 One thing that strikes me is, you know, we talk about living in bubbles, and I think the U.S. does live in bubbles. It doesn't make, you know, comparison with other places. And I think to appreciate whether it's doing well or not, we should, from time to time, compare the way our systems, you know, our government, our culture, compares with other countries. For this discussion, we have my co-host, Tim Appichella. We have our esteemed guest, Manfred Henningston, and we have our regular contributor, Stephanie Stull Dalton. And we're going to talk about the comparison of the justice system. That means criminal justice system in America versus Europe. And there's a lot of interesting wrinkles to that. Let me begin this discussion with Tim. Tim, you know, if you were investigated and indicted and prosecuted and tried and punished ultimately, and subject to appeal ultimately in the U.S. versus Europe, where would you rather be tried? In Europe. Why? I think our justice system isn't so much justice. And I think I said this on a previous show. I got in big trouble when I was in sixth grade reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. And the final part was, when it says for liberty and justice for all, I said for liberty and justice for some. And I was hauled off to the principal's office for saying that. Why did I say that in sixth grade? Because I believed then, and as I firmly believe now, that the justice system is those who have financial resources to mount a reasonable defense for the charges levied against me or the accused. And so often we have people in jail because they take a plea. They take a plea bargain. Why do they take a plea bargain? Because they don't have the financial resources to hire a competent attorney. And they know well that the public defender is way overburdened and certainly doesn't have the time and resources to mount inadequate and reasonable defense for the crime that you're being accused of. I only ask you the same question, Manfred. If you were, you know, charged with a crime and faced a justice system, which justice system would you prefer? I think I would prefer Europe. But I mean, you have to remember you have Europe is not an entity, even though it's called European Union, but they don't have a constitution. You know, they tried to get one in 2005. But the president of the constitutional assembly, the former president, Giscard de Stern, made this mistake of sending to all French citizens a document of 800 pages. And so the constitutional draft was accepted in Spain in a plebiscite in really with overwhelming majority. And the French voted it down. And then the Irish. And the next two would have been the United Kingdom and Denmark. So what you are confronted with when you're speaking about Europe, it's a union and disunion. Oh, I suppose the United States, you know, which also says has the word united, doesn't it? It has the word united in the United States. And they say we have a constitution. But, you know, the Supreme Court has, you know, done some heavy work on it. In any event, we also have our disparities. Institutionally as big as they are in Europe, you know, and that I find really very sad. Americans have the tendency of when they are comparing Europe with the United States, always talking about Great Britain. Even though Great Britain should never have become part of any European entity, the goal was right. Keep them out. They suffer from an empire complex that they have still not overcome. For that reason, you know, one should tell American journalists, especially when they write about comparative politics, do not use Great Britain as the major comparison. Well, some people feel that Great Britain is great. The Brits too. But I mean, the Scots do not accept that. And the Welsh don't either. But the Irish. Because the Irish, you know, the English still believe, you know, that they roll the waves. What does that got to do with the individual defendant who is hauled into court on a crime? What does that got to do with the system, you know, the process, the way that individual is treated, the civil rights that are afforded to that individual? No, I would certainly prefer being treated in, for example, since originally came from Germany and Germany. I find the German justice system more just than the American. What do you mean by just? Well, the application of it, you don't have, since 1949, when West Germany came into being, as a separate country, you do not have all of the restrictions that you had before that, in historical Germany, whereas in the United States, you know, you have the baggage of 200 years that. What is that racism? You mean racism? Is that what you're talking about? Yes, certainly. I mean, it's one of the major features, you know, of American history and American politics and the American justice system still is. You know, Manfred, there is a migrant problem in Europe. That's cultural, but it's also racist. And, you know, query whether that racism turns turns into injustice, whether it has infected the courts and the justice system and the prosecutors and the judges. Yeah, no, absolutely. But again, there are difference between the various countries that have been affected by it. Germany, as the result of having come, of having come to terms with their macro criminal historical record, I think is better off than most other European countries, including France, formerly fascist Italy, and especially Scandinavia. I want to just mention that we were interviewing a young woman from HPU. I asked her, I said, how do you feel about the migrants? And she says, I am so jealous of Germany. I am so disappointed. She was from Sweden. I'm so disappointed, you know, in Sweden, because they are not nearly as kind to the migrants as Germany is. And that was a very interesting remark for a Scandinavian to make, but there you have it. So, Stephanie, I didn't ask you the question. I need to ask you the question, too. If you were being charged with a crime, you know, where would you rather be facing justice in the United States, and if so, where? Or in Europe, and if so, where? Well, I'm sorry. I can only quote a line. It's simply the best, except for all the rest, and that's the U.S., okay? And with particular reference to Bamford mentioned Italy. And I know that young woman was unjustly handled in that Italian case against her slain roommate. And then there are a couple of other examples. I'm sure we could crank up here, but I just haven't seen anything that encourages me to select out of the U.S. justice system with all of its faults. Well, let's drill down a little bit, Tim. You know, what are the good things, what are the bad things about the American justice system that you would include in your analysis here? Well, what comes to my mind right off the top is you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Also, things that came later was your Miranda rights, the right not to self-incriminate, your ability to cite the fifth, in the Constitution, the Fifth Amendment, protection against self-incrimination. I like those things. With all of that, you know, is it really working? All the plea bargains or people who... Well, that's my point. The plea bargains come as a result of you don't have enough financial resources to mount a lengthy and arduous defense. So it's money. There are a lot of people who are incarcerated because they didn't have the financial resources. And so they took the plea. They took the plea bargain. Where's justice in that? And where's justice in the fact that the United States percentage-wise has more people in jail than any other country? And most of them are from economically adverse families and households. And took the plea, as you said. And took the plea. And I asked the question again, and I never get a real answer, is where is the justice in that? Okay, and Stephanie, let's go to you. I mean, what do you like or dislike about the American justice system? I mean, this is a great, huge amount of rhetoric that comes out, civil rights and the battle for civil rights over a couple of centuries. But, you know, is it working if you had to make that decision your own self or a member of your family or a friend? What would trouble you about the American justice system? I would focus on my troubles. I would go back to Tim's list, all of those protections that you know you have. And you don't need a high-powered lawyer to make sure those protections extend to you or your family member or friend. But I just think we're in that situation again. And I quoted Tina Turner, of course, but I took the second phrase, which I shouldn't have. It's like with the democracy definition, you know, it's the worst government system possible except for all the rest. And certainly I would say the same thing about the legal. So there are many, many flaws and one has to be careful for those. And that you have got the plea, because I don't know that Russia gives the plea or places that are corrupt in their practices. And I don't know any others except maybe Britain. Why do you use Russia? Yeah, I was going to ask you that, Manfred. What about Russia? What about the autocracies in Europe? Would you go there? It's a strange reference at this point to, you know, quote Russia at all in the discussion of criminal justice. There is no justice. There is no justice. So for there is no justice, yes. I mean, so for that reason, this comparison, I find somewhat bizarre. But I mean, in this particular case, in this particular case, it should not be even mentioned. The reason, I think, that we need to talk about Russia and autocracies in general is that they are the flip side. If you have an autocracy, if a democracy deteriorates into an autocracy, you have Vladimir Putin and Navalny. How many others that are held without any civil rights at all that are essentially sentenced to death for whatever they do by being incarcerated and God knows what happens in prison. This happens in China, too. So autocracy takes away any, you know, veneer of civil rights. And it makes the mockery out of the justice system in general. And so if we allow, you know, our democracy, our representative government, civil rights protections to deteriorate, and they might very well do that under another administration from Trump, you know, who attacked the prosecutor, that who every day, as we see it in the news, he makes the mockery of the justice system, then we might go there. We might go to Navalny and Ljubljanka prison in Moscow and all the solzhenets and stories in, you know, in the archipelago. So don't you think that's relevant to this discussion? It is important, and especially in connection with the European Union, because you have in the European Union two countries, Hungary and Poland, that show autocratic science, Hungary, maybe even more so than Poland, but Poland is not far behind. So what you have here, I think this defect of the constitutional construction of the European Union, not being constitutionally a union, the only power that the European Union has to get at Hungary and Poland is simply cut the money flow, the support, the financial support of the European Union to both countries. And they have done it recently to Hungary. One of the requirements for the EU is you cannot have the death penalty in your country. It's all of Europe. Strangely enough, you're also in Russia, Russia abided by that. So you have the abolition of the death penalty in all European countries. What does it mean, Tim, that we have the death penalty here in several states? And we see it on the news when somebody is about to be executed through some really inhumane technique. What does it mean? What does it say about our country that we still have the death penalty and the Supreme Court hasn't stopped it? There's traditions that go hundreds of years in our country. And I really think a lot of our problems, and I hope the relatives or ancestors of John Withrup don't come after me legally, but I think the problem started with the Puritans. They had a certain way of dealing with things and they weren't very nice. They're pretty harsh. Things went south from there, bad conflicts with the Native Americans. And so those traditions kind of just permeated through for decades and hundreds of years to where we are now or a hard nation when it comes to crime. I'm reminded of the Wild West form of justice. We're going to give you a fair trial, then we're going to hang you. Interestingly enough, and Manfred can confirm this, that in the early part of the 19th century, we all had the death penalty. The United States had the death penalty and so did what most of Europe I suppose. The Enlightenment about the death penalty did not really sweep across Europe until the middle of the 20th century. That's after World War II. It was after World War II. It's very interesting that the world has changed. The death penalty is no longer popular in Europe and for that matter, as Manfred says in Russia. We still have it and it's brutal and it offends the sensibilities and we still have it. Is that a question of federalism? Is it a question of human rights? Is it a question of head in the sand where we want to punish people? I remember, Manfred, I was telling you, I remember that it was a 60-minute show back a few years ago where they looked at the justice system in Germany and they talked to some convicted murderers who were mowing the grass in a public park. That was part of their fairly routine and they seemed like they weren't crazy. They seemed pathological. The public was friendly with them. They were friendly with the public. They just happened to be murderers and they were on the way to rehabilitation. I think the word rehabilitation actually pervades in a number of countries in Europe, but it doesn't pervade here. We're into punishment. We're into retribution. We're to keep those people away from us. This is a completely different orientation. I don't think the United States has really learned about that. Stephanie, has the United States learned about rehabilitation in lieu of retribution? Well, that's slowly coming on, but let's face it. We're out of human history and in human history, it's spectacularly characterized by the death penalty in every way. We're barely, barely poking out of that into thinking at a higher level about how these criminal acts need to be handled. I mean, the first step forward, folks, tell me, isn't it the Magna Carta? King John, 13th century, the Barons finally got fed up and got organized and they got something written down. We've started there in the 13th century. I would interject the laws of Hammurabi. And then there were some of those more ancient ones, but these are all based on that. All of our philosophies and our principles and commandments and commandments that are out of Egypt. So, I mean, all of this has been slowly accruing. It doesn't sound like we've made all that much progress. I mean, if you were black in this country and you were charged with a crime, would you prefer American justice or European justice? It's a simple answer. It would depend on the European country. I'd like to address that question, Jay, because when this country, they signed off on the anti-lynching laws in the late 1800s, okay, so you couldn't just take someone out in the street and lynch them, but what we'll do is we'll give you a fair trial and then we'll hang you. And that's what happened. That's the court system, the jury trial system in the deep south was nothing more than a legalized way of lynching and or incarceration for life. To add on to that, what is more cruel? Is the death penalty more cruel or put someone in a life sentence in solitary confinement so they drive themselves insane? I don't know. Take me out. Take me out fast. You know, Manfred, they say that public interest is a function, and this is from the chat GBT Q&A that I did. I don't know if you had a chance to look at all that. I asked a bunch of questions about this to chat GBT and I got some very interesting answers. And one of the points of interest is that if you have confidence in the system, you are much more likely to be interested in reforming the system. If you are not confident in the system, if you sort of don't care that you're turned off by the system to a certain point, you don't want to reform it, you don't care. And this is very troublesome because we know in so many states we need to have reform of the system, not only the justice system, but hey, the police and also the prison system. And so I guess what I get here is that in the last few years, and I know Tim will agree anyway, in the last few years, we have lost confidence through the machinations of Donald Trump because he doesn't believe in a system. He always games the system. There are so many things he does and has done through his life to undermine the system and make it work for him only, but not for the community that people may have lost confidence in it and thus they're not interested in reforming it. What do you think about Trump and his machinations and all the stories about how a special brand of justice exists for him and his friends? Find it very interesting that you are speaking about the loss of trust. You know, if you look at France today, you could say it's the only Western country where this lack of trust becomes manifested in large-scale protest demonstrations, starting with the Yellow Vests and now having to do with protests against raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. I mean, as an issue, it's bizarre. Most European countries have, at this point, a retirement age of 65. In some cases, it goes already up to 67. But what I find interesting about these French protests is it's a manifestation of distrust at the same time, because these demonstrators really believe that their revolutionary-looking protests and the violence that is sometimes connected with it will change the system. Whereas Macron sits there in the LSA palace and doesn't give a damn and goes ahead with what he had designed as being necessary, and I think his political arguments for raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 are rational. I mean, they make a lot of sense. Everybody who looks at the French retirement system would say the French are nuts. They had a show about this only a few days ago with a young fellow who shaped himself as a liberal progressive in Paris. What he said is, yeah, sure, the retirement age, it's a proxy issue. The real issue is how Macron is conducting himself in the matter, the style he has. And the other issue is that the French, and this goes right back to Les Miserables, goes back to the French Revolution, feel that they have to be free to express themselves outside of government. They have to be free to express themselves in the street. The revolution in France is not over. Just as some people say, the revolution in the U.S. is not over. If they have lost confidence in the French government and system and constitution, does that somehow affect their confidence in criminal justice too? If they lose confidence about the government in one way, as Trump has helped us do, aren't they also losing confidence in other ways? Because the thing where the government actually touches you is in your taxes, which we don't have the same confidence that we had before after the quote, tax reform act of 2017, where he treated the 1% against the 99. And then criminal justice, those are the things where this citizen is directly engaged with the government. And if you are unhappy with the government, you are unhappy with those two things. So in France, isn't it so that this lack of confidence, not about the retirement age, but about everything, affects their view of criminal justice also? Well, look, you have really a whole array of protests in the United States. Today, I mean, you have the anti-assault weapon demonstrations by school children. You have the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. So you have all kinds of demonstrations in the United States that resemble in the intensity demonstrations in France. So you could say all of these demonstrations, not only those in France, but those in the United States also, confirm in a way a trust relationship to the possibility of the system against which they protest of change. For that reason, I find it interesting when you are looking at Turkey, you have now the repeat election very soon, and people think everyone will win. Where are these protests? And strangely enough, a majority of the Turks living in Germany, there are by now around 4 million, a majority of them who are still having the right to vote in Turkey will vote for everyone also. I mean, they found that out. And the Turks who have become German citizens and do not understand the fellow Turkish community members, where this madness comes from. They have madness in Turkey? I could cite a number of instances to prove to you we have madness in this country. I don't know, absolutely. But I mean, what I wanted to simply say is, you do not have the consistency of these protest movements. No. And that is the problem, as I was saying in France, the culture, the history, the whole track of it since the revolution. But you have that in the United States, too. Absolutely. And you know, that's it's very interesting. The United States, and the United States, some of these protests are not about the government doing too much. It's not about protecting our civil liberties. It's about the government doing too little. Right. And Rachel Maddow had a really interesting podcast where she demonstrated that there were Nazis involved in the government, in the United States Congress back in the 30s. And there were plenty of Nazis in the 30s here. Hitler's American friends is a wonderful book. Yeah. And what happened is you had all these trials of people who were really on the wrong side. They were fascist on the side of, you know, bringing the country down in the 30s. And we have that now, too, don't we? And the public had lost confidence, not because the government had done too much, but it had done too little. And the Department of Justice lost the cases, and the public was outraged that the Department of Justice could not bring them to justice. And does that remind you in any way of moral logo? Does it remind you in any way of January 6th? Tim, do you think the public has more or less confidence in the criminal justice system in this country? And I guess I would have to say that the argument against that is what happened with regard to this fellow in the Oath Keepers who was sentenced to 18 years. 18 years. That's pretty serious. But do you think, you know, once it took a long time, right? And we weren't sure. And I wonder if these events where people don't feel the government has done enough are a problem in terms of public confidence. Well, done enough, I think. In some cases, they've done more than enough with the Dodd case and overturn of Raid, you know, Roe v. Wade. But, you know, Americans are idealists, by and large. And so when we look at the Statue of Justice with a blindfold, we expect our judges to be blindfolded. And there's a process, a judicial process, of a determined one's guilt or innocence. The problem is, I think most Americans now think that politics have influenced our judges and the decisions rendered by those justices, and might I've mentioned the Supreme Court, are tainted. They've been painted by a political persuasion. And the persuasion comes to mind is Donald Trump and his influence on the Supreme Court and his selection of Supreme Court justices. So a lot of people are starting to think, hey, the game's rigged. Supreme Court, I think it's very important in comparison. For example, with Germany, where you have a Supreme Court, which was, in a way, a model, modeled after the American Supreme Court when West Germany became a republic in September in 1949. This Supreme Court has today two senators. They have 16 judges, which are chosen by the parliament for 12 years. And after 12 years, they will not be possible to become reappointed. So what you have in the German case, you have a wonderful counter example to the madness of the American Supreme Court, the institutional madness of the American Supreme Court, having life appointments. And for that reason, if you have term limits for the judges to the Supreme Court, term limits of 12 years with no reappointment, I think that would be a solution. But for some strange reason, the madness of American politics is supported by the madness of some of the ancient institutional restrictions that you have since the founding, including the Electoral College and since 1791, the Second Amendment. This is a madness institutionalized as well. No other Western country has that, the right for citizens to defend themselves. That is handed over to the sovereign. Why about corruption? Can we talk about corruption just for a little bit? We know that there's a lot of corruption. The American judiciary's, including federal and state, I would never have thought federal. But lately, I begin to question whether there was corruption in the federal judiciary. But what about Europe? You have the civil law judges. And I would say by and large, they are younger. Their terms are not that long. They are more of the people, if you will. Are they subject to corruption? They are human. Bingo. You heard it right here. There it is. For that reason, by definition of the birth. Stephanie, you've been nodding your head. You want to say something on this, don't you? The problem about public confidence, the problem about the American judiciary, and the problem of trying to fix it. Right. The American judiciary in its own way has been gerrymandered, as you've referred to. And at all the expectations and principles and standards for judges for honor and integrity that used to exist and actually used to be enacted have all changed. So it's all changed. And all of the trust that was placed and faith in these people who were put in these special judiciary positions is no longer deserved. And let me just give you the example here in Hawaii, Bishop of State. The Bernice Pallahi Bishop, when she sought out those who would be responsible for selecting trustees of the bishop and state needed to be a little organization that would exist in perpetuity and have the honor and dignity and integrity to manage to put people in who were deserve it, learn it, and able to function. And she chose for that position to go on for centuries in perpetuity, the judiciary, the leaders of the judiciary, the Supreme Court judges of Hawaii. That is where the corruption went in that led to the tremendous difficulties that they suffered. We're out of time, Stephanie. We got about one minute apiece to summarize and leave a thought about this very difficult subject. And I frame the question to you, Tim, as what can we learn from the Gestalt in Europe? I know that there are different situations in different countries, that's for sure. But from the best we find in Europe, what can we learn from them? And what can they learn from us? Wow, tough question. Quickly, I'm going to go to Manfred's comment, they're human. And if the judicial system or any system of government, we have to acknowledge that corruption is part of the human nature. Therefore, there has to be built in safeguards, not only implemented and approved, but maintained and oversight of those safeguards. And without it, you have an autocracy of sorts. Okay. And Stephanie, your final comment, hold it to one minute. Well, I'm just going to pick up from what Tim said, because now that has been played out through our own Supreme Court, no code of ethics that actually was specific to them, and their particular needs to be overseen. So, and we're suffering from that now, because there used to be one way of thinking about these people. There used to be one way that they acted. Now it's changed, corruption is there. Okay. So in the Western Europe and in the West in general Manfred, how important is it that we reform these issues? Because as I mentioned, for most people, it's tax and criminal law that way they engage with the system. What can we do to give them the confidence to make the system more sustainable? I think the Americans have to first stop looking always to the United Kingdom. United Kingdom is old history and they have not come to terms with their own history, but I find it always absurd. These English comparisons are brought up by journalists. I think it has to do with the lack of education. They should look to Germany. For example, the Supreme Court, this originalism argument is sheer ideology. It's stupid. I mean, constitutions are living doctrine. People, I mean, look at us, we are getting old. We shouldn't do this here in perpetuity. We should be replaced by younger people. Speaking of perpetuity, we have to say farewell. Thank you very much, men, for joining us today. And Tim, thank you so much. And Stephanie, thank you so much.