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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

#351

Post by catlover76 »

chollida1 wrote: post #236
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> . Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system. This is common in almost all legal systems. How else would the defendant get to examine the evidence against them and how else would you provide evidence if there was no discovery process? Its hard to imagine there would be a legal system without it.

The legal process in the US is driven by the parties, and the party with more money can abuse this fact. Party-driven discovery is a major scene of abuse in this regard.

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

#352

Post by lurk2 »

ponector wrote: post #339
lurk2 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most Americans cannot. You have no idea what you’re talking about and there is no statistical basis to the claims you are making. The only two metrics Europeans win out on is life expectancy (by around 4 years) and (narrowly) on home ownership rate (around 5 percentage points higher in Europe). Americans are overwhelmingly wealthier than Europeans by every other metric.

> Americans are overwhelmingly wealthier than Europeans by every other metric. $1.21 trillion in credit card debt, $1.66 trillion in car loans and $1.6 trillion in federal student loans - yes, Americans are overwhelmingly wealthier.

Yes, they are. The largest of those three figures involves the purchase of a hard asset that provides utility to the purchaser over time. If you buy a $30,000 van, you’re not out $30,000, because you’ve received the van in exchange.

I note that you didn’t provide equivalent figures for the EU, however, so I imagine you’re less interested in making an actual argument than you are in looking clever.

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

#353

Post by givemeethekeys »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #288
givemeethekeys wrote: post #7

Standing out in any way in a small, socially conservative community can have some pretty terrible consequences.

Same as wearing a MAGA hat in San Francisco or New York City.

Even in SF and NYC, you will find friends by wearing a MAGA hat.

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

#355

Post by mixologist »

lupusreal wrote: post #250
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…

European NATO members were well within their rights to refuse to participate in Afghanistan when America invoked Article 5 (read it!). They should have in fact, because it was a bullshit war and they knew it at the time. They chose to participate anyway and have been whining about it ever since. Fine, mistakes were made, but now you lot should be happy to put distance between yourselves and America and take on full r…

Region as in "relatively close to Europe". Immigrants are coming all the way from Middle East where US performs the operations, not our neighboring countries.

Russian thing is all EU fault. Glut for cheap oil made putin think he has a big bargaining chip against EU and that this will all be a simple task.

I don't know what propaganda media you get your information from, but people of Europe are not gloating or thinking you are stupid. I work for a company that has US offices (as many Europeans do) and we work very well together. We travel a lot between countries and work face to face and there have never been any problems.

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

#357

Post by rafram »

throwaway17_17 wrote: post #350
rafram wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I would challenge you to find a single case, reported in the media, in which a defendant took a plea deal rather than face charges that included mandatory sex offender registration for nothing more than public urination. If that has ever happened, surely it would've been reported on at least once, right?

I am uniquely qualified to respond to your question in that over my career I have represented 4,000+ criminal defendants. It is incredibly common for defendants to take lower charges to avoid consequences. This is nearly uniformly true for sex offenses which require registration. While obviously not able to use individual client names, I can guarantee I have personally represented hundreds of defendants who pled to a…

And were any of those for public urination alone, without any obscene intent at all? Just a guy peeing in the bushes because he can't find a bathroom?

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

#358

Post by yowzadave »

fragmede wrote: post #334
monkey_monkey wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if the cartel with their automatic weapons come at you, do you really think your stash is going to protect you? Also, lack of police services is probably commensurate with the low levels of taxation that so many Americans desperately want and vote for.

I'll be super real. The numbers from 2021 say the average American household owns 5 guns. This isn't because the average American really has a gun, but because of the people with 100 guns skewing the numbers. Those people are real, exist, and will give the cartel, and the local police, and a swat team a run for their money, if invaded. The real average American doesn't have an armory that can protect them from the ca…

Can you point to any actual real-world cases where something like this has happened? It sounds like a movie concept; we're letting real-world policy be determined by a fantasy people have about a lone gun enthusiast killing a bunch of drug cartel members?

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

#359

Post by niederman »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #298
ajross wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're the plaintiff and you have evidence that supports your version of events, you give it all to the court. If you're the defendant and you have exculpatory evidence, or anything that shows that the case is frivolous, you give it all to the court. Yes, but what if you're the plaintiff/defendant and the other party has evidence in your favor? How do you get it before the court? That is what discovery is for. H…

> Yes, but what if you're the plaintiff/defendant and the other party has evidence in your favor? How do you get it before the court? That is what discovery is for. What do you know of this evidence and how do you know about it? > Honestly it just sounds like you had an easy case tried in China and a hard one tried in the US and are making some really broad assertions about the two legal systems based on a small samp…

> What do you know of this evidence and how do you know about it?

It's called "discovery" for a reason. You ask for everything you think might be relevant.

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

#360

Post by fragmede »

yowzadave wrote: post #358
fragmede wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be super real. The numbers from 2021 say the average American household owns 5 guns. This isn't because the average American really has a gun, but because of the people with 100 guns skewing the numbers. Those people are real, exist, and will give the cartel, and the local police, and a swat team a run for their money, if invaded. The real average American doesn't have an armory that can protect them from the ca…

Can you point to any actual real-world cases where something like this has happened? It sounds like a movie concept; we're letting real-world policy be determined by a fantasy people have about a lone gun enthusiast killing a bunch of drug cartel members?

Nope! I agree it's something out of a movie, but real world people do actually have such arsenals. I'm not embedded enough in gun culture to have any personal stories/know of any news reports, but not everything makes the news. I'm not making a comment on policy, just that such individuals exist.
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