Why would the defense ever need to proactively gather evidence? Are the DAs looking to prove their clients innocence? The way the system is written, the prosecution is attempting to prove guilt against the party's assumed innocence.
How much evidence could you gather within, say, a week that you didn't commit a murder? I don't have very much evidence of crimes I haven't committed lying around.
If the defense doesn't want to gather any, then it doesn't have to and it certainly wouldn't be going after any potentially harmful evidence. But, getting some basic defense evidence is a lot easier than you seem to make it out to be - I'm assuming you would have an alibi for why you didn't commit a murder and I imagine you could get some evidence supporting the alibi could be fairly easy. Testimony from a friend that you were hanging out, traffic logs from a streaming service or a game service that you were at home watching/playing when the murder happened, GPS data from your phone, whatever. A lawyer could at least request if not get that in a week or two without any issue.
Why would the defense ever need to proactively gather evidence? Are the DAs looking to prove their clients innocence? The way the system is written, the prosecution is attempting to prove guilt against the party's assumed innocence.
How much evidence could you gather within, say, a week that you didn't commit a murder? I don't have very much evidence of crimes I haven't committed lying around.
If the defense doesn't want to gather any, then it doesn't have to and it certainly wouldn't be going after any potentially harmful evidence. But, getting some basic defense evidence is a lot easier than you seem to make it out to be - I'm assuming you would have an alibi for why you didn't commit a murder and I imagine you could get some evidence supporting the alibi could be fairly easy. Testimony from a friend that you were hanging out, traffic logs from a streaming service or a game service that you were at home watching/playing when the murder happened, GPS data from your phone, whatever. A lawyer could at least request if not get that in a week or two without any issue.
Fair enough