Madison said that buzz has bled into the criminal justice system, making it difficult for his client to get a fair trial.

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Further, an attempt to examine issues that relate to the criminal proceedings in Greece will seriously violate Ms Thanou's right to a fair trial and it would breach the European Convention on Human Rights and it would constitute an interference with an independent criminal procedure of a country's criminal justice system.

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The judge said Loughner's fair-trial rights were no longer on the line now that his criminal case has resolved.

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The defendants had tried, and failed, to have the case reclassified as criminal under the European Convention of Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair trial.

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Both cases, along with hundreds, if not thousands, of other federal prosecutions currently lodged in the bloated federal criminal justice system, raise the question of whether the federal Constitution, which supposedly guarantees defendants a fair trial, prohibits the feds from bringing unnecessarily complex charges and then financially disabling defendants from engaging in a fair fight.

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That's unfortunate, because what went down in that courtroom should send shivers down the spine of anyone worried about the state of criminal justice in Russia today--or, for that matter, in any society that believes a fair trial can be conducted in secrecy.

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