The first thing that really jumped
out at me was the one detective’s hesitancy to consider O’Connell as a suspect
based on stories family and friend had told him. I didn’t really expect this sort of bias to
come up while investigating a criminal case, in my mind he should have been
looking at the facts and details and not the man’s background that his own
family and friends have provided. The detective’s
thinking could have set a criminal free.
A second thing would be the lack of
cooperation between the FBI and local police forces. If the two worked together, justice would
have come much quicker upon the guilty. Instead
they slowed each other down, refusing to help, give information they had, or
turn prisoners over to one another so that they could be prosecuted. It seems like a slow system that could easily
be made much more efficient.
The final thing I noticed was the
very intricate international laws regarding extradition of criminals and the
laws based on that. It seemed as though
the police were constantly treading very lightly with what they could and could
not do with O’Connell to make sure that his being in America wouldn’t allow him
freedom on its own merit. If he had
testified for the other murder he would have been allowed to be free in America
and never face British justice and may been released before he could be
revealed as the real killer. Laws around
extradition make bringing criminals to justice much harder, but bring into
question how international justice should be used. How far should one countries’ arm stretch to
bring justice to someone who broke their laws?
It is my opinion that people should not be able to flee a stable
countries justice system by slipping into another country, and that these
people should be handed back to the country whose laws they have violated.
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