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No because money runs everything in this world which is bull but aye thats them but for me the justice

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I think our justice systems is somewhat fair because dependig on your crime it ca be servere or not so much severe

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I don't think it's fair because sometimes people go to jail for no reason

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I think it  can be but sometimes not.
http://ejusa.org/learn/fairness/

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Yes in most cases but is some they are not like some people commit a murder and then they only get 25 years in prison were they should get life or the death penalty because they were the ones that committed the murder.

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I feel that it means equal.

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I think that its unfair because the adults have more punishments than the juvenile.

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I do and don't know think they're fair because some kids/juveniles know what they're doing and get tiny punishmnts compared to adults

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i think its fair because the justice system can change the laws if people think they aren't fair

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Geography, race, and the death penalty

Just one percent of murders in the United States have resulted in a death sentence over the last decade. But are those individuals truly the "worst of the worst" - or simply those with the worst lawyers, the wrong geographic location, or the wrong skin color?

We all expect justice to be blind. Otherwise it's not justice at all. Yet geography, poverty, and race continue to determine who lives and who dies. When the public sees this level of disparity in the death penalty, it compromises the integrity of the entire criminal justice system, sending a message that some lives are more valuable than others.

...being selected as a defendant for a capital case is as random and serendipitous as being struck by lightning.

- Robert DelTufo, former Attorney General of New Jersey

A Lottery of Geography

Where a crime occurs can play as big a role as the nature of the crime in determining who will live and who will die. Convictions might get 40 years in one county and death in the next county over.

Many states, like Ohio, California, Indiana, and Florida, have a large percentage of death sentences originate from just one or two counties.¹

Geography plays a role nationally as well. Just two percent of the in counties the U.S. have been responsible for the majority of the nation's death sentences and executions.²

Our criminal justice system doesn't always mete out justice and fairness in neat little packages - sometimes it's a little rough. It's not something you can compute with a calculus or with any kind of certainty as to who belongs and who doesn't on death row.

- Martin Franz, prosecutor, Wayne County, Ohio

Biased and Arbitrary

Individual prosecutors have broad discretion to decide when to seek the death penalty. Such discretion is one of the hallmarks of our nation's legal system. But the definition of "death eligible" is so broad that there is little guidance for prosecutors to make that decision. That leaves room for bias and other factors to seep into the decision making process, despite a prosecutor's best intentions.

Many of the nation's most high-profile murder cases don't result in a death sentence because the defendants can afford better lawyers who negotiate deals. Meanwhile, poorer defendants are executed for robberies "gone wrong" or other murders that were not premeditated. There have even been instances of accomplices getting executed while the person who actually committed the murder got life.

All murder is horrible, but the death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the "worst of the worst." Human beings have differing opinions on what counts as the worst - making it impossible to create a human system that is objective and consistent in selecting people for death.

The death penalty is largely reserved for the poor. The vast majority of those on death row across the country are too poor to afford their own attorney.³

Not Blind to Race

The race of the victim has a profound effect on which crimes receive the death penalty. Studies in states as diverse as California, Ohio, and Georgia have found that people convicted of murdering a white victim were many times more likely to get sentenced to death than people convicted of killing African Americans or Latinos.

In the U.S., over half of all murder victims are African American, yet less than 15% of the people executed since 1976 were sentenced to death for the murder of an African American.⁴

Race exacerbates the risk of executing an innocent person. Eyewitness identification, which is the leading cause of wrongful conviction, is even less reliable when the witness is identifying someone of a different race. Of the 160 death row exonerees in the US since 1973, 60% are black or Latino.⁵

At least five men who were sentenced to death in Georgia had lawyers who referred to them in court as [n-word]s.

- Steve Bright, Southern Center for Human Rights

A Jury of Your Peers?

People who do not support the death penalty are excluded from serving on capital juries, which means large segments of the population can't participate in the most serious cases. Studies have shown that death-qualified juries are more likely to favor a guilty verdict, raising the risk of wrongful convictions.⁶

Prosecutors have taken pains to strike black jurors in murder cases, even though the Supreme Court has expressly prohibited racially motivated strikes. A famous training video for Philadelphia prosecutors instructed them on how to strike black jurors and get away with it. Prosecutors in a Texas county codified these practices in a written training manual.7

In some communities, race-based exclusion from juries is extreme. For example, in Houston County, Alabama, 8 out of 10 qualified African Americans have been struck by prosecutors from death penalty cases.8

Fairness in the death penalty is a moving target. Tinkering has only made the system more complex - not more fair. After 40 years, we have not found a way to make the death penalty any less arbitrary. And when a life is on the line, good luck simply isn't good enough.

Download the PDF

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Fair and Equal Under the Law? | Equal Justice USA

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Geography, race, and the death penalty Just one percent of murders in the United States have resulted in a death sentence over the last decade. But are those individuals truly the "worst of the worst" - or simply those with the worst lawyers, the wrong geographic location, or the wrong skin color?

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Same thing for me i also think that it is kind of unfair because the adults have more severe felonies punishments than the juveniles.
http://www.co.stearns.mn.us/LawPublicSafety/AdultCriminalJustice/AdultFelonySentences
and
http://www.kidslegal.org/what-if-im-charged-juvenile-offense

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I believe that our justice system was created to be a fair justice system that stands out. Now, many years later, it has about the same concept, but has shown many flaws from many unconstitutional decisions.
http://articles.latimes.com/1993-05-10/local/me-33508_1_justice-system

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I think that our justice system is fair, but not all the time.

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I believe that our justice system is fair even though sometimes it isn't fair in most cases.
http://ejusa.org/learn/fairness/

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I think our justice system is fair but in some cases they can change their ways. In this article i found a agree to what Obama wants to change with our justice system

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At the 106th annual NAACP convention in Philadelphia Tuesday evening, President Obama called for major changes to one of the country's most pressing and complex issues: mass incarceration. Noting the importance of preventing crime by ensuring opportunities for all Americans, and of reducing recidivism by making jails more humane, Obama stressed that reform is in the hands of not only prosecutors, judges and police, but of our country as a whole. He asked the audience to have the courage to confront criminal justice reform step-by-step, and made some salient remarks about the inefficiency of a criminal justice system that does not make us safer, but that does come with high costs, financial and otherwise.

"Mass incarceration makes our country worse off, and we need to do something about it," Obama said, noting that our criminal justice system "remains particularly skewed by race and by wealth, a source of inequity that has ripple effects on families and our communities, and ultimately our nation." The speech, which came on the heels of the announcement that he would commute the sentences of 46 non-violent drug offenders, focused on three areas in which reform can happen: in the community, the courtroom and the cellblock.

Here are some of his most poignant remarks, reflecting the ways in which he wants this unjust system to change.
1. On the country's enormous prison population:
"The United States is home to 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Think about that. Our incarceration rate is four times higher than China's. We keep more people behind bars than the top 35 European countries combined."
2. On when - and why - that population grew so huge:
"Over the last two decades we've also locked up more and more non-violent drug offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before, and that is the real reason our prison population is so high. In far too many cases, the punishment simply does not fit the crime. If you're low-level drug dealer or you violate your parole, you owe some debt to society. You have to be held accountable and make amends. But you don't owe 20 years. You don't owe a life's sentence."

"For nonviolent drug crimes we need to lower long mandatory minimum sentences or get rid of them entirely."
3. On better ways to spend our tax dollars:
"Every year we spend $80 billion to keep folks incarcerated - $80 billion. Just to put that in perspective, for $80 billion we could have universal preschool for every 3-year-old and 4-year-old in America. That's what $80 billion buys. For $80 billion, we could double the salary of every high school teacher in America. For $80 billion, we could finance new roads and new bridges and new airports, job-training programs, research and development. For what we spend to keep everyone locked up for one year, we could eliminate tuition at every single one of our public colleges and universities."
4. On racial disparities in prisons and jails:
"And then, of course, there are the costs that can't be measured in dollars and cents because the statistics on who gets incarcerated show that by a wide margin,it disproportionately impacts communities of color. African-Americans and Latinos make up 30 percent of our population. They make up 60 percent of our inmates. About one in every 35 African-American men, and one in every 88 Latino men, is serving time right now. Among white men, that number is one in 214. The bottom line is, in too many places black boys and black men, Latino boys and Latino men, experience being treated differently under the law. This is not just barbershop talk."

"A growing body of research shows that people of color are more likely to be stopped, questioned, frisked, charged, detained. African-Americans are more likely to be arrested. They are more likely to be sentenced to more time for the same crime."
5. On the impacts of over-incarceration on black families and communities:
"One of the consequences of this is that one million fathers are behind bars. Around one in nine African-American kids has a parent in prison. What is that doing to our communities? What's that doing to those children? Our nation's being robbed of men and women who could be workers, and taxpayers, could be more actively involved with their children. They could be role models, could be community leaders, and right now they're locked up for a non-violent offense."
6. On investing in opportunity instead of incarceration:
"If we make investments early in our children, we will reduce the need to incarcerate those kids. One study found that for every dollar we invest in pre-K, we save at least twice that down the road in reduced crime. Getting a teenager a job for the summer costs a fraction of what it costs to lock him up for 15 years. Investing in our communities makes sense."

"What doesn't make sense is treating entire neighborhoods as little more than danger zones where we just surround them, where we ask police to go in there and do the tough job of trying to contain the hopelessness, when we are not willing to make the investments to help lift those communities out of hopelessness."
7. On the school-to-prison pipeline:
"If you are a parent, you know that there are times where boys and girls are going to act out in school. And the question is, are we letting principals and parents deal with one set of kids, [while] we call the police on another set of kids? That's not the right thing to do. We've got to make sure our juvenile justice system remembers that kids are different. Don't just tag them as future criminals. Reach out to them as future citizens."

"[I]n too many cases, our criminal justice system ends up being a pipeline from underfunded inadequate schools to overcrowded jails.
8. On improving conditions behind bars:
"The people in our prisons have made some mistakes, and sometimes big mistakes. They are also Americans, and we have to make sure that as they do their time and pay back their debt to society, that we are increasing the possibility that they can turn their lives around...and that's why we should not tolerate conditions in prison that have no place in any civilized country. We should not be tolerating overcrowding in prison. We should not be tolerating gang activity in prison. We should not be tolerating rape in prison and we should not be making jokes about it in our popular culture. That's no joke. These things are unacceptable."

"What's more, I've asked my attorney general to start a review of the overuse of solitary confinement across American prisons. The social science shows that an environment like this is often more likely to make inmates more alienated, more hostile, potentially more violent. Do we really think it makes sense to lock so many people alone in tiny cells for 23 hours a day, for months, sometimes for years, at a time? That is not going to make us safer. That is not going to make us stronger."
9. On re-entry into society:
"And if those individuals are ultimately released, how are they ever going to adapt? It's not smart. Our prisons should be a place where we can train people for skills that can help them find a job, not train them to become more hardened criminals."

"All the people incarcerated in our prisons will eventually someday be released....So on Thursday, I will be the first sitting president to visit a federal prison."

"Let's reward prisoners with reduced sentences if they complete programs that make them less likely to commit a repeat offense. Let's invest in innovative new approaches to link former prisoners with employers, help them stay on track."

"Let's follow the growing number of our states and cities and private companies who've decided to ban the box on job applications so that former prisoners who have done their time and are now trying to get straight with society have a decent shot in a job interview. And if folks have served their time, and they've reentered society, they should be able to vote."
10. On equal opportunity and justice for all:
"Justice is not only the absence of oppression. It is the presence of opportunity."

"Justice is...making sure every young person knows they are special, and that they are important and their lives matter. Not because they heard it in a hashtag, but because of the love they feel every single day."

"In the immigrant tradition of remaking ourselves, in the Christian tradition that says none of us is without sin and all of us need redemption, justice and redemption go hand in hand."

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10 Ways Obama Wants Our Criminal Justice System to Change

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At the 106th annual NAACP convention in Philadelphia Tuesday evening, President Obama called for major changes to one of the country's most pressing and complex issues: mass incarceration. Noting the importance of preventing crime by ensuring opportunities for all Americans, and of reducing recidivism by making jails more humane, Obama stressed that reform is in the hands of not only prosecutors, judges and police, but of our country as a whole.

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not really--can you elaborate?

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No, because there are plenty of times that Wall street and rich people have committed crimes, and nothing has been done about it. An example of corporations getting away with breaking the law is the story in the link below:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-millhiser/by-trap-or-by-trick-how-c_b_166219.html

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I believe our justice system can be fair on most cases but people that are pled guilty and did nothing wrong thats unfair. http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cnsnewscom-staff/obama-much-our-criminal-justice-system-remains-unfair

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No because money runs everything in this world which is bull but aye thats them but for me the justice is crap 💩

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I think that our justice system is mostly fair, but in some cases the justice system can be unfair because the race of a person effects whether they get the death penalty.
http://ejusa.org/learn/fairness/

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i agree partly because some of our crimes like having a gay marriage and religions are unfair but stuff like murder and homicides are fair  

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i agree partly because some of our crimes like having a gay marriage and religions are unfair but stuff like murder and homicides are fair  

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CAN You explain better? This is a bit confusing. ALso, put your name.

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I think that or justice system is partially fair because some people get put in jail for some cases that are misunderstand which makes it unfair.

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I think it is mostly fair. Like for penalty's. It is also unfair because they judge people on how they look or problems they can't help like race.http://ejusa.org/learn/fairness/

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I think that our justice system is fair but they can also be unfair because people judge how people are for ex. race or blindness.
http://ejusa.org/learn/fairness/

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I think our justice system is fair but in some cases they are unfair
http://www.gallup.com/poll/10474/public-justice-system-fair-still-too-soft.aspx

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I think our justice system is mostly fair. In some cases they can be unfair. They can be unfair in someways like if you have a bad lawyer or if you are the wrong skin color.
http://ejusa.org/learn/fairness/

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i agree partly because some crimes are simple mis-understandings and i believe if prosecutors spent more time actually investigating, it could be easily  avoided.