61–70 of 119 posts
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> I’m not so sure we should allow people to sell fentanyl pops or cocaine to kids without going to prison. You don't need specific drug laws for that. Child endangerment laws are enough.
> Child endangerment laws are enough. Are they, for small doses?
If/when they demonstrably are, those laws should be enough.
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it's pretty standard in the US for the district attourney to offer a plea bargian of parole in exchange for pleading guilty. This results in high win rate for the attourney and they look at it as most of these parolees end up making a mistake during parole and going in for longer sentances.
Unless some jurisdiction uses “parole” to include what “probation” usually means, that's incorrect, and even if that's true in some jurisdiction it's not in Louisiana, where (as is generally the case) you can be sentenced to probation , or released from a prison sentence on parole . So, as a parolee, he had previously been sentenced to prison and released under supervision.
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Sincere question -- how do we spot things like this? Let's pretend for a moment that I'm a relatively competent programmer with small amounts of disposable income to spend on hobbies, such as running algorithms over government datasets. (Okay, that's a weird one -- but I think it's good to apply my craft towards politics.) I know a lot about making computers scan through large sets of data looking for patterns, and s…
The main problem is that most people in American society don't care what happens to prisoners. Don't be surprised if you employ these techniques only to discover nobody lifts a finger. That said, this would be a project I'd be interested in contributing to. If you set it up, shoot me an email.
But I suspect that much like homelessness, step 0 is gathering an accurate, systemic level picture so we can even understand what we're trying to fix. Targeted treatments and good intentions aren't working -- we need a system level mechanism.
Ed:
I replied to a cached copy; leaving in case anyone raises the same point.
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> Child endangerment laws are enough. Are they, for small doses?
Drugs are either harmful or they're not. If/when they demonstrably are, those laws should be enough.
Otherwise, the term overdosing wouldn't exist.
What happened to his constitutional right to a speedy trial?
USA no longer operates under the rule of law.
I would hope that these days no rational individual could support jail time for any non-violent drug crime, with the possible exception of cross-border smuggling, which treads on some different areas of the law.
Pretty sure branding half the US population as irrational isn't going to win you much consensus.
There are many cases of defendants' right to a speedy trial being trampled. I'm not completely convinced this is a particularly great example of that. He was arrested while on parole, which is why he didn't get out on bail. Many of the delays came from his side. If it had gone to trial, the prosecution would have only had to prove he was guilty by a preponderance of the evidence. So the long time in detention could h…
> Many of the delays came from his side. If it had gone to trial, the prosecution would have only had to prove he was guilty by a preponderance of the evidence No, that would be true if it was just revoking parole on the prior charge (it's kind of odd that that didn't happen, but it's possible that the original sentence ended to soon after the arrest to bother), but this was a new criminal charge which would have to…
The government should pay back-salary to anyone with a case dismissed in this manner. This would cause queue back-pressure that would focus the system on high-value targets at the front of the queue.
You're arguing that higher income poeple should get speedier trials than lower income people?
There's an inmate in LA County jail who has been there 9 years awaiting trial on attempted murder. He is completely and totally institutionalized. A very nice guy but intimidating. Cops can arrest you for any reason, and if you can't make bail, then they place you in jails with convicted violent felons, some on murder trials. In LA jails, you have to be racist. Depending on your pod and program, you have special requ…
You may as well name these people, to save us the effort of digging it up