Alright, you can spend a week or more in jail awaiting a preliminary hearing so that we can catch every one of those evil-doers, Janus, but I’m not going to. Untill you do, I don’t think you really have room to talk (just youing your own logic, see Halo thread).
As for the 4th amendment, it was designed to prevent individuals from being convicted with evidence that may have been planted or otherwise ill-gotten. If a police force is too incompetent to obtain a search warrant you’re not going to take my rights away so they can convict some dumb shmuck who’s growing pot in his closet, it’s just not worth it.
You say a trial by jury is prone to incompetence and misunderstanding; I say that a jury of peers is far better than a panel of judges, first of all, becuase it is a jury of peers, that is people of similar circumstance. A jury of peers is most likely to understand a defendant, a panel of judges are appointed by governing fat-cats, hence the common person is not likely to become a judge. That means you have a bunch of people who are going to look down their noses at most defendants becuase they are of a lower status, that’s just the way our society works.
Your comments on the death penalty are absolutely ridiculus and border on human rights violations. As a society we have determined that human life is something pretty special, and you can’t just go around killing people convicted of just any crime. Why not insititute roving bands of peasants weilding pitchforks and torches beating and killing people instead of having a court system? Secondly, in order to make the death penalty national you’d need to ammend the consititution, good luck with that.
Are you purposefully supporting turning the US into an authoritarian state with the power to do pretty much whatever it pleases without the input of the people, becuase that’s basicly what your getting at. Imagine a group gaining power on the national level and appointing judges that will do whatever said group pleases. They could then theoreticly make people disappear; charge them with a crime, convicted with a little evidence the defendent has never seen before, just for show, (because after all the judges do what their told) and the person is exicuted and sent to the city incinerator. You may think it’s a preposterous scenario, but it’s happened in the Soviet Union, China, Nazi Germany, and even further back. You can keep your distopian ideals, I’ll never give in to authoritarianism like this.