51–60 of 67 posts
https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2018/12...
This type of system is what should happen in Detroit, but only if the public pushes hard for it will they find the funds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the court system you are treated with the same regard by court officials as a janitor would treat a full trash can. Is this really what you see while fulfilling your jury duty? I dare say it's not the common impression people come away from the courtroom with.
He is explicitly talking about the experience of the defendant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even more chilling considering that thanks to the state of the law today we are all guilty of some "lesser offense" right now. It would be interesting to calculate the "default jail sentence" of the average citizen if an overzealous prosecutor decided to randomly harass them.
This is a somewhat common sentiment, probably because it's cynical enough to conform with people's prior conceptions. But I doubt it is actually true. Consider, for example, the various congressional investigations of Hilary Clinton in 2014/2015. If everybody was guilty of some crime(s) punishable by jail time, it would follow that some of those overly brought criminal statues would have come up in those proceedings,…
I doubt there's a lawyer alive that has read all of the statutes that govern me in the jurisdictions I'm currently in (and all of the applicable caselaw that defines the jurisprudence and interpretation of those statutes).
You seem to be arguing the ability and likelihood of a guilty plea/verdict against someone winning in court (and the risk of the prosecutor's reputation for spending). That's a high burden compared to simply being objectively guilty (from a "God's eye view"). The difference is the gray area of interpretation, the burden of proof (especially when it comes to motives and state-of-mind).
Those who've followed the cypherpunks list for many years know Jim Bell. Of Assassination Politics (AP) fame. So maybe a year or two ago, he proposed setting up a GoFundMe-style NGO that would take every federal criminal case to trial. The argument being that it wouldn't take more than 10% (or whatever) to overload the system. And so defendants would get cases tossed based on the 6th Amendment.
One billion dollars is spent per year on public defenders. The Justice Department spends twenty-eight billion dollars. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/us/public-defenders-are-t...
> The result, said lawmakers, judges and public defenders, are court delays that might violate defendants’ rights to speedy trials and could lead to the dismissal of criminal cases.
That does imply that the system is close to overload.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a somewhat common sentiment, probably because it's cynical enough to conform with people's prior conceptions. But I doubt it is actually true. Consider, for example, the various congressional investigations of Hilary Clinton in 2014/2015. If everybody was guilty of some crime(s) punishable by jail time, it would follow that some of those overly brought criminal statues would have come up in those proceedings,…
Not to get too political, but the FBI actually revised their memo clearing her because they accidentally used language which would have established she met all the elements of a crime. I.e. they used the words "grossly negligent" but changed them to "extremely careless." So I'm sure you can say they were trying to make anything stick.
https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ar380-5/vi.htm
How the FBI classifies something, is wholly irrelevant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this typical in a normal court/with a normal judge? Or is this scenario an outlier?
The American Justice system is dehumanizing. If you never have been involved as a 'criminal' in the USA court system it's a really huge culture shock and extremely dismaying to be treated as human refuse for the first time. Most of the time we spend our time surrounded by people who care about us in one way or another. Your friends, your family, your partners, etc etc. Even out in public the people you meet tend to h…
Wait wait wait what? Surely this can't be true? What's the justification for this?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The American Justice system is dehumanizing. If you never have been involved as a 'criminal' in the USA court system it's a really huge culture shock and extremely dismaying to be treated as human refuse for the first time. Most of the time we spend our time surrounded by people who care about us in one way or another. Your friends, your family, your partners, etc etc. Even out in public the people you meet tend to h…
> And on the Federal level they typically try to freeze your accounts so you can't afford a proper defense anyways. Makes their jobs easier. Wait wait wait what? Surely this can't be true? What's the justification for this?
The stated reason isn't to deprive you of money to fund your defense, it's something like an allegation that the money is the proceeds of a crime or whatever other pretext. Which you might have been able to disprove if you had the money to hire a lawyer. But now you don't, which is really why they do it, and then you can't adequately defend yourself against whatever other charges they levy on top of that either.
They also commonly try to keep the money -- even if you're not found guilty of anything:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even more chilling considering that thanks to the state of the law today we are all guilty of some "lesser offense" right now. It would be interesting to calculate the "default jail sentence" of the average citizen if an overzealous prosecutor decided to randomly harass them.
This is a somewhat common sentiment, probably because it's cynical enough to conform with people's prior conceptions. But I doubt it is actually true. Consider, for example, the various congressional investigations of Hilary Clinton in 2014/2015. If everybody was guilty of some crime(s) punishable by jail time, it would follow that some of those overly brought criminal statues would have come up in those proceedings,…
There are a lot of reasons to expect it not to be easy in that specific case.
The first is that she's a career politician and a lawyer married to a lawyer. That removes most of the low hanging fruit. She would be more aware of more of the laws that are easy to avoid breaking if you know they exist but most people break all the time only because they don't. Then she's not going to let herself be questioned without consulting legal counsel, which makes it a lot less likely they can prove something by getting her to admit to it.
On top of that, there are two kinds of laws that people break all the time, and neither of them are really suited for political cases like this.
The first is the really obscure laws or unusual circumstances. You have a pocket knife, you walk under an overpass which is technically state owned property, there is a law in that state prohibiting possession of a weapon on state property, etc. Or you have an unusual fruit in your bag on when you cross a border. Everybody breaks laws like this unintentionally, but these are the ones where (absent a surveillance state) it's a lot easier to choose an overpass and find a person walking under it than to choose a person and try to find evidence of a violation like this, and charging a prominent politician with something like that would immediately lead to mockery and claims of a politically-motivated prosecution.
The other is the ultra-broad laws they can charge anybody with (e.g. CFAA) because technically everyone violates them regularly. The problem there isn't finding violations, it's that the prosecutors won't want to risk using those laws in cases like that, because they find them too valuable in general and it's prominent cases like that which lead to them being narrowed by judges. The power of those laws for prosecutors is that you might be able to beat the charge, but only by spending millions on lawyers, which causes ordinary people to plead guilty. That doesn't work against someone like Hillary Clinton because she'll spend the millions on lawyers -- and potentially cost prosecutors future use of that law against the proles.
> The Clinton example may be imperfect because of partisanship, but I can't currently think of any other widely-known case where prosecutors were trying to "throw the book" at someone.
Think of cases where the accused isn't rich or politically connected, e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Manning
In particular, look at all the ancillary charges they tack on to make sure something sticks and consume defense resources. That's really common and is typically even worse in less high profile cases where there is less scrutiny of their absurdity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The American Justice system is dehumanizing. If you never have been involved as a 'criminal' in the USA court system it's a really huge culture shock and extremely dismaying to be treated as human refuse for the first time. Most of the time we spend our time surrounded by people who care about us in one way or another. Your friends, your family, your partners, etc etc. Even out in public the people you meet tend to h…
> In the court system you are treated with the same regard by court officials as a janitor would treat a full trash can. Is this really what you see while fulfilling your jury duty? I dare say it's not the common impression people come away from the courtroom with.
“Probably 95 percent of the people that are charged with something are guilty of something,” she asserted. “They may not be guilty of what they’re exactly charged with, but they may be guilty of a lesser offense, okay? … And you have probably 90 percent of those people who are looking for the best deal possible.” What a disturbing quote and very telling about the state of our justice system.