right now.

[00:22:42] Pointofview.net slash sign up.

[00:22:50] Point of View will continue after this.

[00:22:59] You are listening to Point of View.

[00:23:04] The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management

[00:23:09] or staff of this station.

[00:23:11] And now here again is Kirby Anderson.

[00:23:14] It's a privilege to have with us Matthew Martins as we talk about his book Reforming Criminal

[00:23:18] Justice, A Christian Proposal.

[00:23:20] Matthew, for just a minute I thought we might also mention your website.

[00:23:23] I've already talked about it, but it's Matthew-Martins.com.

[00:23:28] There's a place where people can find out a little bit more about you, and there is a

[00:23:33] place where they can contact you.

[00:23:34] There's a place where they can find out more about your speaking engagements.

[00:23:38] We can buy the book there and a variety of other resources because I think it would be

[00:23:42] great for somebody that is in the legal profession struggling with this, maybe was in the criminal

[00:23:48] justice system on one side or the other to benefit from some of those resources.

[00:23:53] So that website is something we're making available to individuals and when they go

[00:23:57] there that's a way in which they can contact you, can't they?

[00:24:01] They can, yeah.

[00:24:02] There's a place on the website.

[00:24:04] They reach out to me.

[00:24:05] My email address if you just want to email me directly is on there as well.

[00:24:09] Well let's again get into the rest of the book.

[00:24:11] We're just about half and half here.

[00:24:13] We've certainly covered some of the basic biblical principles and Christian principles,

[00:24:17] and there are many others that we didn't have a chance to get to, but I thought we might

[00:24:21] focus some time and attention on some of the more controversial aspects which you certainly

[00:24:26] are well aware of.

[00:24:28] The first is this chapter on plea bargaining, and it has to do with why would someone who

[00:24:35] would plead guilty to a crime when of course you have stories, very sad stories of individuals

[00:24:41] that would rather plead guilty to a crime they did not commit rather than go through

[00:24:47] a trial.

[00:24:48] Then we've had other individuals who are obviously very guilty but in order to extract

[00:24:55] some kind of information from them have been willing to have them plea bargain and get

[00:25:02] a lesser sentence.

[00:25:04] Take us through that.

[00:25:05] There's all sorts of extremes and you have certainly thought that through perhaps more

[00:25:09] than most people that I've ever met, and so how do we think about this from a biblical

[00:25:14] point of view?

[00:25:15] Well what I try to say is that everybody should hate American style plea bargaining.

[00:25:19] I don't care what your political views are, if you're conservative or you're liberal.

[00:25:23] I think once you understand how plea bargaining works in the United States you should hate it.

[00:25:28] If you back up, our US Constitution guarantees those charged with crimes the right to a jury

[00:25:34] trial.

[00:25:35] As I mentioned it was one of the issues that the country was formed over, that the Revolutionary

[00:25:38] War was fought over, and yet today 95% of criminal defendants plead guilty.

[00:25:44] They're convicted not as a result of jury trials but as a result of plea bargaining.

[00:25:49] The only way you get that to happen is by either threatening people with unjustly severe

[00:25:55] sentences or offering them unjustly lenient sentences.

[00:25:59] You either threaten to punish them with more than they deserve if they insist on their

[00:26:02] constitutional right to a jury trial, or you offer them less than they deserve if they

[00:26:08] will give up the right to a jury trial.

[00:26:11] So people commit serious crimes and we call it something less serious and give them a

[00:26:16] slap on the wrist, or people commit perhaps even serious crimes or sometimes not serious

[00:26:21] crimes and we threaten them with much more severe sentences than they deserve if they

[00:26:26] insist on a jury trial.

[00:26:28] You add into that the fact that while we promise people in our Constitution a speedy trial,

[00:26:34] the reality is that courts have ruled that you can be held in jail for years, literally

[00:26:39] years, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years before your trial and that that doesn't violate

[00:26:46] the Speedy Trial Act.

[00:26:48] So you can jail people before they're actually even convicted and then offer them some type

[00:26:53] of plea bargain to induce them to plead guilty or threaten them into pleading guilty, one

[00:26:59] or the other.

[00:27:01] The result is we know that people plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit.

[00:27:05] So of the first almost now 3,500 exonerations since the advent of forensic DNA technology

[00:27:13] in August of 1989, and by exonerations I mean people who we later concluded did not commit

[00:27:19] the crime for which they were convicted, 24% of that 3,500 people were people who pled

[00:27:25] guilty.

[00:27:26] The system is coercing innocent people into pleading guilty.

[00:27:30] The first 200, a professor at Duke Law School, Brandon Garrett, looked at the first 250 exonerations

[00:27:36] after DNA technology came about, the first 250 DNA exonerations, meaning people we know

[00:27:42] now because of science, they didn't commit the crime.

[00:27:46] Sixteen of those 250 people had pled guilty.

[00:27:49] So we know the system as it's working, this plea bargaining system is sweeping up not only

[00:27:55] the guilty people but is sweeping up innocent people.

[00:27:58] I might just mention too that you have a link to the National Registry of Exonerations

[00:28:04] if people want to look that up.

[00:28:06] But just before we go on to the next topic, as we talk about plea bargaining, you have

[00:28:11] a section where you talk about biblical justice and you take some of the principles that

[00:28:16] you've talked about earlier in the book, like accuracy and proportionality and due process

[00:28:23] and some of those impartiality to show how you take some of those Christian principles

[00:28:29] that you write about in the first part of the book and apply them to this whole issue

[00:28:34] of plea bargaining.

[00:28:36] But let's recognize that even with all these guilty pleas, you point out there are thousands

[00:28:41] of criminal defendants that still go to trial each year.

[00:28:46] And it again is one of those problems in the American justice system in which certain individuals

[00:28:53] are able to benefit from all sorts of things in terms of trial and the rest and jury selection

[00:29:02] and the rest and even judges, which is another one of your chapters.

[00:29:06] And so again, how do we begin to apply some of those principles that you've just talked

[00:29:10] about like accuracy and proportionality and the rest in terms of what actually happens

[00:29:16] in terms of jury selection and jury trials?

[00:29:19] Well, you're exactly right.

[00:29:22] What I tried to do in the first half of the book was lay out here's the principles.

[00:29:26] If loving our neighbor as ourselves means designing a system that achieves accuracy

[00:29:32] through due process and impartiality and proportional punishment, then how does that apply to plea bargaining?

[00:29:38] And as you noted, I've raised questions about whether our system is achieving accuracy in

[00:29:45] the plea bargaining given how many innocent people are being compelled to plead guilty

[00:29:48] to crimes they didn't commit.

[00:29:50] But then you also have to say, well, how do some of these biblical principles also apply

[00:29:54] to jury trials?

[00:29:56] So take, for example, jury selection.

[00:29:58] And I explain the long history of using jury selection as a way to exclude African-Americans

[00:30:04] from jury service, including up through 2019 in a U.S. Supreme Court case written by Justice

[00:30:11] Brett Kavanaugh, where he explained how in six successive trials, a prosecutor had tried

[00:30:19] to strike all of the black jurors in a case involving a black defendant who was sentenced

[00:30:25] to death in Mississippi.

[00:30:27] And that that violates the biblical principle of impartiality, that we judge cases based

[00:30:32] on what people did, not based on what racial group they're a part of.

[00:30:38] It violates ultimately the principle of accuracy by trying to skew the outcome based on racial

[00:30:46] bias.

[00:30:47] And so, you know, that's just one example of how even something like jury selection

[00:30:52] raises questions of how we apply biblical and Christian principles of justice to our

[00:30:58] justice system.

[00:31:00] One of the questions off air had to do with the lack of judges, and that's one of your

[00:31:04] chapters interestingly enough, because we choose judges in different ways.

[00:31:09] Of course, you just mentioned Brett Kavanaugh, the justices to the Supreme Court are selected

[00:31:14] by the president with advice and consent from the Senate.

[00:31:18] But many of our listeners in different states, some are actually appointed, others are elected.

[00:31:25] And so the whole question of judicial qualifications and the way in which we have judges in courts

[00:31:32] in the system is part of the problem too, isn't it?

[00:31:36] Well, right.

[00:31:38] Who we pick as the judge is that even though the judges aren't ultimately the finders of

[00:31:42] fact, the judges are going to instruct the law, instruct the jury on the law.

[00:31:47] They're going to decide what type of evidence gets in or doesn't get in, decide what type

[00:31:52] of witnesses can be called, how long parties will have to make their arguments to the jury,

[00:31:58] all types of decisions that they make that affect the outcome of the case.

[00:32:02] And what you see in the federal system where judges, as you point out, are appointed by

[00:32:06] the president and confirmed by the Senate is that overwhelmingly presidents of both parties

[00:32:10] have picked far, far more prosecutors than they pick defense lawyers to serve as judges.

[00:32:17] And so you have to imagine over time that when you pick people who are predominantly

[00:32:21] prosecutors to be judges, they're going to bring predominantly that prosecutorial perspective

[00:32:26] to the case.

[00:32:27] At a state level, that situation is exacerbated because in state courts, most states elect

[00:32:33] judges rather than appoint them.

[00:32:36] And so overwhelmingly, you end up with a situation where judges run on tough on crime

[00:32:41] platforms, which is understandable because that's what the public wants.

[00:32:45] But as I point out in my book, you have judges who've run on the idea that they have a prosecutorial

[00:32:50] mindset rather than serving as an independent judge, an independent judiciary, which again

[00:32:55] is one of the issues that the colonists objected to when they wrote the Declaration of Independence.

[00:33:02] We've gone from an independent judiciary to now judges who are saying, I align myself

[00:33:06] with the prosecutors.

[00:33:07] And again, I think that that impacts issues like due process and accuracy.

[00:33:13] Well, let's take a break and we'll come back, get into a couple other issues, maybe witnesses

[00:33:18] because those witnesses are not only flesh and blood, but as we've pointed out just a

[00:33:22] minute ago, some of them are DNA witnesses in that sense and sentencing and a couple

[00:33:27] of other issues are all part of this book, which is entitled Reforming Criminal Justice,

[00:33:31] a Christian proposal.

[00:33:33] Matthew Martin's with us and we'll continue our conversation with him on the book right

[00:33:36] after this.

[00:33:57] Listening to point of view, as we talk about reforming criminal justice, a Christian proposal,

[00:34:07] Matthew Martin's with us and just off the air, we had someone else call in talking about

[00:34:11] the fact that his public defender would not allow him to go to trial, but required him

[00:34:17] to plea bargain.

[00:34:18] And of course we know what happens there, which again brings us to one of your chapters

[00:34:23] on witnesses.

[00:34:25] The biblical view, of course, gets back to this issue of accuracy and as you pointed

[00:34:30] out earlier, but again bring out once again that we are recognizing because we now have

[00:34:36] people that are exonerated through DNA evidence, we see that sometimes wrongful convictions

[00:34:44] become more reasonable or maybe in some cases more strict because of mistakes of eyewitnesses

[00:34:53] identification, forensic evidence, informant testimony and even of course false confessions.

[00:35:01] The goal of course of both the prosecution and the defense is to ask very difficult questions

[00:35:09] of witnesses in order to provide the best possible evidence for the judge and the jury,

[00:35:17] but again we live in a flawed system because we live in a flawed world, but what other

[00:35:22] issues should we be thinking about when we talk about witnesses in the court of law?

[00:35:26] Well I guess we've lost...

[00:35:32] Well, I think that one of the main issues is recognizing that eyewitness testimony is

[00:35:43] not as reliable as we think it is.

[00:35:46] And that's not because people are intentionally trying to lie, but that despite what we say

[00:35:52] something like I remember exactly what happened, the reality is we know that we don't remember

[00:35:57] exactly what happened.

[00:35:59] It's just not how our minds work, that we remember a version of what happened and that

[00:36:04] even people doing their best to try to speak accurately will get things wrong.

[00:36:11] We know for example that the ability to identify someone who committed a crime if that person

[00:36:17] was someone who you didn't previously know, that the ability to do that accurately is

[00:36:21] very low.

[00:36:23] We just don't have the ability to pick people out when we saw them under stressful circumstances

[00:36:28] for a very short period of time.

[00:36:30] And so what's really interesting is that when I mentioned Professor Brandon Garrett from

[00:36:35] Duke who's gone back to look at the DNA exonerations, the biggest single contributor to the inaccurate

[00:36:42] convictions was flawed eyewitness identification testimony.

[00:36:46] Someone who thought they could identify who committed the crime but didn't.

[00:36:50] In one of the cases, six witnesses came in and identified the defendant as the one who

[00:36:56] committed the crime and DNA showed he wasn't the person.

[00:36:59] So I think there's a, and scripture warns us about this, right?

[00:37:02] You can go back to Deuteronomy where scripture speaks of requiring two or three witnesses.

[00:37:07] You see this repeated in the New Testament.

[00:37:10] And there's wisdom ahead of its time in those passages because while we know that now it's

[00:37:15] a matter of studies done by psychologists and otherwise, scripture was telling us thousands

[00:37:22] of years ago that the reliability of eyewitness testimony is not what we think it is.

[00:37:28] Very good.

[00:37:29] Well, again, I just thought I would at least focus on one other chapter and that is sentencing.

[00:37:34] That's because for quite some time as a federal prosecutor you actually were involved in what

[00:37:41] are called sentencing hearings.

[00:37:44] And that does not sound like a very positive kind of experience in terms of a job description,

[00:37:51] but it's something that you've done.

[00:37:53] So how do we think about this?

[00:37:55] Because once again, we want to give people what they are due.

[00:38:00] That is what a biblical view of justice is.

[00:38:03] But some of those sentences as you've already pointed out are too light and some of them

[00:38:07] are too harsh.

[00:38:08] How do we think about this?

[00:38:10] Well, even when the sentence is just right, it's hard, emotionally hard, and I found it

[00:38:17] always hard to bring punishment to bear on other people, particularly imprisonment, because

[00:38:22] you knew that this was going to have dramatic impacts on other family members, particularly

[00:38:28] the children of the people who were sentenced.

[00:38:31] And I always found that extremely difficult when the children would speak or when they

[00:38:35] would children would write letters, or even when they were just there seeing what was

[00:38:39] going to happen to their, usually their father.

[00:38:43] And that is an emotional experience even in the best of circumstances where the punishment

[00:38:47] is one that's due.

[00:38:49] One that you know that the perpetrator has brought on themselves through the way they've

[00:38:54] decided to act.

[00:38:55] As we talked about earlier, they made a decision and respecting their humanity requires holding

[00:39:00] them accountable for it.

[00:39:02] But that doesn't, I don't, there's no joy to be taken in that.

[00:39:07] At the same time, it's emotional to deal with the victims who have faced these serious crimes

[00:39:14] often, suffered physical harm, have suffered financial loss.

[00:39:20] And the challenge of identifying what is the proportionate sentence, what is the sentence

[00:39:25] that's due?

[00:39:27] Due as a matter of justice to the perpetrator, to send a message to him or her about the

[00:39:33] seriousness of what they've done.

[00:39:35] And also to love by being proportional to the crime victim, by saying to the crime victim

[00:39:42] through the sentence that we recognize as a society the seriousness of what's done to

[00:39:47] you.

[00:39:48] And so I think that process of striving to get a proportional punishment that tells the

[00:39:53] truth to both the criminal and the crime victim about the seriousness of what is done

[00:39:58] is a hard one.

[00:40:00] Well, again, this book deals with, of course, a Christian ethic of criminal justice.

[00:40:05] And we've talked about social justice and neighbors and accuracy and due process and

[00:40:10] accountability and partiality, proportionality.

[00:40:13] And then we've just worked our way through some of the aspects of the American criminal

[00:40:17] justice system, crime and plea bargaining, jury selection, judges.

[00:40:22] We didn't get into all the aspects of evidence and witnesses and sentencing, but we covered

[00:40:27] quite a bit.

[00:40:28] And I thought just before we're winding down here, Matthew, can you just talk about how

[00:40:32] people can use this book?

[00:40:33] It seems to me that I'd want to put this in the hands of anybody that's in the legal profession,

[00:40:39] but also whether you're a lawyer or not, whether you've ever served on a jury or not, although

[00:40:44] I suspect many of our listeners have, you would benefit from just really thinking about

[00:40:49] what should be the biblical basis for a criminal justice system, how is it different and how

[00:40:55] we could in the future bring about remarkable changes.

[00:40:59] And I think that's really why you wrote the book.

[00:41:01] Yeah, I wanted my fellow Christians to be more knowledgeable in participating in a discussion

[00:41:07] that's been getting a lot of airtime recently in our country, that as people discuss this

[00:41:13] issue, particularly as election time comes up and people start to focus on perhaps electing

[00:41:18] their district attorney in their county, maybe this will help them be more knowledgeable.

[00:41:23] But also I wanted to encourage people to be willing to serve on juries.

[00:41:28] That's a unique privilege we have in this country, unlike few people in the history

[00:41:32] of the world and unlike few people even around the world today.

[00:41:36] And rather than seeking ways to avoid what is admittedly the inconvenience of jury service,

[00:41:42] I wanted to encourage Christians to take that opportunity as a stewardship to go and do

[00:41:47] justice and most notably do justice by demanding accuracy, holding the government to its proof

[00:41:55] and then returning true and accurate verdicts for the good of both the person who's accused

[00:42:00] so that they can be corrected and for the good of the person who's victimized.

[00:42:04] Let me again mention that your website is Matthew-Martins.com.

[00:42:07] We have that link on the website.

[00:42:10] People can find out more about your book.

[00:42:11] They can contact you as well.

[00:42:13] And so Matthew, thank you for writing the book and thank you for giving an hour of your

[00:42:16] time today to talk about this book with our listening audience.

[00:42:20] So thank you for being with us.

[00:42:22] Well thank you for giving me an hour to talk about it.

[00:42:24] I love doing it and I hope it's a benefit to your audience.

[00:42:27] Well just before we go, let me just mention again that God's law can be summarized by

[00:42:31] certainly loving God and loving our neighbors.

[00:42:34] And if indeed we are wanting to love others and give them what they are due, certainly

[00:42:40] one aspect of doing that certainly applies to the criminal justice system.

[00:42:45] So let me encourage you to get a copy of the book.

[00:42:48] If you know somebody that would benefit from this, maybe go to the website pointofview.net.

[00:42:53] Click on that button that says Watch or Listen.

[00:42:55] Maybe send the podcast to them that they could begin to think about these issues because

[00:42:59] these are issues we need to think about.

[00:43:02] Christians need to be involved in every aspect of life and one very important part of that

[00:43:06] is the criminal justice system.

[00:43:08] And you've been listening to Point of View.

[00:43:12] It almost seems like we live in a different world from many people in positions of authority.

[00:43:18] They say men can be women and women men.

[00:43:22] People are prosecuted differently or not at all depending on their politics.

[00:43:27] Criminals are more valued and rewarded than law abiding citizens.

[00:43:32] It's so overwhelming, so demoralizing.

[00:43:35] You feel like giving up but we can't.

[00:43:38] We shouldn't.

[00:43:39] We must not.

[00:43:40] As Winston Churchill said to Britain in the darkest days of World War II, never give in.

[00:43:45] Never give in.

[00:43:46] Never, never, never.

[00:43:49] Never yield to force.

[00:43:50] Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

[00:43:55] And that's what we say to you today.

[00:43:57] This is not a time to give in but to step up and join Point of View in providing clarity

[00:44:03] in the chaos.

[00:44:05] We can't do it alone but together with God's help we will overcome the darkness.

[00:44:12] Invest in Biblical clarity today at PointofView.net or call 1-800-347-5151.

[00:44:20] PointofView.net and 800-347-5151.

[00:44:30] Point of View is produced by Point of View Ministries.