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Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

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11–20 of 66 posts

Re: Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

#11
This is an inspiring story and every time I hear about something like this I wonder how much money each year of my life would be worth behind bars. Years of not knowing when/if I'd ever be released.

This man is suing for 60 million and will probably get a settlement for less but still large sum. If he were to get $10 million, would that be enough for 10 years behind bars?

Re: Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

#13
post #7
post #6

What are the typical consequences to the corrupt prosecutor and police department in a case like this?

Unless they blatantly broke the law in some provable way, probably nothing. Though as with the guy in this case, he can sue the State/City for wrongful imprisonment and other issues.

So this guy proving his innocence by exposing corruption does not prove their corruption? There must be some fun technicalities there.

Re: Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

#14
post #6

What are the typical consequences to the corrupt prosecutor and police department in a case like this?

Prosecutors have absolute immunity for their actions in office, and they also decide whether or not to charge the police on the rare chance that a case makes it past the police's own "internal investigation." In the grand scheme of things, the DA is dependent on the police and it's not common for a prosecutor to survive a loss of confidence by them.

Re: Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

#15
post #13
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they blatantly broke the law in some provable way, probably nothing. Though as with the guy in this case, he can sue the State/City for wrongful imprisonment and other issues.

So this guy proving his innocence by exposing corruption does not prove their corruption? There must be some fun technicalities there.

Nobody is watching (or prosecuting) the prosecutors. That's very very sad.

Re: Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

#16
Hey HN, I mean no disrespect to any of the parties in this story -- but hey isn't this forum about HACKER NEWS ?

The only inspirational stores I wanna read about HERE are about fellow hackers' finding Seed/ VC funding and their successful exits. Or about cool programs and code. Items pertaining to Technology , Free Markets and Capitalism.

For all other life-affirming and inspirational stuff , I could always go to reddit.

Re: Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

#17

Hey HN, I mean no disrespect to any of the parties in this story -- but hey isn't this forum about HACKER NEWS ? The only inspirational stores I wanna read about HERE are about fellow hackers' finding Seed/ VC funding and their successful exits. Or about cool programs and code. Items pertaining to Technology , Free Markets and Capitalism. For all other life-affirming and inspirational stuff , I could always go to red…

Get used to it. Law has a good deal in common with programming, many hackers have a strong interest in and commitment to civil liberties, and this is a story about a man who overcame obstacles most entrepreneurs can barely imagine - by teaching himself how to hack the legal system. It's not just inspiring, but instructive.

Re: Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

#18
post #12

Why does 'the system' seem to make this process so painfully slow and seemingly reject requests for information/appeals arbitrarily? It seems much of the 15 years here was spent playing paperwork games with the legal system.

I don't know about the state of NY, but the entire federal court system only takes up about 2.5% of the federal budget - when you think about it, it's the least expensive branch of government by far. The flip side, though, is that there are far more cases to be heard at any given time than there are courts and personnel to hear them, and complex technical rules which have to be complied with. It seems very inefficient and arbitrary, but generally all of those rules were created in response to so some failing in the previous version. Every so often the 'legacy code' becomes unmanageable and a relevant part of the law is redrafted or similarly overhauled.

For example, California switched over to a completely new set of jury instructions known as CALCRIM for criminal trials a few years ago, designed to eliminate a lot of unnecessary confusion and legalistic cruft which had accrued to the previous version, known as CALJIC. But even drafting those from scratch takes years. My reference copy of CALCRIM is about 2500 pages over 3 volumes. And that's just criminal - there's a lot more for civil trials. A LOT more.

Think of it like encountering Unix as a complete newbie. You know what computers are for and what they can do, but but actually learning unix at the command line is pretty complicated, no?

Re: Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

#19

Hey HN, I mean no disrespect to any of the parties in this story -- but hey isn't this forum about HACKER NEWS ? The only inspirational stores I wanna read about HERE are about fellow hackers' finding Seed/ VC funding and their successful exits. Or about cool programs and code. Items pertaining to Technology , Free Markets and Capitalism. For all other life-affirming and inspirational stuff , I could always go to red…

From the HN guidelines at http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

I had no idea that you could lawyer your own way out of prison like that, and upon reading the title I was most assuredly curious.

Re: Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

#20
post #6

What are the typical consequences to the corrupt prosecutor and police department in a case like this?

The risk is low for the police department and virtually zero for a corrupt prosecutor or judge - in most cases they enjoy legal immunity because of the nature of their job. It's an imperfect system, but it's worth bearing in mind that taking away prosecutorial immunity would also lead to calls for defense attorneys to be punished if their clients were found guilty.

The principle that an attorney can and should pursue every possible legal option on behalf of a defendant, no matter how heinous the crime or how seemingly obvious their guilt, is more recent than many people realize. It was not really established before 1840. I was very surprised to find this, an only learned thanks to a book recommendation from HN member (and attorney) grellas.

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