Joseph, great post at 2:12. Every word of it is true.
Prosecutors generally see themselves as the cops’ lawyers, with the mission of prosecuting everybody who’s arrested and getting them the longest sentence possible. They’re idealistic but in an unnecessarily partisan and punitive way. (This along with overly punitive laws and unfair policing practices resulted in our country having the world’s highest incarceration rate, which basically everyone, even Republicans like Gingrich and Norquist, thinks needs to be reduced dramatically.) Judges are often former prosecutors and have the same mentality. Other judges have quit after having to hand down so many unreasonable mandatory minimum sentences the defendants don’t come close to deserving.
Prosecutors have the constitutional duty to turn over exculpatory and witness impeachment evidence to the defense but violations of this duty are extremely widespread (they are known as Brady violations, and they (and other forms of prosecutorial misconduct) are so common that they are a significant driver of false convictions.) However, they usually never get caught and when they do they are virtually never punished even in the slightest way. This is all very well documented, in research carried out in reaction to the Supreme Court’s Connick v. Thompson decision, which made it much harder to sue prosecutors even when they engage in misconduct that leads to innocent people being sent to prison for years.
The Bill of Rights looks good on paper (and indeed, it resembles Torah criminal procedure in some respects, such as the Fifth Amendment) and sometimes these rights are enforced. But the system as a whole produces massively unjust and unreasonable results.