Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I was falsely arrested

iwasfalselyarrested.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 108 posts

Re: I was falsely arrested

#21

Post by beat »

ncallaway wrote: post #19

The state needs to financially make whole persons who are wrongly arrested. There needs to be a standard set of damages that get paid out to someone who is in jail wrongfully. I would propose that the state owes you double the highest paid salary that you have earned in your career for the duration of your stay in prison. This is to both make a person whole for their missed earnings, and to repair the damages that ha…

It's complicated, though. How do you define "wrongfully arrested"? "Not guilty" is not the same as "innocent". "Charges dropped" is not the same as "innocent". This is not to say that all those arrested are guilty - far from it! But you would need a separate legal mechanism to distinguish actual wrongful arrests - and sadly, that mechanism would almost certainly be as badly biased by race and class as the existing courts.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#22

Post by nickff »

ncallaway wrote: post #19

The state needs to financially make whole persons who are wrongly arrested. There needs to be a standard set of damages that get paid out to someone who is in jail wrongfully. I would propose that the state owes you double the highest paid salary that you have earned in your career for the duration of your stay in prison. This is to both make a person whole for their missed earnings, and to repair the damages that ha…

>"a real financial burden on the state for making these kinds of errors"

I agree with everything in your post except this; the state does not care whether it is burdened or not, it simply taxes the citizenry to cover these expenses. At least a portion of this compensation should come from the responsible parties if this type of problem is to be discouraged. Imagine that you are a prosecutor or police officer set on obtaining a conviction for moral, corruption, or career reasons; will the possibility of future costs to the state give you any pause, or make you reconsider your actions?

Re: I was falsely arrested

#23

Post by ncallaway »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #6

I'm happy that this guy finally got out of jail. Here's hoping he doesn't let this terrible tragedy hurt him the rest of his life. I support any reasonable thing the public can do to help folks like him out. We live in a security state, and video cameras everywhere are beginning to show how rotten it is in places. Having said all of that, I do not want to see us become self-indulgent with pity. There are 300 million…

In another comment I proposed tying a financial payout to those who have been wrongfully arrested. Such a payout would (or should) be enough of a financial burden that prosecutors get rewarded for avoiding large payouts — or punished for incurring large payouts.

The fact of the matter is there is no real downside for a prosecutor right now to put away the wrong person. Prosecutors have every incentive to put away anyone that they think they can. These payouts would also be a very good metric for judging the relative size of the problems, and which areas have the worst issues.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#24

Post by golergka »

Everybody here in the comments seem to take the story on face value. Meanwhile, the only video attached to the post is pixelated to the highest degree, and you certainly can't see facial features on it.

Am I missing something here?

Re: I was falsely arrested

#25

Post by camgunz »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #6

I'm happy that this guy finally got out of jail. Here's hoping he doesn't let this terrible tragedy hurt him the rest of his life. I support any reasonable thing the public can do to help folks like him out. We live in a security state, and video cameras everywhere are beginning to show how rotten it is in places. Having said all of that, I do not want to see us become self-indulgent with pity. There are 300 million…

While I support your "keep your head" message, I think it would be more helpful to say something like, "here are some stats about the US criminal justice system". Otherwise it just feels like you're throwing a wet blanket on people's legitimate reactions to something heinous (if a private citizen locked me up for 4 months, we'd view that crime as psychopathic), which sets off my "this person has an agenda" detector.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#26

Post by DanielBMarkham »

beat wrote: post #17
erikpukinskis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you bringing it up if you don't think it applies in this situation? I always get nervous when people say stuff like this because it's like... he says he doesn't think it's a small problem, but then the only thing he's talking about is how we have to be careful making claims about scale... Why would he bring that up except to question the scale of the problem? But I must be missing something, because you expli…

Reflexive defense of authority is a pretty common pattern. People doing it don't realize they're doing it, or they wouldn't. That's one of the fundamental mechanisms of racism, among other unpleasant things. Hardly anyone thinks of themselves as racist, so when they make a racist argument (not saying this one is, just making a broader point), they don't think it's racist - they think it's all about the equality. The…

You know, I'm perfectly capable of explaining why I do things.

Look at what you've done here: you've taken away my agency. Instead of letting me engage in a conversation, you've pronounced some over-arching reason for my comment, thereby not only eliminating anything I might have to offer, but wiping aside any category of comment that is similar to mine.

Gotta watch that. It's perfect fine for an internal dialog. After all, we can't take a year to figure out what everybody we run into is thinking, but in an open conversation, well, the important thing is to converse. Who knows, each of us might learn something.

"...Thinking about this stuff is hard...." -- It hurts, but somehow I'll manage.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#27

Post by JoshTriplett »

justathrow2k wrote: post #14
x0x0 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of white people maybe black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works

This is an incredibly racist way to look at the issue.

It's an incredibly racist way for the world to work, but in practice it does. Fixing that requires noticing it, acknowledging it, and finding the reasons for it.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#28

Post by beat »

ncallaway wrote: post #19

The state needs to financially make whole persons who are wrongly arrested. There needs to be a standard set of damages that get paid out to someone who is in jail wrongfully. I would propose that the state owes you double the highest paid salary that you have earned in your career for the duration of your stay in prison. This is to both make a person whole for their missed earnings, and to repair the damages that ha…

Following on, it would be far more effective to just radically reduce the obscene rates of arrest and incarceration in this country, make sure bail is fair so unaffordable bail isn't used to force guilty pleas, make sure we have sufficient public defenders (easy to do if we could lighten their case load by 80% or so), and in general radically reduce the chances of someone getting arrested/charged in the first place.

Another interesting attack front would be modern riot control techiques like "kettling". Kettling is the practice of herding protesters with chemicals and force into a road blocked at both ends by police walls, ordering everyone to disperse, then arresting everyone and charging them with failure to disperse. Usually, the charges are simply dropped just before habeus corpus issues set in - after people sit for three days in jail without even a hearing. Kettling is an affront to the ideals of the Constitution and it'd be wonderful to see it either legally abolished, or made unaffordable with successful lawsuits.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#29

Post by DanielBMarkham »

ncallaway wrote: post #23
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #6

I'm happy that this guy finally got out of jail. Here's hoping he doesn't let this terrible tragedy hurt him the rest of his life. I support any reasonable thing the public can do to help folks like him out. We live in a security state, and video cameras everywhere are beginning to show how rotten it is in places. Having said all of that, I do not want to see us become self-indulgent with pity. There are 300 million…

In another comment I proposed tying a financial payout to those who have been wrongfully arrested. Such a payout would (or should) be enough of a financial burden that prosecutors get rewarded for avoiding large payouts — or punished for incurring large payouts. The fact of the matter is there is no real downside for a prosecutor right now to put away the wrong person. Prosecutors have every incentive to put away any…

I love the financial payout idea. The system is broken structurally -- it's not just a few bad people. The best answer for something like that is not to go after individuals, but make the bad behavior more expensive for all involved. At some cost, it'll work itself out.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#30

Post by ncallaway »

beat wrote: post #21
ncallaway wrote: post #19

The state needs to financially make whole persons who are wrongly arrested. There needs to be a standard set of damages that get paid out to someone who is in jail wrongfully. I would propose that the state owes you double the highest paid salary that you have earned in your career for the duration of your stay in prison. This is to both make a person whole for their missed earnings, and to repair the damages that ha…

It's complicated, though. How do you define "wrongfully arrested"? "Not guilty" is not the same as "innocent". "Charges dropped" is not the same as "innocent". This is not to say that all those arrested are guilty - far from it! But you would need a separate legal mechanism to distinguish actual wrongful arrests - and sadly, that mechanism would almost certainly be as badly biased by race and class as the existing co…

That's fair. "Wrongfully jailed" would probably be a better terminology. I wouldn't apply this to someone who sat overnight in the drunk-tank, but I would apply it to someone who spent a month or more in jail awaiting a trial.

"Not Guilty" — in a society with a presumption of innocence — is the same as innocent. If we find you Not Guilty, and you spent 3 months in jail, the State should repair you for that harm.

"Charges Dropped" after a brief-arrest is not something I would punish. "Charges Dropped" after someone sat in jail for 2 months awaiting a trial? Pay up.

Post reply on HN