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New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed

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Re: New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed

#81
post #73

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…

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. If he didn't go in a killer, he sure as hell should be ready to take a life by now. If someone robbed me of 9 years of my life, I'd make it my mission to rob them of any joy in their life.

sadly that's just positive thinking. most people don't toughen up, they just break and maybe commit suicide.

Re: New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I’m not so sure we should allow people to sell fentanyl pops or cocaine to kids without going to prison. Not arguing against your point broadly, but that’s exactly the type of response that would sink an effort to remove imprisonment for non violent drug crimes. As I see it, we need both a propaganda campaign pointing out how nuts the drug laws are in addition to some recognizable way of incrementally easing the…

One of the big problems in America is simply not effectively treating drug use and addiction. Putting people in jail doesn't stop drug use. You're talking about big distributors, not individual users. Portugal has probably had the best response to drug use, evaluation each case individually and helping people quit drugs when it interferes with their lives.

Portugal still jails non-violent drug dealers, defined only by the amount you're carrying.

Re: New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed

#83
post #67
post #16

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.

> I would hope that these days no rational individual could support jail time for any non-violent drug crime Pretty sure branding half the US population as irrational isn't going to win you much consensus.

Well acknowledging that half the US population are irrational is a pretty good first step. You probably wouldn't want to rub it in their faces if you were campaigning for reform like this, but why would you assume they would?

Re: New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed

#84
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The concept of bail negatively affects the poor. I thought that was intentional :) afaik bail isn't used much outside the US, Canada and UK. The US for-profit bail industry is the usual case of Americans taking a bad idea to the extreme in the search of a little profit.

It makes sense as a deposit to make sure you show up to trial. But in practice, with bail bonds, it’s a fee. The financial amounts are rarely in line with what it would take to get someone to show up trial.

If bails were relative to income, then this would maybe not be such a huge problem.

Re: New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed

#85
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're out on parole. you're effectively on probation though.

Yes, but you don't get parole as a plea bargain, as suggested in GP.

Re: New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed

#86

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

It's easy enough to google and find out.

Re: New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed

#87

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…

Terrible.

And I'm willing to bet anything that there is no evidence that prisons actually achieve their stated purpose.

Re: New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed

#88

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

Based on Neil Gorsuch having worked for him, the secretive billionaire seems to be Philip Anschutz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Anschutz

New Yorker article about 'a secretive mogul's entertainment kingdom': https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/16/the-man-who-ow...

This guy worked for the California office of Homeland Security, now works for Anschutz's company: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewbettenhausen

(I don't know anything, and I'm not claiming anything about the GP's allegation or their truthfulness. Just wanted to save others the time of making the same Google searches.)

Re: New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed

#89

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…

Hi, four-month felony pretrial inmate who is proudly defying recidivism here. I’m the kind of guy who thinks load balancing is a fun topic of discussion — ask anyone who knows me how incredibly unfit for jail I am — and I survived just fine. You seem to have had the shit scared out of you, and I wanted to clarify a few things for you. You don’t have to be racist to survive county. You simply stick with your race. The…

You're supposed to be safe in jail. Just in case that had not sunk in yet because of your experience but whoever runs that jail should be in jail themselves.

Re: New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed

#90
post #43
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few criminals who are completely out of reach. Whether that's physiatric lock up or prison depends I guess. But most criminals, even most murders aren't out of reach. Note: I'm not proposing that there need not be control initially. Merely that we need to be better at giving up control over time. And yes, you'll find exceptions.

I mostly agree with you. However, there is no incentive for justice reform. No politician has won any accolades for making prisons safer much less for reintroducing ex-convicts back into the mainstream society. However, if someone ran on that and (inevitably) when someone from a program like that goes off the rails then the politician risks their career. I'm not saying that makes it OK. I am just trying to analyze wh…

In other countries we have political parties that say: "we don't want harsher sentences" and the like.

The US have political problems. They are unfixable as long as most of you have given up.

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