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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

#201

Post by arcbyte »

mmooss wrote: post #99

Could any attorneys comment on why habeas corpus actions aren't used here. Isn't this sort of thing exactly what habeas is for?

Habeas corpus applies to illegal detention. After an arrest, you may be detained even without charges for a "reasonable amount of time". In most cases, this will be 48-72 hours depending on the state and your circumstances. After that "reasonable" period has passed without charges, your detention would then be illegal, and habeas corpus would be the perfect remedy.

So why isn't it used?

The answer is simple and twofold: 1. These people don't know to do that, let alone how. 2. They don't have the money to pay somebody who knows to do that.

The final, uncomfortable answer here is that most of these people are actually guilty. If they filed the writ, it would only serve to speed up the actual filing of charges. This could be seen as a good thing, but why would you take the few thousand dollars to file habeas corpus when your family is now suffering because you aren't working anymore - and because you committed the crime you aren't going to be working for some time to come. So might as well wait out the period anyway. Is it fair or good? No, its brutal calculus.

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

#202

Post by lurk2 »

Terr_ wrote: post #42
decimalenough wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous poster's point is, I presume, that the upkeep of a prisoner costs a hell of a lot more than $10/day. Specifically, the California Dept of Corrections quotes $133,000/year. https://www.lao.ca.gov/PolicyAreas/CJ/6_cj_inmatecost

I'd have less of a problem with prisoners being paid a pittance for helping out if it weren't for how the spending-side of prison commissaries [0] and phone calls [1] are often unconscionably overpriced. [0] https://theappeal.org/locked-in-priced-out-how-much-prison-c... [1] https://www.vera.org/news/the-fcc-is-capping-outrageous-pris...

In a lot of states, inmates are required to reimburse the state for some portion of the cost of their incarceration. Oddly, the commissary issue strikes me as perverse, but the requirement to cover incarceration costs didn’t, at least once I had thought about it some more. While I am cautious to endorse El Salvador, I think their model is the one to beat: Prisoners are either working or in school, but the goods produced by the prisoners are used by the government to offset costs in other departments, rather than being sold on an open market. For example, they have the prisoners sewing uniforms for public officials, repairing fleets of public vehicles, and building desks for schools. This nominally solves the issue of prison labor being exploited (at least so long as the program remains revenue negative or revenue neutral) without burdening the general public with the cost of incarceration.

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

#203

Post by Veelox »

sersi wrote: post #113
nadermx wrote: post #4

"Two men were released after The Times asked about them, half a year after their sentences had been completed." Horrific. This egregious human rights violation is something you'd think you read about in a developing nation, not a developed nation.

I think at this point the general consensus of most Europeans is that the US has more in common with a developing nation than with a developed nation when it comes to equality in the eye of justice, equal access to health care, support for the downtrodden and freedoms...

This general consensus is part of why Trump gets support for his recent trade and defense comments and actions. Also, from an economic perspective the US has been successful and has poured that success into different buckets than Europe would prefer but that's fine, let the US be the US and let Europe be Europe.

Numbers for anyone curious US gdp per capita ~$82.7k EU gdp per capita ~$41.1k

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

#204

Post by NekkoDroid »

walrus01 wrote: post #136
sersi wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think at this point the general consensus of most Europeans is that the US has more in common with a developing nation than with a developed nation when it comes to equality in the eye of justice, equal access to health care, support for the downtrodden and freedoms...

I've heard the US described as a third world country wearing a Gucci belt.

I personally still call the USA "the most advanced 3rd world country posing as a 1st world country"

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

#205

Post by lawn »

raincole wrote: post #177
lawn wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a similar phenomena with how Russians view Ukraine. "Who allowed them to live so well?".

Ukraine is and was literally the poorest european country. Even before this war.

And what do you think this says about the average Russian?

Remember that wealth distribution in Russia is extremely skewed and many people don't even have access to luxury such as an indoor toilet (roughly 1/4th of the population).

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

#206

Post by tpm »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #193
tpm wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going by "The purpose of a system is what it does", I think European (specifically EU-member) states do a lot more for their citizens than the US does, in welfare, healthcare, environment, infrastructure and so on, so either the oligarchs are very subtle indeed (looking at our Slovakian oligarchs... I don't think so) or they just don't own the governments far more (yet). They are certainly trying though. I think this…

The European upper class doesn't generally pay taxes, and they are more of internationalists than you are thinking. They move around enough and have their home base somewhere like Monaco so they don't participate at all in the welfare systems. European welfare systems redistribute huge amounts of money from the middle class to the poor, not from the rich. In other words, the European welfare systems are actually a gr…

I'm not disagreeing with you, just that even with all that "the common people" still get more from the state than in the US, that's at least my feeling.

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

#207

Post by askonomm »

mattw2121 wrote: post #194
askonomm wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, by all accounts we have a higher life quality than Americans. Only Americans care about money, because in USA you don't get anything without paying for it all yourself. Here we have minimum mandatory vacations for 4 weeks per year, and many countries have a lot more than that, most countries have a year or more of maternity leave, paid of course, we have plenty of public holidays, paid of course, and we don'…

After reading your comment, one might come to the conclusion that Europeans see Americans through the lens of reporting and social media, just as Americans see Europeans through the same lens. Both sides believe characterizations of the other.

The conclusion is correct, I would say. I know plenty of Americans who are not the archetype I portrayed, but this is HN, and that’s the HN American I see here a lot. Not all, but a lot. And we seem to be fundamentally incompatible. It’s really unfortunate, but that’s what it seems to me, and I’m sorry for the bitter undertones, it’s just really hard to stay optimistic in the current social climate.

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

#208

Post by mixologist »

robertlagrant wrote: post #184
mixologist wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No sane person will tell you that EU should accept all the consequences of US starting wars in our neighborhood and also pay for that privilege. Nobody is forcing US to field the largest army in the world. It is their own choice. We all would much rather if they didn't have such an incentive to arbitrarily start wars just to justify their defense budget. BTW, if US is such a mighty nation as they advertise themselves…

I don't see the point in this bad faith stuff. Clearly the US has provided a massive defence umbrella not limited to wars the US started. EU countries are now arming up and spending increased GDP on defence to accommodate the US spending less on their defence. The US has spent a fortune that those countries didn't have to previously spend, and could instead spend on social things. I think the US was fine with this, b…

What bad faith?

US has been destroying Middle East for decades. Where do you thing that migrants from those regions run to?

Wars in Middle East are not something that EU needs or wants. We just went with it because of all the "we are allies and we respect each other" lies that were used by US administrations to swindle EU and get what they want.

Or do you propose that US pays for the costs of immigration problems around the world?

It is obvious that only reason US doesn't have safety net for their own citizens is US.

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

#209

Post by hollerith »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #192
raincole wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine is and was literally the poorest european country. Even before this war.

So why do the Russian invaders keep steeling the toilets and washing machines? When you measure wealth, it makes a huge difference how exactly you calculate it. Having a few astronomically rich oligarchs in your country increases the arithmetic mean, but does nothing about the median. This is how Russia can have better numbers in national statistics, and yet the average Russian soldier can feel the other way round in…

Your making stuff up.

[del: Most Russian soldiers are paid over $100,000 a year to volunteer to fight in Ukraine. :del] In contrast, most of the Ukrainian soldiers are conscripts.

Here's a Youtube channel by a Brit who moved to Russia in 2002 or 2003:

https://www.youtube.com/@SamsRussianAdventures/videos

At the current time, the top video (i.e., the latest video) in that list is titled, "I'm Much Happier Here in Russia - Here's How Much it Costs".

Sadly, I haven't been able to find out (after watching about 5 of his videos) how much he earns and how he gets his money.

Russia's Gini coefficient is 35.1 whereas the US is at 41.3. Zero means perfect equality whereas 100 is the most unequal society possible.

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

#210

Post by matips »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #138
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 100%. I've written about this here before, but I've been involved in two civil lawsuits in my life. One was in the USA, the other was in mainland China. I should stress that I am an American, and I wasn't even in China when the lawsuit over there was moving along. The Chinese process was very fast -- it went before a judge who reached a verdict in something like ten months -- and it was extremely inexpensive.…

In Poland it is much cheaper, but it is slow or even slower.
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