Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.
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Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.
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Re: Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.
#2I'm glad someone is finally standing up for the rights of common citizens. I really don't want to see the social experiment of the United States end in a failure, and every day our rights are eroded, we get closer to that. I like this country, and consider myself a patriot. I just also have to recognize that the people who participate in running this country do not always have our best interests at heart.
Re: Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.
#3In situations where accusations of widespread corruption, misconduct, unethical action, etc are made, a phrase that is often trotted out in defense of the accused is "just a few bad apples". It's not WhereEver Police Department that has an issue with racial bias and violent escalation, it's just a few bad apples. Our school district does not have a bullying problem, it's just a few bad apples. Etc.
What is interesting about this cliched defense is that it is actually a malformed statement of the original cliche, "A few bad apples spoil the barrel."
The original cliche refers to a phenomenon where overripe or rotten apples release ethylene gas, which is a ripening agent. This ethylene gas will accelerate the ripening/rot of nearby apples. If you are not vigilant in weeding out the bad apples, the rot will rapidly spread and soon there will be no good apples left to rescue.
Human "bad apples" don't release ethylene gas, but they corrupt their peers nevertheless. When a good cop backs the cover story of his corrupt cop partner, he becomes a bad cop as well. When prosecutors take up arms in defense of their corrupt prosecutor peers, they become no better than the initially targeted. If school administrators allow a bully to have his way for too long, then everybody else sees that they can get away with it too and before long you have daily fistfights behind the school at the end of the day.
Institutions that have had widespread unchallenged corruption for decades rarely need keyhole surgery, they need amputations.
Re: Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.
#4In situations where accusations of widespread corruption, misconduct, unethical action, etc are made, a phrase that is often trotted out in defense of the accused is "just a few bad apples" . It's not WhereEver Police Department that has an issue with racial bias and violent escalation, it's just a few bad apples . Our school district does not have a bullying problem, it's just a few bad apples . Etc. What is interes…
Related: I don't understand how the "few bad apples" defense always seems to be used to argue for "so ignore it" rather than "and by the way, when we find a bad apple, it goes straight in the garbage disposal where it belongs". Like, all these prosecutors are going apeshit because a judge dared to say they should possibly lose their licenses -- what about the idea that they should serve time, time comparable to what they may have capriciously caused innocents to serve? "Law and order" is all well and good, but I'd like to see it go both ways once in a while.
Re: Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.
#5In the interest of hearing both sides of the story, can someone explain what legitimate complaints prosecutors may have about these developments, if any?
Re: Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.
#6I applaud this judge. I also feel like I'm not hearing the full story.
Re: Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.
#7I'm glad someone is finally standing up for the rights of common citizens. I really don't want to see the social experiment of the United States end in a failure, and every day our rights are eroded, we get closer to that. I like this country, and consider myself a patriot. I just also have to recognize that the people who participate in running this country do not always have our best interests at heart.
I really don't want to see the social experiment of the United States end in a failure, and every day our rights are eroded, we get closer to that.
If you watch television, you will think that the world is becoming worse. After all, news is only when rare things happen, and usually very bad things at that. Now, I am not saying that that criminal justice system is in need of a huge overhaul. It is a real human right problem that needs to be fixed.
But what you're saying is that you think that we are losing rights. Are we really? Consider that in the last 50 years or so, we are gaining more rights. Even animal gains more right. Perhaps this is not the case in the last 10 years or so. Maybe we really are losing rights.
Consider this: When somebody brings a human right problem, that is a good omen. That mean somebody acknowledges the problem. If a human right problem remains hidden from view, our perception will be wrong, because it means we think we have more right or freedom than we really have and we can't do anything about it. So the Snowden revelation is good news, but the bad news is that Snowden is necessary in the first place and the fact that it had remain hidden across two presidency.
So if the media is openly reporting abuses done by prosecutors and other agents. That is a good thing. It means that our error correction mechanism is starting to work, which will hopefully lead to a change that curb the abuse and prevent it from happening.
But what about our freedom over the last ten years? What's the reality? One of the freedom index graph says that our freedom across the world is quite stable, maybe increasing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World#Trends
I have yet to look at other graph. But if you're going to say that we are losing our rights, maybe it's a good idea to quantify how much over what time period.
Re: Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.
#8In situations where accusations of widespread corruption, misconduct, unethical action, etc are made, a phrase that is often trotted out in defense of the accused is "just a few bad apples" . It's not WhereEver Police Department that has an issue with racial bias and violent escalation, it's just a few bad apples . Our school district does not have a bullying problem, it's just a few bad apples . Etc. What is interes…
Related: I don't understand how the "few bad apples" defense always seems to be used to argue for "so ignore it" rather than "and by the way, when we find a bad apple, it goes straight in the garbage disposal where it belongs". Like, all these prosecutors are going apeshit because a judge dared to say they should possibly lose their licenses -- what about the idea that they should serve time, time comparable to what…
I suppose there is some tradeoff involved with crafting new rules, but all the new rules that I have seen suggested seem sensible and reasonable.
Re: Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.
#9I'm glad someone is finally standing up for the rights of common citizens. I really don't want to see the social experiment of the United States end in a failure, and every day our rights are eroded, we get closer to that. I like this country, and consider myself a patriot. I just also have to recognize that the people who participate in running this country do not always have our best interests at heart.
I really don't want to see the social experiment of the United States end in a failure, and every day our rights are eroded, we get closer to that. If you watch television, you will think that the world is becoming worse. After all, news is only when rare things happen, and usually very bad things at that. Now, I am not saying that that criminal justice system is in need of a huge overhaul. It is a real human right p…
I don't disagree with your analysis, but people don't gain or lose rights based on government whims. People have inalienable rights that can be respected or violated. This may seem like a semantic point, but I think it's important that to remember that fundamental rights, like the right to to a fair trial, exist no matter whether the law and its agents honor those rights.
When governments fail to respect inalienable rights, they lose legitimacy.
Re: Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.
#10Two things:
1. I suspect the genisis of this immunity was to inoculate prosecutors from coercion by politicians - which is probably a good thing. But I would be curious to know about the logic behind it.
2. While perhaps it might be worthwhile to have some level of immunity that logic frays somewhat when acts that would generally be considered immoral and perhaps criminal are unaddressable.