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Donate to Chelsea Manning's Legal Defense

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Re: Donate to Chelsea Manning's Legal Defense

#51

Post by flexie »

rayiner wrote: post #50
andrelaszlo wrote: post #11

I find it very disturbing that you need tens of thousands of dollars at your disposal to get a "fair" trial. I say "fair", because the output obviously changes with the amount of money you feed the system. Too little money and the outcome will be biased against you, too much money and the outcome will be biased in the other direction. Which amount will give an unbiased output? $50k? $100k? How can this be considered…

Your point is well-taken in the abstract, but I don't think it applies here. This is one of those cases where the defense must make the case complicated, because otherwise they lose. There is no dispute that Manning actually did most of the things she is accused of doing. I don't think she's contending that it was someone else who leaked those classified materials. The defense is in a position of arguing that, despit…

She :-)

Re: Donate to Chelsea Manning's Legal Defense

#52

Post by rayiner »

flexie wrote: post #51
rayiner wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is well-taken in the abstract, but I don't think it applies here. This is one of those cases where the defense must make the case complicated, because otherwise they lose. There is no dispute that Manning actually did most of the things she is accused of doing. I don't think she's contending that it was someone else who leaked those classified materials. The defense is in a position of arguing that, despit…

She :-)

Thank you.

Re: Donate to Chelsea Manning's Legal Defense

#53

Post by anon3_ »

A legal defense? He admitted to breaking the law.

He is a traitor who has endangered lives.

If you want to talk about people's rights - what about the rights of the identities he leaked? Where was there trial? I don't see much sympathy for them.

Re: Donate to Chelsea Manning's Legal Defense

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

sambeau wrote: post #31
humanrebar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can this be considered normal? It's not acceptable, but nobody has any better ideas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_aid A better idea is common throughout the world.

Legal aid (which the US has) does not fix the problem in all cases, though it mitigates it somewhat.

Re: Donate to Chelsea Manning's Legal Defense

#55

Post by dragonwriter »

higherpurpose wrote: post #41
humanrebar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can this be considered normal? It's not acceptable, but nobody has any better ideas.

What's causing the prices to be so high? Is it the complexity of U.S. law? Would it help if you had 5 pages laws instead of 500 pages laws, or would that make things worse? (more room for loopholes) I'm inclined to believe simpler laws would help, though, because a lawyer wouldn't have to know tens of thousands of pages of laws by heart (or close to it), or at least wouldn't have to research tens of thousands of page…

What causes the prices to be high is supply and demand driven by a combination of wealth inequality and frequency of legal action. There are people with enough money, and enough at stake, to offer the best attorneys lots of money, therefore quality legal services are quite expensive.

Re: Donate to Chelsea Manning's Legal Defense

#56

Post by kefka »

bhickey wrote: post #44
JoshTriplett wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, you're already entitled to an attorney for your defense. That doesn't necessarily mean you'll get a good attorney.

Gideon v. Wainwright established that indigent defendants are entitled to free legal representation. There's no such right for non-indigent defendants.

Not even when the price of legal representation is above my means to pay?

Re: Donate to Chelsea Manning's Legal Defense

#57

Post by dragonwriter »

nicboobees wrote: post #27
vdaniuk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person with $200 000 yearly income (a very conservative assumption for top lawyers) is in top %0.04 richest people by income.[0] Yeah, right, they have to "put food" on the table. [0] http://www.globalrichlist.com

Rich people don't just swim in money you know. It's fairly likely they'll have far more expenses than poor people. So they might have a better pension plan, pay a gardener. Might send their kids to private school. etc etc So someone earning $200k could well be less well off after expenses than someone earning $50k.

The freedom to choose to take on greater discretionary expenses like that is the definition of being more well off.

Re: Donate to Chelsea Manning's Legal Defense

#58

Post by bmelton »

ekianjo wrote: post #47
icelancer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend is a criminal defense attorney for those who are usually unable to pay market rates. He's making a lot less than I was as a senior developer and not much more when I was a junior developer. Factor in law school loans and time spent in the books and he's not exactly rolling in cash.

> criminal defense attorney for those who are usually unable to pay market rates So obviously he is not the typical lawyer.

That depends on your definition of typical, I suppose.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/15/pf/jobs/lawyer-salaries/

There's indeed a lot of potential to make third-house money as a lawyer, but it is by no means a given, and it seems a lot less likely than you think.

Re: Donate to Chelsea Manning's Legal Defense

#59

Post by icebraining »

nicboobees wrote: post #16
LGBT_2000 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transgender people are probably more hated than any other minority and hate-speech that would be completely unacceptable made about any other group often goes unchallenged when made about members of the transgender community. So it's not at all surprising a member of this group is having trouble finding her legal defence. And that's a problem.

You don't think you're slightly playing the victim card here at all do you?

How is it "playing the victim card"? Do you think it's untrue?

Re: Donate to Chelsea Manning's Legal Defense

#60

Post by Coding_Cat »

DasIch wrote: post #40
Coding_Cat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialized legal defense? Government funded legal defense, with a private choice of the law firm to reduce pro-government biasses. Similar to how certain socialized healthcare systems work. Of course, there are some glaring issues here, such as the fact that unfortunately there's a strong correlation between socio-economic status and the odds of you needing legal counsel... Something which also occurs in healthcare b…

That's not an issue at all, if the government just acts as a lender to whoever is going to lose. That also has the added bonus of making people think twice about engaging people in civil suits and prevents people and bad prosecutors from using the legal system for blackmail.

Well, if you go with a "loser pays" system you run into the issue of false convictions and economic-disparity again.

If I were to barely break even at the end of each month, and was tried for a crime I didn't commit I might still consider pleading guilty because the actual punishment would be less than the results of the financial penalty incurred by defending yourself and losing. If I were rich enough to easily pay the fees should I lose, I would risk it.

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