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[IANAL]
In the US, courts assess guilt or innocence before a conviction, then after that the appellate courts focus solely on fairness. The Atlantic has an exposé on some people who are wrongly convicted are pressured to accept Alford Plea Deals in lieu of exonerations — that more or less means to plead guilty for a verbal guarantee from the courts to both speed things up and give a much lighter or minimal sentence. But how many do this is not known: this situation is not tracked there are no formal statistics. However, in Baltimore City and County alone, there were at least 10 cases in the last 19 years in which defendants with viable innocence claims ended up signing Alford pleas. These can translate to the occasional innocent person being stigmatized, unable to sue the state, and that no one re-investigates the crime meaning that the real perpetrator is never brought to justice.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday September 11 2017, @01:02PM (11 children)
The whole concept of plea bargains is screwed up. Prosecutors and judges want to avoid trials, because they involve effort. So people are pressured into pleading guilty in a variety of ways. Because it's faster, because the cost of defending yourself can bankrupt you, because otherwise the prosecutor will pile on all sorts of charges, etc, etc.. Add to that all the "crimes that are not crimes", like "lying to federal agents" (think: Martha Stewart).
If the court system cannot properly handle all of the criminal cases, then maybe their are too many laws on the books. Just for a start, all victimless crimes (drug possession, prostitution, etc.) should go. "Three felonies a day" and all that.
In most cases, the government should have to pick a single crime to prosecute. One action does not represent 20 different crimes - that's just abusive.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday September 11 2017, @02:53PM (4 children)
I agree with most of what you said, except this:
In most cases, the government should have to pick a single crime to prosecute. One action does not represent 20 different crimes - that's just abusive.
There should be some mechanism to prevent prosecutors from piling on charges, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Many criminal actions involve multiple crimes. If someone takes a gun and shoots up a place, killing three people, you can't just limit the court to prosecuting only a single instance of murder; that's ridiculous.
What we really need is a way to get evil people out of the system. Prosecutors who happily prosecute people for BS "crimes", for instance, should not be reined in by some law; they should be fired and replaced with someone who isn't a sociopath. Police who abuse their positions shouldn't be reined in, they should be fired and prosecuted. Why is this so hard to do?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @03:16PM
Ehh, you can never 100% determine if someone is evil, much of the evil is done "legally" and the rest is done off the books.
You have to design the legal system to account for human greed and abuse of power. Massive penalties for officers who put a single toe out of line, removal of bad laws, MASSIVE punishment for anyone who sets up a corrupt system. Anyone involved in the legal system should be held to a higher standard.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday September 11 2017, @03:21PM (2 children)
Define "abuse" in a way that a judge can apply consistently without abusing her power, and I'll answer your question.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @10:22PM
Why does that only apply to police? Ordinary people have to deal with our abusive legal system all the time. I don't see why it would be so bad to prosecute cops for violating people's constitutional rights, killing people unjustly, or just assaulting people for no justifiable reason; it's the same system that everyone else has to deal with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @06:31PM
Shooting people when they clearly shouldn't?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/21/florida-police-shoot-black-man-lying-down-with-arms-in-air [theguardian.com]
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/09/20/video-shows-tulsa-man-had-hands-up-before-police-shooting.html [foxnews.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfRhxezUW0k#t=7m00s [youtube.com]
If judges abuse their power by punishing cops who shoot people in somewhat justified cases, that's not really a big deal in the big picture since it means cops are encouraged to shoot fewer people.
Cops should be held to a higher standard and be less trigger happy than the ordinary criminal.
The USA is definitely doing things wrong when the average US cop is more trigger happy than a US veteran: http://www.npr.org/2016/12/08/504718239/military-trained-police-may-be-slower-to-shoot-but-that-got-this-vet-fired [npr.org]
It's not like US soldiers have a reputation for being reluctant to shoot people:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/jun/05/broadcasting.Iraqandthemedia [theguardian.com]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-474320/British-commander-wants-trigger-happy-US-troops-Helmand.html [dailymail.co.uk]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday September 11 2017, @02:55PM (5 children)
Often, it's a series of events that constitute different but related crimes. For example, I sat on a jury in a case where a guy was doing drugs with a woman, attacked her with a knife and cut up her face, jumped in her car and drove off, then tried to evade police when they saw the car. Now, that's 1 set of events, but it's several different crimes (possessing the drugs, the assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft auto, fleeing an officer). So that can be legitimate.
I should also mention that if you wanted to change public opinion about the (in)justice system really quickly, just have the police, prosecutors, and judges treat relatively well off white people the same way they treat poor non-white people. Do that, and there would be widespread demands for both repealing pointless criminal laws and reforming the treatment of criminal defendants within a month. The only reason anybody tolerates the status quo because they believe that the same treatment won't happen to them.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @03:09PM (4 children)
Please drop the false dichotomy white=well off v. non-white=poor.
There are plenty of poor white folks who get the judicial shaft too.
Yes, money buys justice. No, injustice is not limited to people of color. cf. OJ Simpson.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday September 11 2017, @03:29PM (3 children)
That's not what I said, though. I specifically stated that we needed to treat rich white people the same way we treated poor non-white people. Complete with planting drugs and guns to justify false arrests, roughing them up during the arrest, denying them medical care while in police custody, bullying them into pleading to crimes they never committed, and so forth. Oh, and occasionally shooting a suburbanite for no reason, and destroying any camera footage that contradicts the police version of events.
As for poor white people getting the judicial shaft, yes, the absolutely do. But it's a whole different level if you're not white: For instance, my poor white friends have never been arrested for being the victim of a knife attack (while the person holding the knife was never arrested nor charged). Poor white people don't get shot and killed for holding a BB gun while shopping at a Toys R Us. Or, in a pair of recent Supreme Court cases where the cops raided the wrong address and the homeowner shot at the cops thinking it was an armed robbery, the poor white guy's case was dismissed while the poor Latino guy's conviction was upheld.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Scrutinizer on Tuesday September 12 2017, @01:11AM (2 children)
You provided no references for your anecdotes.
I'll give you references with my counter-anecdotes: Matthew Stewart [fox13now.com], imprisoned for "drug crime", accused "cop killer", murdered while locked in a jail cell and thus naturally officially deemed a suicide. John Geer [policestateusa.com] murdered by cops who shot him inside his own house after his girlfriend broke up with him and called the cops when her stuff was thrown out of his house. Kelly Thomas [wikipedia.org] was flat-out beaten to death by murderous cops. James Boyd [wikipedia.org], murdered by cops too tired to bother climbing a hill to harass a homeless man.
Criminal government agents murder innocent people regardless of skin color. Injustice and criminality in government is the problem - NOT that some victims of criminal government have this-or-that skin color. If you don't have the authority to do something on your own, you can't delegate that task to the Constitution, the cops, nor anyone else. (I have no authority to forcibly forbid or take a percentage of Eric Garner [wikipedia.org]'s cigarette sales, and therefore neither did the cops who murdered him.) If that task is done regardless, it is literally a criminal act.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @10:29PM (1 child)
Of debian fame. I am not sure how rich he was, but I think he fell under privileged white person territory and look how the cops treated him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:34AM
I hadn't heard. I'm still not sure what to make of Ian's death, but the reports [truthvoice.com] I've looked at today seem consistent with someone who found out about government criminality suddenly and first-hand.