How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#231

Post by mrcorona » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

bsanr2 wrote: post #226

roenxi wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conclusion doesn't really follow from the premise. If all crime were committed by one racial group it would be madness not to use that information to target crime-fighting measures. If there are credible reports of a white man committing murders it doesn't make any sense to waste resources listing mainly female Asian suspects, for example. There are also other similar issues. For example, if a crime happens on my…

The majority of crime in America is committed by white people, in terms of absolute numbers of arrests, value of stolen goods and funds, etc. By your logic, it would be most effective to target white people. This is without even taking into account that white suspects tend to avoid arrest, prosecution, conviction, and long jail sentences at higher rates than other racial groups (that is to say, when brought to a part…

I heard it mentioned that Bernie Madoff, in one sitting, stole more money than all African American criminals in the history of the US combined.

If true, pretty astonishing when we think about the violence one set of people were exposed to when compared to the other.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#232

Post by curryst » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #230

curryst wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that's discovery as I understand it. But why would you, as the defense, plan to present a video that demonstrates your guilt? If you aren't going to present it, it isn't part of discovery. The prosecution is required to share material that undermines their own case under the Brady Rule [1], but the defense does not bear the same burden as far as I know. In fact, the defense is not even required to request or s…

If the prosecution isn't make aware of its existance, the defense attorney is vulnerable to being disbarred. That's a lot to ask, for one deadbeat client. A good defense lawyer would say "If that video doesn't obviously clear your name, then don't show it to me".

I went on a Google search for prior case law, because this piqued my interest. Everything I can find says that they are not required to disclose evidence, with the exception of 1) things they intend to use in court 2) physical evidence. The BAR seems to agree [1], there is no mention of disclosing evidence other than what you intend to present in court. [2] also notes that being required to disclose physical evidence is in contrast to the 5th amendment, which indicates to me that most evidence is not required to be disclosed under the 5th amendment.

I am unsure about the status of a video as "physical evidence". My assumption would be that a VHS tape is physical evidence, but an mp4 attachment to an email is not.

As an example, if a client gives his lawyer a murder weapon, the defense has to disclose that. If the client tells his lawyer where the murder weapon is buried, the lawyer is not required to disclose that [2].

[1] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/criminal_justice/publicat...

[2] https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=... page 5 (page 900 if you go by the numbers on the text).

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#233

Post by bsanr2 » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

bsanr2 wrote: post #226

roenxi wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conclusion doesn't really follow from the premise. If all crime were committed by one racial group it would be madness not to use that information to target crime-fighting measures. If there are credible reports of a white man committing murders it doesn't make any sense to waste resources listing mainly female Asian suspects, for example. There are also other similar issues. For example, if a crime happens on my…

The majority of crime in America is committed by white people, in terms of absolute numbers of arrests, value of stolen goods and funds, etc. By your logic, it would be most effective to target white people. This is without even taking into account that white suspects tend to avoid arrest, prosecution, conviction, and long jail sentences at higher rates than other racial groups (that is to say, when brought to a part…

A dead reply to this post expressed incredulity at the disparate treatment of Bernie Madoff and countless black convicts when comparing the scale of the damage they respectively caused. They illustrated this with the erroneous "factoid" that Madoff stole more than the value of all robberies and burglaries by black people in the country's history. This is probably untrue, due in no small part to the nature of his scheme. That said, the trillions in value lost during the Great Recession, which was the result of completely unpunished malfeasance by executives and regulators across the financial industry, and which stripped black families of roughly half their wealth, almost surely eclipses whatever figure one could come up with for the proposed above. I agree with the spirit of his comment.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#234

Post by bzbarsky » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:00 PM UTC

curryst wrote: post #224

bzbarsky wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also not a lawyer, but as I understand it, both the defense and the prosecution tell each other and the judge what evidence they plan to bring; unlike crime shows, you generally don't spring surprises in court. In this case the defense would say "we have a video that shows we are innocent" and the prosecution would then request a copy of the video, and a warrant to acquire it. Providing said video doesn't seem any mo…

Right, that's discovery as I understand it. But why would you, as the defense, plan to present a video that demonstrates your guilt? If you aren't going to present it, it isn't part of discovery. The prosecution is required to share material that undermines their own case under the Brady Rule [1], but the defense does not bear the same burden as far as I know. In fact, the defense is not even required to request or s…

Good points. I had read the thread start as having the defense lawyers only present the parts of the video that support their case, not the full video, which as I understand it would not be OK. But yes, I don't know that anything prevents them from not presenting the video at all.