Hey, it's a free country.

American juriprudence is, in fact, *not* rife with people being locked up for reasons that are as objectionable as disobedience or "reunion ilicita".

In fact, I'm not even sure there *are* any reasons for imprisonment as objectionable as those two.

It's true that there are many ugly features of America's legal system, one of the most prominent of which is that "driving while black" (or perhaps more accurately "breathing while black") is still enough to get you stopped by a racist cop who thinks you're in the wrong neighborhood. But who, even among African Americans, would trade this for a system where the corresponding crimes are "driving while opinionated" or "breathing while disagreeing"?

If Leonard Peltier had been arrested in Cuba, the activists fighting for his freedom would be in prison with him. "Hurricane" Carter's appeal would never have been heard. Geronimo Pratt's lawyers, who have freed their client and are suing the D.A. and LAPD on his behalf, would be -- well, they wouldn't be anything. He wouldn't have lawyers.

On top of that, each of these three miscarriages of justice occurred decades ago; and since two of them have been recently overturned, they say little about the *current* state of America's legal system except that it's clearly much improved.

Your point about Amnesty is well taken; they report on America just as they do on Cuba. The title link is to a page containing the 1999 reports for the nations of the western hemisphere. It's liable to be equally instructive whether you think America's blameless or that we're not that much better than Cuba.