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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

#361

Post by MOARDONGZPLZ »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #328
MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tesla ran into me while I was crossing the crosswalk and then took off. I was able to capture their license plate. We tracked them down and were able to ask them, but they denied that they had done this. I sued them in civil court to cover my medical expenses. I happen to know what Teslas keep a video log of these. The defendant wouldn’t provide it willingly until we went into discovery and they were compelled to…

> I happen to know what Teslas keep a video log of these. You provide the court with that information, and the judge presiding over the case can (and almost surely will, if you're correct,) ask for the logs. If they don't provide them upon request, they're hit with a adverse inference, just as they would be if they withheld documents in discovery. It's plain common sense. Now, it's true that "you don't know what you…

The 95 year old lifetime appointment judge with dementia and cataracts: “Cars have cameras you say? In my day we only had daguerreotypes. We wore an onion on our belts, the style at the time. Request denied.”

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

#362

Post by MSFT_Edging »

chasd00 wrote: post #212
SauciestGNU wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but it explains the disdain for Europe in the current American government. European society proves that Americans could have true freedom and quality of life if it weren't for corporations and oligarchs effectively owning our government. Fascists hate a counterexample.

Man the European/anti-US folks are really triggered this morning. Yeah criminal justice moves slow in the US and isn’t perfect at all. It’s a huge thing from local police and courts to the FBI and… even more courts. As for lawyers there’s a reason for the joke “what do you call a million lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.”

> isn’t perfect at all

Isn't this purposefully minimizing what essentially amounts to a poor-people-torture machine.

The purpose of the system is what the system does.

In the US we have deeply ingrained perverse financial incentives in criminal justice with wildly variable sentencing that depends on the mood of the judge that day.

Stray any amount from the fine line of legal, and if you're unlucky you could be plunged into a system where you'll be put into massive debt, while also losing your job, home, important documents, etc. We claim to want to reform criminals, yet we kick out their feet at every turn and expect them to say "thank you".

And then the people who face the smallest amount of risk to being victimized by this system like to say "Yeah, it's not perfect".

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

#363

Post by thayne »

netcan wrote: post #235
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…

> Just like healthcare, US justice is only for people with money. In most times and places, this is true. Ancient times, recent history, autocracies, democracies... Justice is expensive. Justice, and the legal college as an ideal often specifically negates this. Equality before the law. Blind justice, etc. That said... justice is inevitably ridden with contradiction, hypocrisy and whatnot. That's what justice is. Deg…

> There's no way around this.

I don't think that is necessarily true. But the system favors the rich and powerful, and that has been true of legal systems throughout history, which means that those with the capacity to make the system more fair are incentivized to maintain the status quo, or at least not change it too much.

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

#364

Post by JadeNB »

6stringmerc wrote: post #273
rafram wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you're facing sexual assault charges (and a lifetime on the sex offender registry) for allegedly peeing in a park People repeat this anecdote all the time, but I'd challenge you to find a single person who has ever been put on the sex offender registry for nothing more than public urination. (Let alone being charged with sexual assault, which is nonsensical -- look up how that crime is defined in US law.)

Tarrant County. Mentally ill but competent to stand trial. I’m sure there’s more than one. Source: 1 year in lockup (solitary) with them, often criminal trespass or public urination charges.

> Source: 1 year in lockup (solitary) with them

As someone whose main knowledge of the US prison system is only from TV and not from first person (thankfully), I think I don't understand what "solitary" is. I thought the whole point of it was that the detained person didn't have contact with others?

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

#365

Post by rafram »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #337
rafram wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean. Are you referring to a specific case?

This person's source is someone they spent a year in jail with. Cases this small probably don't get articles written about them often. That's why we have the phrase "falling through the cracks"

I do not think that this person is… all there: https://samhenrycliff.medium.com/when-a-gypsy-woman-loses-he...

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

#366

Post by JadeNB »

potato3732842 wrote: post #327
netcan wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just like healthcare, US justice is only for people with money. In most times and places, this is true. Ancient times, recent history, autocracies, democracies... Justice is expensive. Justice, and the legal college as an ideal often specifically negates this. Equality before the law. Blind justice, etc. That said... justice is inevitably ridden with contradiction, hypocrisy and whatnot. That's what justice is. Deg…

>Justice is expensive. Nitpick: Process is expensive. Process does not yield justice by itself. It (assuming it's crafted right) just makes the outcomes more consistent.

> Nitpick: Process is expensive. Process does not yield justice by itself. It (assuming it's crafted right) just makes the outcomes more consistent.

While I agree, and it's an important distinction, I think it's probably true conversely that the chances of justice for the average person are increased by the imposition of "good" due process.

The weasel word "good" there means that I can disagree with any specific instance, but I mean to say that I don't think process is inherently bad. Bureaucracy is definitely a bane of most of our lives, but the obvious alternative, a greased-wheels process where somebody makes decisions quickly and without significant accountability, is great only if the decision maker is on your side, and terrible otherwise.

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

#367

Post by pests »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #361
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I happen to know what Teslas keep a video log of these. You provide the court with that information, and the judge presiding over the case can (and almost surely will, if you're correct,) ask for the logs. If they don't provide them upon request, they're hit with a adverse inference, just as they would be if they withheld documents in discovery. It's plain common sense. Now, it's true that "you don't know what you…

The 95 year old lifetime appointment judge with dementia and cataracts: “Cars have cameras you say? In my day we only had daguerreotypes. We wore an onion on our belts, the style at the time. Request denied.”

This is an old tired stereotype. Judges are perfectly able to handle complex novel concepts such as technology. The judge before the oracle c. google case learned to program to gain insight, for example.

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

#368

Post by tetromino_ »

anon291 wrote: post #356

There's a major bias by outlets like the NYT to paint red states in a bad light. In reality, the worst state in the country for lacking public defenders is Oregon.

Lack of public defenders is the least of the problems pointed out in the article. The presence of a public defender should not be the only thing keeping the system from losing track of who has been imprisoned, why, and for how long. The presence of a public defender should not be the only thing preventing judges and prosecutors from violating the state's sentencing guidelines. The system described in the article is irredeemably fucked.

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

#369

Post by dionidium »

kubb wrote: post #65
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…

Is this where the whole Europe bashing on social media comes from? US needing to believe that a better society, rule of law, social services isn’t real in Europe and impossible in general?

Speaking only for myself, I think Europeans, in general (and most people in this thread) have no real sense for how violent the US really is, how much more crime we have than Europe, how many of our violent offenders serve no serious time, or how many times the modal US prisoner has been previously arrested or convicted of a crime.

The typical US prisoner 1) did their crime; 2) did many other crimes besides the one they're in prison for; 3) is very likely to commit additional crimes upon their release.

Small, homogenous European countries have absolutely no idea how to solve our crime problem and their criticisms reflect an irritating combination of ignorance and arrogance.

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

#370

Post by simpaticoder »

iwontberude wrote: post #270
tombert wrote: post #268

Something I’ve joked about but also kind of depended on in my life: most, but not all, problems go away if you throw enough money at it. For the last nine years, I’ve aggressively saved money because I don’t ever want to be in a situation where I cannot buy my way out of a problem. Cynical? Absolutely, but I live in the US. I think this is terrible, but just because I don’t like it doesn’t change the fact that this i…

Best part is after amassing all of this wealth I don’t feel any more protected. I don’t trust brokers/banks to allow sufficient withdrawals, FDIC or NCUA to pay out in a timely way, cash to not be inflated, BTC network fees and trouble causing more lost wealth, my physical ability to protect precious metals from government or thieves, etc. The reality is we are naked and pretending otherwise is a prisoners dilemma.

Life is always a prisoner's dilemma. The real societal "choice" is which equilibrium we pick. There are only two, and one of them is significantly better. The problem, of course, is that indicidual defectors gain advantage in the cooperate-cooperate equilibrium. If they aren't dealt with quickly and meaningfully, then society quickly devolves into the other equilibrium. So really the "choice" is distributed across institutional leadership as a combination of rules and enforcement. It can tolerate some unethical choices, but not many, and not over a long period of time. I wish leaders would understand (or care about) the "environmental damage" their unethical decisions do to society at large.

Personally, I blame Citizens United for doing the most damage. Because of that horrendous decision, our information space has been flooded with paid-for advocacy and sophistry of the most pernicious sort. It's like we live in an always-on disgusting court battle between two cynical, unethical lawyers willing to say or do anything to "get" the other side. There isn't sufficient reputational damage attached to this behavior, and the result is an increasingly cynical, unethical public convinced that's the only reality there is. It is utterly tragic what we have lost in so short a time.

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