"President Trump’s attitude toward the criminal justice system has long blended ignorance with contempt for constitutional values. That ugly mixture was on full display after New York suffered its worst terrorist attack since 9/11 and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III unveiled his first indictments.
The president’s instinctive reaction to the New York attack was typical Trump bluster. The country must “come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting now,” he said. “They’ll go through court for years. . . . We need quick justice and we need strong justice, much quicker and much stronger than we have right now. Because what we have right now is a joke and it’s a laughingstock.”
Take that in: a U.S. president calling the criminal justice system a “joke” and a “laughingstock.” It is a measure of how aberrant this statement is that the only defense the White House press secretary could summon was to deny that the president had actually said those words...
... Trump’s statement is factually wrong, as a later tweet implicitly conceded. The criminal justice system has consistently meted out severe punishment to convicted terrorists in remarkably short time. Since 9/11, more than 620 individuals have been convicted on terrorism-related charges in civilian courts. “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid tried to blow up a plane in 2001; he pleaded guilty in 2002 and was sentenced to life in prison in 2003. Faisal Shahzad tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square in 2010; five months later he was sentenced to life in prison. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev planted bombs that killed three people at the Boston Marathon in 2013; two years later he was convicted and sentenced to death. How much quicker and stronger does Trump want?"
Our criminal justice system is not a ‘joke.’ Yet. - The Washington Post
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