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In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

nytimes.com

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Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#101

Post by ceejayoz »

jMyles wrote: post #81
ceejayoz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imprisonment is indeed a newer development. Ancient Greece and Rome are "newer"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamertine_Prison was built in the 7th century BC .

Please - and I ask this with calmness and a sincere urging: Stop trying to make incarceration seem like a long-running historical phenomenon. It is profit-driven propaganda, the promulgation of which began promptly in 1865. Incarceration, in the Western legal tradition, is very new in relative terms, and its growth has been overwhelmingly the result of the experience of the USA transforming slavery into something mar…

The UK’s Bloody Codes and transportation, the French Bastille, etc. all long predate 1865.

American post-Civil War incarceration is absolutely squicky in its often clear continuation of the slavery system it replaced, but prisons and incarceration aren’t new.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#102

Post by ranger_danger »

DistractionRect wrote: post #53
crooked-v wrote: post #8

Merely "fails"? That sounds like apologetic underemphasis to me, like so many other Times stories. The system described is more like active oppression.

It's amazing how understated some parts are. Like they just casually mention > Like most Texas county judges, he does not have a law degree. I'm sorry, what? Anyone off the street can be a judge? That one line begs soo many questions, and at least some outrage, which is simply glossed over. Doing my own research, I guess I see why it's glossed over, because apparently this isn't uncommon - a quick search says that on…

Some lower level judges in Texas are not required to have a law degree.

https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1454620/judge-qualifications-...

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#103

Post by t-writescode »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #86
t-writescode wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the States know how fast our country can fall and don’t accept “well, we’ve still got a ways to go” as an excuse for the descent. The so-called best shouldn’t compare itself to others, it should compare itself to itself from yesterday. And in those regards, we are descending rapidly, especially for those of us LGBTQ+, women and minorities. Do not forget how fast Saudi Arabia and other countries changed from…

[flagged]

  Trans people can't get passports[0]
  Literally everything with the word "gay" is being removed from federal ledgers[1, 2]
  Initiatives to **penalize** companies that still choose to have DEI hires
    greatly impacts anyone that's not a white male. [3]
  Anti-Abortion legislation directly attacks women's health, including when there's
    a harm to the mother. [4]
  Elderly may very well be missing out on their social security payments [5]
Frankly, to imagine that things aren't getting worse for women, bipoc and lgbtq+ people at this point means you've either lived under a rock, in which case, "Welcome! The world is worse now."; you're willfully ignorant of the harm that's being done to so, so, *so* many communities; or, you're acting in bad faith and sealioning[6].

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/2025/03/07/transgender...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/03/19/nx-s1-5317567/federal-website...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_government_...

[3] https://www.newsweek.com/costco-under-fire-states-trump-dei-...

[4] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=woman+dies+needed+abortion&...

[5] https://www.axios.com/2025/03/21/social-security-lutnick-dog...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#104

Post by FilosofumRex »

Of course big corp media like NYT would report on injustices in red states, especially Texas.

Next door to NYT in the deep blue state of Massachusetts, two men have been arrested for simple trespass even though they had valid active IDs. Cops simply took the ID and left it out of police report, and never turned it over to the DA or the defense as exculpatory evidence. All with complete impunity and re-arrested them half a dozen times again repeating the same exact way!

You'd think where gay marriage was first legalized (and has a lesbian governor), plenty lawyers would take such cases. They've had to go through six lawyers because they refused plea bargain deals so that the dirty cops would have to testify under oath. But the corrupt DA dropped each and every charge on the days of trials, to save the cops from perjury; but not until after nearly two years of fake and phony court hearings to make sure these two lose their jobs or give up their rights.

You'll never read their story on the front page of NYT or any other big corp media because it happened right at the heart of Massachusetts in Cambridge/Boston on the precious private property of an elite university.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#105

Post by BrenBarn »

FilosofumRex wrote: post #104

Of course big corp media like NYT would report on injustices in red states, especially Texas. Next door to NYT in the deep blue state of Massachusetts, two men have been arrested for simple trespass even though they had valid active IDs. Cops simply took the ID and left it out of police report, and never turned it over to the DA or the defense as exculpatory evidence. All with complete impunity and re-arrested them h…

Can you provide a link to a non-big-corp-media source where we can read about it?

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#106

Post by FireBeyond »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #73
askvictor wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the irony, but it doesn't have to be that drastic. In Australia we have the Law Reform Commission, which looks to gradually make laws better. Is the legal system perfect? Far from it. Does it get political? All the time. Is it getting better? I would argue yes, slowly. To your analogy, it's possible to incrementally improve a code base. It's also possible to stop it getting worse.

Right, which no one (to my knowledge) is opposed to.

Prosecutors have political lobbies.

So too do prison guards and their unions.

You would be hard pressed to find a union that represents prison guards which has supported ANY kind of political reform to laws. Legalization, even changes to traffic laws, prison guard unions and their members almost exclusively vote against.

Just for two examples.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#108

Post by FilosofumRex »

BrenBarn wrote: post #105
FilosofumRex wrote: post #104

Of course big corp media like NYT would report on injustices in red states, especially Texas. Next door to NYT in the deep blue state of Massachusetts, two men have been arrested for simple trespass even though they had valid active IDs. Cops simply took the ID and left it out of police report, and never turned it over to the DA or the defense as exculpatory evidence. All with complete impunity and re-arrested them h…

Can you provide a link to a non-big-corp-media source where we can read about it?

No, because cases are very recent , as in 2024-25 and one is still pending. I got it from a local court listener who said they had filed an 800 page lawsuit against alleging various undisclosed connections between major corps, elite universities and the notorious Jeffery Epstein.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#109

Post by dragonwriter »

BrenBarn wrote: post #80
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is the root of the evil is in our overcriminalisation of day to day life. Is this accurate? Or would reducing the prison population through reduced sentencing not alleviate the worst of the problems? (Reduced sentencing loads mean you can raise standards for court-appointed counsel, possibly ban plea deals, et cetera .)

I think it is less to with "overcriminalization" in the sense of legislation, and more to do with the enforcement process. In some sense I think we need more criminalization, in that the types of malfeasance described in the article (e.g., keeping people imprisoned beyond their sentence, failing to provide an attorney, etc.) should result in long jail sentences for the officials who perpetrated them. The problem is t…

You can’t add more criminal laws to deal with systematic refusal by law enforcement to obey and hold other law enforcement officials accountable for obeying existing law, because that relies on the same people whose behavior you are trying to correct to auddenly behave differently to have any effect.

The US, in fact, has a comprehensive federal and civil and criminal prohibition applicable to such behavior (the prohibition on deprivation of rights under color of law and conspiracy against rights), but the criminal prohibition is consistently inadequately enforced, and the civil prohibiition has been neutered by applying qualified immunity against it, which arguably is inconsistent with the letter of the statute.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#110

Post by chasil »

AngryData wrote: post #38

Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. 90% of it is about extorting the population for funding for the courts and cops. If you can't afford a lawyer, they will provide you with a joke. And if you can afford a lawyer, now its just a question if you are willing to spend more on your lawyer than the state is hoping to extort from you. If you are, you will get…

I agree that this is unfair, and far violates constitutional rights.

I would willingly donate to their cause.

However, mass violation of the constitutional rights of citizens seems to me the venue for a class action?

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