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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

#371

Post by [deleted] »

ty6853 wrote: post #280
marcus_holmes wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree, there's definitely that. I know I would not be alive now if I had easy access to a gun. But the parent is talking about the USA having more self-defence freedoms, and gun ownership is definitely part of that. It's not about suicide, it's that weird "you gotta protect your family" that non-Americans find a bit worrying - what are you so scared of? I've lived in a few countries and nowhere I've lived has…

I live next to the us-mexico border, in a place with basically no police services. There are (true) signs everywhere warning of cartels roaming, often with automatic weapons diverted from the Mexican military. Maybe they won't ever bother me, but better to have and not need, than the other way around.

[deleted]

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

#372

Post by throwaway17_17 »

rafram wrote: post #357
throwaway17_17 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My response was to the question about defendants pleading out to a lesser charges to avoid felonies. But, I have pled several defendants to charges based on public urination, both guilty as charged (typically to avoid a Habitual Offender enhancement) and to misdemeanor charges. In my state, Obscenity (which public urination is considered) is not a registration requiring offense, but it is in several other states, like Texas for example.

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

#373

Post by ty6853 »

totalkikedeath wrote: post #336
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…

[flagged]

Half of ar15.com membership would be dead by now, were that the case. Although I imagine a great deal of the 'retards' are feds fishing for conspiracy charges.

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

#374

Post by ty6853 »

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?

Warsaw ghetto uprising bought some people a few extra days (and a couple women their lives spared), which is better than nothing.

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

#376

Post by totalkikedeath »

ty6853 wrote: post #373
totalkikedeath wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Half of ar15.com membership would be dead by now, were that the case. Although I imagine a great deal of the 'retards' are feds fishing for conspiracy charges.

[dead]

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

#377

Post by _DeadFred_ »

dguest wrote: post #126
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…

You forgot that the prosecution will go over the top on charges, as bargaining chips for a plea deal. None of these would ever stick in a real court, but if you're facing sexual assault charges (and a lifetime on the sex offender registry) for allegedly peeing in a park, pleading guilty to a lesser crime sounds pretty good. Everyone has a right to a trial by jury in theory, but if you waste the prosecutor's time by e…

It is called the trial tax. If you dare exercise your rights in American you will pay a price for being obstinate. The justification? It costs the Court too much for people to exercise their rights.

https://www.nacdl.org/Media/TrialPenaltyScourgeofAmericanCri...

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

#378

Post by qingcharles »

rafram wrote: post #264
dguest wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot that the prosecution will go over the top on charges, as bargaining chips for a plea deal. None of these would ever stick in a real court, but if you're facing sexual assault charges (and a lifetime on the sex offender registry) for allegedly peeing in a park, pleading guilty to a lesser crime sounds pretty good. Everyone has a right to a trial by jury in theory, but if you waste the prosecutor's time by e…

> 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.)

I'll bite. It's a little bit more, but I knew a 19yo guy who flashed his girlfriend at a public swimming pool and is on the registry for life. Like most people on the registry he'll spend a significant portion of the rest of his life in and out of prison for minor violations of the registry[].

[] e.g., he was driving across country and stopped for a couple of days at a friend's house in Illinois. He was in a traffic stop and while talking to the cop, the cop realized he'd been in Illinois for over 72 hours and was given another prison sentence for failing to register.

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

#379

Post by [deleted] »

FilosofumRex wrote: post #124
selimthegrim wrote: post #11

It is not uncommon in certain rural Louisiana towns to have the local sheriffs/police make up some traffic offense and have you sit in the local jail for a weekend because the judge isn't going to show up until Monday if they don't like you being around there as an outsider/activist.

It's not uncommon in certain urban Massachusetts metropolitan to have the state police make up some phantom hacking & trespassing offenses and lock you up until you post $100K bail. Then have you face 35 years in prison and over a million dollars fine, if they don't like you being around there as insider-activist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz

[deleted]

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

#380

Post by qingcharles »

dguest wrote: post #128
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…

Some defense lawyers have a flat rate (a few thousand USD) for drunk driving cases. They call up a few "experts" who can brandish a threat of paperwork at the prosecution and reliably get charges dropped to negligent operations or similar. So if you are in the know a bit of drunk driving is a 2k fine. If not, you loose your drivers license and likely your livelihood.

I almost never see any experts being called by the defense. It's practically unheard of except for the luckiest defendants or the ones with deep pockets.

source: thousands of hours observing criminal courts

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