TO THE EDITOR:
Believe me when I say how badly I feel for Paul Frampton, unjustly imprisoned in a foreign country for months. However, it interests me how quick we are to criticize other foreign governments’ legal systems, when our own country has a legal system that can be just as bad.
I have personally known individuals who have been imprisoned in our state in horrible conditions for over a year before being granted a trial. I thought we were innocent until proven guilty?
I also know a UNC student who was arrested and imprisoned for 3 months, having to drop out of school, losing his job and having to start his life all over again when the charges were suddenly dropped, and he was released without an apology but not without huge legal bills.
We should spend as much time cleaning our own house as we do in trying to clean others. Unfortunately, this will never happen because we entrust the legal profession to make our laws and run our courts.
There is certainly not any motivation to improve the efficiency of our courts to guarantee defendants a speedy trial. More delays mean more money, especially when lawyers earn $200 to $400 an hour.
If an Argentinian professor was arrested at RDU for the same charges, I suspect he would be in Raleigh’s Central Prison for a very long time before being given the opportunity to go to trial.
Let’s demand speedy trials for all defendants, including our own.
Eric Plow
Retiree
UNC School of Dentistry
