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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

#381

Post by qingcharles »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #309
sixothree wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most repulsive and eye-opening experiences I have had is sitting in my local traffic court for 4 hours. It became clear to me that court was filled with people trying to go to work or live their lives but end up being saddled with thousands of dollars in fines. The worst part of the experience for me was agreeing to pay my $150 fine. This was the amount stated by the judge. But of course when you actually…

Back when I was too broke to afford a lawyer, my favorite part of traffic court the couple times I went was all the people video calling in from the local jail who are in jail because they didn't pay tickets they couldn't afford and then inform the court that no they still can't pay them because they are in jail.

The bail payments are awful too.

For a few years before Illinois did away with cash bail they had a rule you could pay your bail off $5/day by... sitting in jail. So if you sat in jail for a year you might actually save up enough credit to be able to bail out.

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

#382

Post by autoexec »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #227
lurk2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Europeans have far more restrictions on their rights of speech, self-defence, and freedom of conscience than the Americans. They are also substantially poorer than Americans, and those numbers get worse when you account for America’s average being skewed…

The self-defence thing absolutely fascinates me. What are you guys so scared of? It's a literal fact that a gun is much more likely to be used to kill its owner (or a member of the owner's own family) than any intruder or external threat [0] Why is this such a thing in the USA? Why do you guys hold gun ownership up as this amazing freedom when owing a gun is literally, provably, way more of a threat to you and your f…

> What are you guys so scared of?

All the other terrified people with guns.

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

#383

Post by qingcharles »

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?

IIRC, you can't get free legal representation for habeas actions?

So, firstly the prisoner needs to be very legally savvy and have access to things like pencils, paper, law library etc, which is no given, especially if they are in a county jail which is usually far more restrictive than prison.

Then I believe you would have to exhaust your state habeas first before you can file federal habeas. State county courts have judges who rarely know the law and will never have seen a habeas action. So when you file it, they'll probably spend a year pushing it down the docket (especially because you're in jail) before finding some random reason to dismiss it.

You'll get more educated responses from federal court, but filing there is a little bit harder and the cases take just as long.

Habeas could easily be a multi-year, perhaps up to a decade to litigate through to disposition, especially for someone acting without a lawyer.

source: lots of experience

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

#384

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

potato3732842 wrote: post #323
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.…

I was sued in the US once. Between all the stuff it took about 3mo. You can't just spew blanket judgements when the actual course of events depends so heavily on the specific facts. I question the intelligence of anyone who managed to have a lawsuit going on for 2yr and not come away with an understanding that specific facts matter greatly.

3 months? Small claims?

Federal civil court averages 33.7 months from filing to trial. Needless to say, it can be a lot busier than that in slower districts. (~43 months in the 2nd District!) And then there are appeals, etc...

Best case, we were looking at 40 months from filing to trial in the 9th District, which is statistically nominal, but the whole process would probably have taken far longer.

Current statistical table: https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/data-tables/2024/12/31/st...

I've never heard of a single 21st century US (Federal) civil case that went to trial in less than a year, to say nothing of three months. I can point to a mountain of cases that have been dragging for many years.

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

#386

Post by nukem222 »

netcan wrote: post #276
nukem222 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In most times and places, this is true. Thankfully most of the instances of it not being true exist right now. Let's stay grounded in current reality or just agree not to discuss the topic. Saying "welp what do you expect" is downright worse than ignoring it entirely.

Where is this untrue currently?

Wherever people think their justice system hasn't failed them so completely. So, this includes many people in the developed world. Approximation of justice was always a matter of degree, not a boolean.

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

#387

Post by pnutjam »

wtcactus wrote: post #130
jMyles wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colonization has only ended in express terms. In many parts of the world, including essentially all of the developing nations where slavery has expanded in the past half-century, the dominant economic activity are forms of extraction at the behest either multinationals, OPEC, China, or USA.

The worst offender in the present is India with 8 million slaves. Who do you argue is colonizing India at the moment?

Sure Jan, they can just shrug off close to a 100 years of colonization like it never happened. It's not even been 100 years since it officially ended.

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

#388

Post by yieldcrv »

Vilian wrote: post #145
yieldcrv wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We already started across most Europe, to the tune of half a trillion of additional spending just now. I’m aware, this is the best inception I’ve ever seen because Europeans are acting like its their own idea because they're scared of the US / Russia now and not that the people in the current US administration have been demanding Europe to do this for 8 years straight. less talking, and just scare people into actio…

Of course they would be demanding that, they wanted Europe to buy Usa guns

European defense stocks are what’s moving, hope you’ve been trading them

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

#389

Post by cycomanic »

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.

> > . 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.

This statement is false, both the German and French legal systems do not have something like discovery. To confirm for yourself just Google "is there something like discovery in the German/French legal system". Considering that many legal systems are based on these two (one could argue the German one is based on the French as well) I think we can conclude that not having discovery is in fact common.

> 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.

Here is a link how the German system works without it. It also explains why for German legal practitioners it is a concept that violates some of the core principles of fair justice. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/german-way-discovery-just-don...

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

#390

Post by netcan »

thayne wrote: post #363
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…

> 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.

> those with the capacity to make the system more fair are incentivized to maintain the status quo

Often true... but networks of incentives are subtle in how they build up. It's rarely just macro, societal-level incentives.

Anyway... one major aspect is that lawyers do law for a living. It's an industry. An industry that thrives, and has thrived since at least antiquity, by representing the interests of well paying clients.

Besides that... formal truth is expensive. It's expensive to have a procedurally validated scientific truth (eg drug testing). It's expensive to create a judicial truth via trial. Very expensive. That's why we do so little of it, even though judicial (and scientific) ideals demand quite a lot of it.

Most legal matters are settled by lawyers negotiating. Courts are a rubber stamp, and (usually) theoretical last resort. Most (vast majority) criminal convictions involve a confession. In Medieval Europe they would publicly torture convicts, obtain a confession and then hang them. These days, you can confess and serve 2 years in prison... or contest and serve 12.

Otherwise, courts could not handle the volume.

The problem here is high standards. People know about the ideals of justice. Expect justice to live up to these standards. IRL it never has. Not close. Justice is an institution of society that exists to solve problems. Often sticky, ugly problems. The ideals play a role, in keeping that institution balanced... but the ideals are not the balance.

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