There aren't many people out there who can out spend the government.

My fellow civil libertarians and I have been been broken records for the last several months in reiterating that our criminal justice system should favor the defense. Note that I've been using the word "should" rather than "does."

First of all, yeah, hiring private council to defend you from criminal charges is freaking expensive. That's why the push against Rittenhouse's crowd sourcing campaigns to pay for his defense team and MSNBC complaining (falsely) that he got off because of his money is so hypocritical and so revealing of the fake liberals out there. As a matter of principle, we should be celebrating crowd sourcing for criminal defense even in cases where the accused is almost certainly guilty.

No matter how you put it, if you're facing criminal charges, you're fighting the government. There aren't many people out there who can out spend the government. The prosecution and the police are on the same team. Most judges are former prosecutors. The crime labs are paid for by the state and some jurisdictions pay the labs based on the number of convictions. Prosecutors can pay witnesses. Prosecutors can offer sweeter deals for people facing their own criminal charges. Of course, the state is legally supposed to provide all of the evidence to the defense; but, they don't always do that - there was a clear Brady violation in the Rittenhouse case - and the prosecutors seldom get punished. Sometimes there's a mistrial without prejudice; but, sometimes that's what the prosecutors want - a second go at a conviction when the trial isn't going their way.

The defense really doesn't have these tools even if a defendant manages to raise a significant amount of money. Even as recently as the late 90s it was determined that your right to an attorney was fulfilled whether or not your attorney was awake during the trial. Although I know plenty of great court appointed defense attorneys, there's no doubt that we have hundreds of horror stories that resulted from attorneys being incompetent, drunk, or, what's incredibly common, simply overworked to the point that they don't have the time to build a proper defense.

Prosecutors can, and often do, find ways to kick the can down the road prosecutors don't run out of money. Defendants do.

If you're a liberal it is part of your duty to, at the very least, not do anything to stifle anybody's (and I mean absolutely anybody's) ability to raise funds to defend him or herself. This is a place where I draw the line. You don't get to call yourself a liberal if you sound like Joe Arpaio on criminal justice the moment the state targets somebody who you don't like.