Bail and legal defense funding raised through GoFundMe or comparable platforms must never be disparaged. These lawful and voluntary fundraising efforts are not only appropriate but essential to safeguarding constitutional rights.
It is true that GoFundMe prohibits campaigns for defendants charged with certain serious crimes. However, other legitimate platforms exist that recognize the fundamental principle that every accused person is entitled to a fair trial, adequate defense, and meaningful access to justice.
Consider the financial reality. In a serious felony case, particularly homicide charges arising from acts of self-defense, bail alone can reach into the millions. Defense costs extend far beyond attorneys. Investigators must be engaged to uncover exculpatory evidence. Expert witnesses must be retained to challenge the State’s case, particularly when so-called scientific testimony is presented. Without private resources, the accused stands defenseless against the full weight of the government.
And the government’s arsenal often includes what courts have increasingly recognized as junk science. Prosecutors regularly present untested, unvalidated, or outright fraudulent forensic techniques as conclusive proof of guilt. The history is damning:
- Hair Microscopy: For decades the FBI claimed a single strand could identify a suspect. In 2015, the FBI admitted over 90% of such testimony contained scientifically invalid statements.
- Arson “Indicators”: Myths such as “alligatoring wood” or “crazed glass” were used to condemn defendants, later exposed as baseless by the National Academy of Sciences and NFPA. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed based on this falsehood.
- Bullet Lead Composition Analysis: The FBI’s “matching” bullet theory was abandoned in 2005 after the National Research Council found it invalid.
- Comparative Bullet Markings: Firearms examiners still claim striations are as unique as fingerprints. The 2009 NAS report found no such validation.
- Shaken Baby Syndrome: Once gospel in courtrooms, now discredited. Medical consensus shows many cases were accidents, birth trauma, or natural disease.
- Bite Mark Analysis: Once accepted to “a reasonable degree of dental certainty,” now rejected by leading forensic boards after multiple wrongful convictions.
- Voiceprints, Polygraphs, Handwriting, and Dog Scent Lineups: All presented as infallible. All proven unreliable.
Two landmark reports have eviscerated these practices: National Academy of Sciences, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward (2009), and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Report on Forensic Science (2016). Both concluded that nearly every forensic discipline outside of DNA lacks scientific reliability.
Despite these warnings, prosecutors continue to introduce such testimony, and courts too often admit it. Defense counsel who fail to challenge these pseudo-sciences risk condemning their clients to wrongful convictions.
The costs of exposing this fraud are staggering. Billions of taxpayer dollars are consumed every year funding prosecutors, courts, judges, clerks, jurors, and defense counsel in indigent cases, all while the state peddles junk science to secure convictions. The public pays dearly for this systemic failure.
Private fundraising changes the equation. When defendants secure independent funds through lawful contributions, two critical outcomes are achieved. First, the accused gains a fighting chance at a fair trial. Second, taxpayers are spared the crushing financial burden of financing both sides of protracted litigation.
The principle is simple and unassailable. Lawful fundraising efforts for bail and defense are not only permissible but indispensable to the administration of justice. They uphold the presumption of innocence, protect constitutional rights, and shield the public from unnecessary government expense.
To condemn such efforts is to condemn fairness.
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