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'Justice' implies something other than what the system is. This is a 'win at all cost' punishment system. Justice doesn't come into it. I can tell you from firs

'Justice' implies something other than what the system is. This is a 'win at all cost' punishment system. Justice doesn't come into it. I can tell you from first-hand experience [0] that, if the system has an opportunity to punish you, it will do so to the maximum extent it possibly can, irrespective of the impact on the victim, the accused, society at large or, frankly, sanity. It is not 'corrective', it is not 'restorative', it is not any of the other euphemisms they use. It is purely punitive. [0] https://fundrazr.com/nicoleabele https://fundrazr.com/nicoleabele

k3oni 10y ago
I hear you, had a bit similar situation involving my wife but regarding her work. Sorry to hear about your guys troubles. Were in PA are you guys?
- nateabele 10y ago
  Philadelphia metro area.
  - k3oni 10y ago
    Not to far away from us, i'll leave something on the fund page. Good luck!
    - nateabele 10y ago
      Oh, thanks, you really don't have to though. I suppose in retrospect, posting the link seems self-serving, but that's the only place the story lives.
Spellman 10y ago
That's partly by design, and partly due to skewed incentives. As noted below, the skewed incentives are that prosecutors need to close and get convictions in order to progress. They are graded on how well they can get convictions, not if those were "fair." However, this is also partly be design. The theory of our judicial system is that each side will do everything (legal) in their power to argue opposing sides. And then the judge/jury, after hearing both sides, comes to a logical conclusion. The theory goes that if both sides do their job, each avenue of either guilty or innocent are properly explored and then the decision by the arbiter is the closest to the truth. In reality, though, the prosecutors often have way more leverage and power to argue more persuasively and offer deals than the average defense lawyer. Especially if the defense is from a public defender. And high-end celebrity defense lawyers that cost millions also have a way of overpowering and bringing more resources to bear in the defense. Combined, this means that rarely are both sides actually being argued in a balanced manner, thus skewing which way the arbiter will decide.
- nateabele 10y ago
  That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. In order to even get to that point, you have to: - Come up with the funds to get out of prison in the first place ($10,000 cash in my case, some % of which you typically never see again; 40% in PA) - Find and still have funds to retain a competent attorney - Navigate the interminable legal process, part of which means spending half a day sitting around in a courtroom, over and over and over again, either burning vacation days, or losing your job, or both (not to mention childcare, etc.) - Reject the coercive and unethical plea bargain they try to scare you into - Waste a day in court at least once a month, just so the judge can satisfy himself that things are moving along - Research and retain your own experts, obtain mountains of records, go over what happened and everything leading up to it about a million times with a million different people (it's basically a part-time job) - Try not to worry obsessively about every aspect of what happened and what you might say - Take more time off to actually go to trial (and jury selection, and other misc. trial prep) - Leave your fate in the hands of people who may not be competent, may not be educated, and by-and-large skew toward favoring law enforcement I have about a million things going for me. I own my own (moderately successful) company, and I have a high profile in a relatively affluent community/industry. That buys me an unreasonably high degree of financial and scheduling flexibility that most people don't have. If not for those things, my family and I would be crushed. If this system is designed to do anything, it's designed to crush the people who get caught in it, with no thought to the consequences for society.
  - derefr 10y ago
    Re: navigating the legal process, wasting days in court, researching and retaining experts, obtaining records—these are all things perfectly suited to be done not by you, and not by a full-on attorney, but by a paralegal. But paralegals are not allowed to sell their services directly to the public, so you effectively pay lawyer-rates to acquire a paralegal's services through some lawyer. The everything-other-than-the-defense portion of law could be a lot cheaper if you could hire your own paralegal to do it, and then pass all their work off to a real attorney if-and-when things came to trial.
    - 10y ago
djsumdog 10y ago
Someone told me in a lot of other countries, there aren't dedicated prosecution and defense attorneys; that in places like the UK a pool can be drawn from to represent both. Is this true? I feel like the win/closure rate is a huge part of the problem.
- arethuza 10y ago
  Well, there isn't really a single legal system in the UK. Here in Scotland, which I think is fairly similar to England even though the terminology is completely different, the public prosecutor is the procurator fiscal who directly employs solicitors to prosecute cases in the lower courts (Sheriff Courts). Defendants will typically be defended by solicitors working criminal defence firms - often paid for by the state through Legal Aid. However, for more serious crimes there is a completely separate court - the High Court of the Justiciary before which normal solicitors can't appear - you need to be a specialised advocate and they can't be employed directly by clients but only by solicitors (you do get Solicitor Advocates but apparently they don't appear nearly as often as you might expect). You might be getting the idea of a shared pool from this idea of an advocate (barrister in England) who in theory will take any side of any case. In practice there are advocates working for the public prosecutor for a stint and others who focus on criminal defence. However I suspect most advocates have no desire to do criminal work unless they want to be Sheriffs or Judges.
  - tripzilch 10y ago
    Do you have this "jury of peers" thing as well? Cause that's such a scary notion in the US legal system, I'm happy we do without (in the Netherlands). It's such an obvious part of the problem. Yes it's nice they're peers or something, but they're pretty useless considering how easily they get wooed by any expert speaking with a sound of authority and the fact that they're a 100 times more familiar with the CSI:Fairytales on TV than they are with the actual justice system. The big difference is that a professional working in this system will actually get a notion of how trustworthy tea-leaf readings actually are when determining objective true facts (or something similarly scientific, like polygraphs--they don't seem to get much use outside the US either, weird). Well, unless of course the incentives for the professional are wrong, and again it's this "jury of peers" idea that gets in the way, the incentives become about populism and convincing the jury, about the show. Not what's really real, but who can produce the biggest superstimulus of hyperreality. Thanks a lot, Baudrillard :-(

k3oni 10y ago

I hear you, had a bit similar situation involving my wife but regarding her work. Sorry to hear about your guys troubles. Were in PA are you guys?

nateabele 10y ago
Philadelphia metro area.
- k3oni 10y ago
  Not to far away from us, i'll leave something on the fund page. Good luck!
  - nateabele 10y ago
    Oh, thanks, you really don't have to though. I suppose in retrospect, posting the link seems self-serving, but that's the only place the story lives.

Spellman 10y ago

That's partly by design, and partly due to skewed incentives. As noted below, the skewed incentives are that prosecutors need to close and get convictions in order to progress. They are graded on how well they can get convictions, not if those were "fair." However, this is also partly be design. The theory of our judicial system is that each side will do everything (legal) in their power to argue opposing sides. And then the judge/jury, after hearing both sides, comes to a logical conclusion. The theory goes that if both sides do their job, each avenue of either guilty or innocent are properly explored and then the decision by the arbiter is the closest to the truth. In reality, though, the prosecutors often have way more leverage and power to argue more persuasively and offer deals than the average defense lawyer. Especially if the defense is from a public defender. And high-end celebrity defense lawyers that cost millions also have a way of overpowering and bringing more resources to bear in the defense. Combined, this means that rarely are both sides actually being argued in a balanced manner, thus skewing which way the arbiter will decide.

nateabele 10y ago
That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. In order to even get to that point, you have to: - Come up with the funds to get out of prison in the first place ($10,000 cash in my case, some % of which you typically never see again; 40% in PA) - Find and still have funds to retain a competent attorney - Navigate the interminable legal process, part of which means spending half a day sitting around in a courtroom, over and over and over again, either burning vacation days, or losing your job, or both (not to mention childcare, etc.) - Reject the coercive and unethical plea bargain they try to scare you into - Waste a day in court at least once a month, just so the judge can satisfy himself that things are moving along - Research and retain your own experts, obtain mountains of records, go over what happened and everything leading up to it about a million times with a million different people (it's basically a part-time job) - Try not to worry obsessively about every aspect of what happened and what you might say - Take more time off to actually go to trial (and jury selection, and other misc. trial prep) - Leave your fate in the hands of people who may not be competent, may not be educated, and by-and-large skew toward favoring law enforcement I have about a million things going for me. I own my own (moderately successful) company, and I have a high profile in a relatively affluent community/industry. That buys me an unreasonably high degree of financial and scheduling flexibility that most people don't have. If not for those things, my family and I would be crushed. If this system is designed to do anything, it's designed to crush the people who get caught in it, with no thought to the consequences for society.
- derefr 10y ago
  Re: navigating the legal process, wasting days in court, researching and retaining experts, obtaining records—these are all things perfectly suited to be done not by you, and not by a full-on attorney, but by a paralegal. But paralegals are not allowed to sell their services directly to the public, so you effectively pay lawyer-rates to acquire a paralegal's services through some lawyer. The everything-other-than-the-defense portion of law could be a lot cheaper if you could hire your own paralegal to do it, and then pass all their work off to a real attorney if-and-when things came to trial.
  - 10y ago

djsumdog 10y ago

Someone told me in a lot of other countries, there aren't dedicated prosecution and defense attorneys; that in places like the UK a pool can be drawn from to represent both. Is this true? I feel like the win/closure rate is a huge part of the problem.

arethuza 10y ago
Well, there isn't really a single legal system in the UK. Here in Scotland, which I think is fairly similar to England even though the terminology is completely different, the public prosecutor is the procurator fiscal who directly employs solicitors to prosecute cases in the lower courts (Sheriff Courts). Defendants will typically be defended by solicitors working criminal defence firms - often paid for by the state through Legal Aid. However, for more serious crimes there is a completely separate court - the High Court of the Justiciary before which normal solicitors can't appear - you need to be a specialised advocate and they can't be employed directly by clients but only by solicitors (you do get Solicitor Advocates but apparently they don't appear nearly as often as you might expect). You might be getting the idea of a shared pool from this idea of an advocate (barrister in England) who in theory will take any side of any case. In practice there are advocates working for the public prosecutor for a stint and others who focus on criminal defence. However I suspect most advocates have no desire to do criminal work unless they want to be Sheriffs or Judges.
- tripzilch 10y ago
  Do you have this "jury of peers" thing as well? Cause that's such a scary notion in the US legal system, I'm happy we do without (in the Netherlands). It's such an obvious part of the problem. Yes it's nice they're peers or something, but they're pretty useless considering how easily they get wooed by any expert speaking with a sound of authority and the fact that they're a 100 times more familiar with the CSI:Fairytales on TV than they are with the actual justice system. The big difference is that a professional working in this system will actually get a notion of how trustworthy tea-leaf readings actually are when determining objective true facts (or something similarly scientific, like polygraphs--they don't seem to get much use outside the US either, weird). Well, unless of course the incentives for the professional are wrong, and again it's this "jury of peers" idea that gets in the way, the incentives become about populism and convincing the jury, about the show. Not what's really real, but who can produce the biggest superstimulus of hyperreality. Thanks a lot, Baudrillard :-(