Courtrooms Shackle the Presumption of Innocence

The following opinion by John Christopher Fine was published by The Epoch Times on December 1, 2011.

I have vivid memories driving through Georgia with my parents en route to Florida. We would see men chained together working on the road. They were prisoners shackled in road gangs overseen by pot-bellied guards with shotguns. The practice was uncivilized yet not far in our recent history.

Today, our courts are adopting practices never before allowed, and defendants are being deprived of their dignity and their chance at a fair trial.

There has always been the “Perp Walk.” The parade of a handcuffed defendant by police or federal agents on public streets in order for the press to get pictures. The “perp” or perpetrator is jostled between police detectives or officers and led somewhere for booking. The police enjoy the limelight. Their pictures are televised and in newspapers, great scrapbook mementos. The defendant is shamed, scorned, and punished before even being adjudicated guilty.

When I served in the District Attorney’s office in New York County the diligence used to protect the innocent was as fervent as pursuing the people’s advocacy to insure the culpable received justice.


A New York City Criminal Court judge scolded a Texas lawman that came to take a prisoner being extradited. The defendant was released by the judge into his custody. The Texas lawman took out leg shackles and started to chain his prisoner. “You will not put chains on that man in my courtroom,” the judge said sternly from the bench.

A New York City Criminal Court judge scolded a Texas lawman that came to take a prisoner being extradited. The defendant was released by the judge into his custody. The Texas lawman took out leg shackles and started to chain his prisoner. “You will not put chains on that man in my courtroom,” the judge said sternly from the bench.

What happened outside his courtroom the judge could not ordain but this was a judge that had the dignity, decency, and demeanor to recognize that there are limits to the way defendants can be treated in a court of law.

Would that that judge presided over the many cases that have been brought into court today.

A physician arrested for white-collar crimes was arraigned. He was shown on television between two brutish officers, stripped of his clothing, in prison garb and shackled with a chain around his waist, hands manacled to it.

The physician was small in stature,stature; he had surrendered to police to answer the charges against him. He appeared before the arraignment judge already convicted despite the fact that our system of justice proclaims him innocent until proven guilty.

There was a controversy about cameras in courtrooms. Most judges disdained them. Defense lawyers in criminal proceedings were against them, prosecutors were apparently neutral for a time. The press urged and even sued for the ability to film and photograph in courtrooms. In the abuses perpetrated in most recent times, cameras in courtrooms have proved to be a mistake.

As society hardens it is becoming more difficult to retain the independence of our judicial system. Many judges are caught up in a tide that seems to be sweeping over America. Police agencies have been given more weapons than they need and more power than they should have. That was inevitable after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Draconian measures cannot be rolled back once imposed. That has been the fate of many democratic societies, long ago perished.

Our basic premise from the founding of America is that a person in a criminal proceeding is innocent until proven guilty. Police can arrest upon suspicion but a Grand Jury composed of ordinary citizens must hear evidence sufficient to bind a defendant over for trial.

Even before a Grand Jury convenes to hear felony charges a defendant is entitled to be promptly brought before a judge. The judge must be an impartial arbiter standing between the police and prosecutor and the accused. There should be a sorting out at this stage, not the inevitable routine of degrading the defendant and rubber stamping papers with the innocent at law being then returned to jail cells until bail is determined.

Bail today is being used as punishment. The federal system of justice is often at fault in requiring high bail. Most often it is a grand-stand play between federal prosecutors and the court. There is the news conference where officials from federal agencies, ambitious prosecutors, and agency heads display the products of their investigation. Many of these public officials get their start in politics this way. How else do they receive media exposure?

The next step is a degrading process where the innocent is paraded before cameras shackled, stripped of personal clothing and looking, for all to see, ashamed. Can such a person receive a fair trial thereafter? Certainly not in a free society. That person is already branded a criminal and condemned.

am no bleeding heart liberal. I do not assume arbitrarily that defendants are framed and all will be found not guilty. They are innocent until proven guilty and must be accorded the dignity and respect required by our Constitution.

Degrading techniques used in our courtrooms veiled as security measures are being used as a means of condemning the innocent before trial. Where is the U.S. Supreme Court when we need it?

John Christopher Fine served as Senior Asst DA in New York County, Director of the Organized Crime Task Force and Special Counsel to a U.S. Senate investigating committee.