I guess it would be an appeal of the sentence, rather than appealing her the charges she pled guilty to.
> I guess it would be an appeal of the sentence, rather than appealing her the charges she pled guilty to.
There were several legal motions prior to the guilty plea and on which it was predicated that are quite likely to be the subject of the appeal, particularly the motions to dismiss all charges (first for Constitutional due process violations involving unlawful pretrial punishment, second for violation of the Constitutional right to a speedy trial.)
I'm noticing in these posts that those who view Chelsea Manning's actions favourably use the right name and pronouns. Those who do not view her actions favourably use the wrong name and pronouns. That suggests that there's overlap between those who do not view her favourably and people who do not view transgender people favourably.
I'd suggest a more innocuous explanation: those who view her actions favourably are more "up to date" with her situation (including coming out as trans), while those who don't are less up to date and might not be aware. In my personal situation, I feel that while some of the leaks were very justified, a lot of the material had no reason to be released [1]. Anyways, I don't pay much attention to the case, and wasn't a…
This is the case for me. There's nothing nefarious about it. When the case was prominently in the media, "he" was Bradley Manning, and so that's what I think of when I see any headline just referring to her as Manning. It's only after reading the article or comments I am reminded that she is "Chelsea" now.
For the record, I lean towards thinking she should be found guilty, but I haven't put enough thought into it to feel strongly.
The question is, how do you make the system more fair? One way to make it more fair is to make it cheaper, and the way to do that is to reduce its complexity. But what does a less complex system look like? Consider that most of our criminal laws have a "mens rea" (i.e. mental state) requirement in addition to the "actus reus" (i.e. culpable conduct). Cases would be a lot cheaper to prosecute and defend without those…
> One way to make it more fair is to make it cheaper, and [one] way to do that is to reduce its complexity. You've made a good case against that solution. But I remain far from convinced that there's not another solution, like having the lawyers of both sides be salaried employees of the state.
You want to make it fair by prohibiting people from paying for a better defense? So because some people can't afford private lawyers, an unfortunate state of affairs that public defenders exist to remedy, private lawyers should just be banned outright?
The independent legal profession is a cornerstone of our free society. My lawyer shouldn't have to be on the payroll of the people trying to imprison me. Lawyers try to do a good job because it improves their reputation and wins them more clients.
You don't make society better by reducing the quality of everything to the lowest common denominator.
I find it very disturbing that you need tens of thousands of dollars at your disposal to get a "fair" trial. I say "fair", because the output obviously changes with the amount of money you feed the system. Too little money and the outcome will be biased against you, too much money and the outcome will be biased in the other direction. Which amount will give an unbiased output? $50k? $100k? How can this be considered…
Your point is well-taken in the abstract, but I don't think it applies here. This is one of those cases where the defense must make the case complicated, because otherwise they lose. There is no dispute that Manning actually did most of the things she is accused of doing. I don't think she's contending that it was someone else who leaked those classified materials. The defense is in a position of arguing that, despit…
People are objecting to the costs that the defendant must bear, not the total cost.
So you believe that whistleblowers should be punished?
I don't think this was a whistleblower issue. Rather than responding with a yes or no, I think we should consider if breaking a law in the furtherance of whistleblowing is justified. If someone reveals classified information, does claiming "whistle blower" status automatically make the initial crime excusable? I disagree. Otherwise why not make it legal to divulge classified material? Then blowing the whistle can be…
Whistleblowing almost always involves breaking at least one law. The general trend has been to bring in more laws to make it less likely that it is possible legally in any given situation. To say "I support whistleblowing but only if no laws are broken" is almost meaningless.
> One way to make it more fair is to make it cheaper, and [one] way to do that is to reduce its complexity. You've made a good case against that solution. But I remain far from convinced that there's not another solution, like having the lawyers of both sides be salaried employees of the state.
You want to make it fair by prohibiting people from paying for a better defense? So because some people can't afford private lawyers, an unfortunate state of affairs that public defenders exist to remedy, private lawyers should just be banned outright? The independent legal profession is a cornerstone of our free society. My lawyer shouldn't have to be on the payroll of the people trying to imprison me. Lawyers try t…
> You don't make society better by reducing the quality of everything to the lowest common denominator.
A common denominator is the only way to make things fair. You pointed out the conflict of interest; very well, that's a good point. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The system we currently have is so vulnerable to corruption, that it wouldn't be hard to make something more fair.
That's not an issue at all, if the government just acts as a lender to whoever is going to lose. That also has the added bonus of making people think twice about engaging people in civil suits and prevents people and bad prosecutors from using the legal system for blackmail.
Well, if you go with a "loser pays" system you run into the issue of false convictions and economic-disparity again. If I were to barely break even at the end of each month, and was tried for a crime I didn't commit I might still consider pleading guilty because the actual punishment would be less than the results of the financial penalty incurred by defending yourself and losing. If I were rich enough to easily pay…
For criminal cases, that probably depends on the interest and repayment terms. If its means-contingent repayment without usurious interest, the incentive to plea guilty to avoid the cost of defense would be minimized, though the public expense would, correspondingly, be greater. OTOH, the expense would be going to assure that the guilty, and only the guilty, were punished and the government was less able to get away with punishing the poor-but-innocent to prevent a public image of dealing with problems while failing to actually get the guilty, so there is a public benefit (in addition to "protecting the rights of the accused") that comes from that public expense.
You want to make it fair by prohibiting people from paying for a better defense? So because some people can't afford private lawyers, an unfortunate state of affairs that public defenders exist to remedy, private lawyers should just be banned outright? The independent legal profession is a cornerstone of our free society. My lawyer shouldn't have to be on the payroll of the people trying to imprison me. Lawyers try t…
> You don't make society better by reducing the quality of everything to the lowest common denominator. A common denominator is the only way to make things fair. You pointed out the conflict of interest; very well, that's a good point. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The system we currently have is so vulnerable to corruption, that it wouldn't be hard to make something more fair.
> A common denominator is the only way to make things fair.
This is how you destroy civilizations. The Soviet Union and Cuba come to mind as places that tried to make society more fair by equally distributing poverty and oppression. You make society better by pulling the bottom up, not by pushing the top down.