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Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

reason.com

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Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#191

Post by hedora »

There are 84 independent charges, the majority were overturned by a judge, and at least one mistrial has been declared due to misconduct by the prosecution.

This looks like prosecutorial abuse to me.

Wrongful convictions in the US are way too common. With that many chargers and cascading retrials like this, I'd expect at least one false conviction regardless of who is on trial.

If the guy's guilty, fine. They should have charged him with things that were supported by solid evidence instead of stuffing charges so they can keep trying him for the same things over and over until they get a guilty verdict.

This sort of case is the reason double jeopardy is supposed to be illegal in the US.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#192

Post by whamlastxmas »

Niten wrote: post #91
brookst wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a few minutes trying to figure that out, but Reason is incredibly slanted, they just link to some even nuttier site, and even starting with news I couldn't find specifics of the one count he was convicted on. But I'd be a little skeptical of Reason's handwave "properly reported to the government". Reported on taxes? To SEC? As part of disclosure for this trial? One way it could be money laundering without bei…

Media Bias Fact Check ranks Reason as a "Right-Center" biased website with a "High" rating for factual reporting: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/reason/ They certainly approach stories with an editorial perspective, but they're generally factually reliable and hardly "incredibly slanted".

That website calling CNN moderately left instantly destroys its credibility

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#193

Post by fieryscribe »

ianhawes wrote: post #92
brookst wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a few minutes trying to figure that out, but Reason is incredibly slanted, they just link to some even nuttier site, and even starting with news I couldn't find specifics of the one count he was convicted on. But I'd be a little skeptical of Reason's handwave "properly reported to the government". Reported on taxes? To SEC? As part of disclosure for this trial? One way it could be money laundering without bei…

Reason would indeed seem slanted compared to traditional liberal media, specifically as it relates to not regurgitating the DOJ’s narrative. Happy Reason subscriber here.

Fellow Reason subscriber here. They're more balanced than most.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#194

Post by yieldcrv »

refurb wrote: post #153
yieldcrv wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mmm actually no. money laundering - the federal crime - relies , absolutely relies on their being an illicit origin. it cannot be charged independently and relies on discovering there was an illicit origin and moving to prosecute that. think harder about it and successful money laundering is impossible to be convicted of as an illicit origin is never discovered and probable cause is never established to get the subpo…

> money laundering - the federal crime - relies, absolutely relies on their being an illicit origin. it cannot be charged independently and relies on discovering there was an illicit origin and moving to prosecute that. There are money laundering laws that require it be illicit funds. But there are also transaction reporting requirements - like generating a currency transaction report (CTR) - that don't require the f…

yes “structuring” is illegal. its not a “money laundering law”, perhaps a capital control. its unproductive to play into the idea that all movement of money is laundering and it isnt moving a discussion forward when the language is conflating everything.

I can see the categorization of "AML" - anti-money laundering law. I think then that the context hasn't been made clear, when we are discussing the actual criminal charge of money laundering, versus the criminal charge of structuring or avoiding a transaction reporting threshold.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#195

Post by catlover76 »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #192
Niten wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Media Bias Fact Check ranks Reason as a "Right-Center" biased website with a "High" rating for factual reporting: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/reason/ They certainly approach stories with an editorial perspective, but they're generally factually reliable and hardly "incredibly slanted".

That website calling CNN moderately left instantly destroys its credibility

[dead]

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#197

Post by yieldcrv »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #161
concordDance wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After this comment I finally looked up Andrew Tate on wikipedia and was surprised to discover he has not actually been convicted of sex trafficking yet. Had the impression he had been... commenting in case it surprises anyone else.

Well, you can’t convict him if he’s not in the US. He’s been hiding in Romania the past few years.

The Romanian authorities indicted him. The surprise is that the Romanian authorities havent convicted him

amusing “default US” moment

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#198

Post by Nevermark »

klausa wrote: post #116
roenxi wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that is philosophically true, but this thread is illustrating why that isn't a helpful perspective . Consider a media organisation has a bias towards accurate reporting with a view to helping readers achieve the best outcome for themselves and good outcomes for society. We could correctly call such an organisation "slanted", but it is missing the point that there some slants are privileged by virtue of leading…

> Consider a media organisation has a bias towards accurate reporting with a view to helping readers achieve the best outcome for themselves and good outcomes for society. I think you'll find that literally every media organisations thinks it's doing exactly that — the issue is that people have _wildly_ different conceits of what "best outcome" for them is.

The correspondences revealed in Fox News court cases do not paint a picture of a company with their own principled view to having a positive impact, that included respect for facts.

All companies "serve" their customers, including news organizations, and inevitably have subjective ways of organizing their efforts.

But there is a big difference between ones that have a mission geared to a positive society outcome, a commitment to customer well being, and respect for facts, with profits following from that service, vs. a mission to print whatever they can legally afford to, to maximize profits. And of course, that difference is a continuum.

Some companies take value creation seriously. Others optimize for opportunities to extract value and prey on dysfunction.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#200

Post by stareatgoats »

Retric wrote: post #99
yareal wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's much Left in US politics, unless you mean in the language of US politics, where somehow Democrats are considered "Left".

Party stances are always going to reflect the country they operate in. On an absolute scale Republican’s support for expanding Medicare drug coverage was left leaning compared to at the time current law even though it’s to the right of many countries and Democrat’s stance on the issue.

yeah, the left/right dichotomy is gradually becoming outright meaningless - usually just sloppily slapped labels that fit an agenda. Important nuances go completely unnoticed in the left/right universe, like libertarians siding with communists, and neocons siding with democrats - or whoever thinks regime changing from above is a good idea. Anarchism, militarism, libertarianism, conservativism, fascism, welfarestateism, social democracy, etc, these are all useful terms. Left and right; not so much.
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