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I'm sympathetic to the idea that we have structural racism in a lot of places, including the justice system. But trying to combat that by worrying about whethe
by aetherson 9y ago
I'm sympathetic to the idea that we have structural racism in a lot of places, including the justice system. But trying to combat that by worrying about whether later-exonerated convicts get some of their fees back is like worrying about the amount of scarring caused by a decapitation.
And this case was about people who had gone through entire non-trivial justice system processes for non-trivial crimes, were convicted, and later had those convictions overturned. It's not about fines and speeding tickets.
- a3n 9y agoBut it would be about those trivial things as it gets implemented down in the smaller communities. That's the point: if an opinion like Thomas' held in the large, it would make it easier to get away with trivial things in the small. It degrades justice, at the core and at the edges.
- aetherson 9y agoBut it wouldn't. Thomas' opinion is very strictly based on the idea that there was once a legal conviction, that was then overturned. That's not something that happens very much in the legal system, and it particularly doesn't happen very much for the small annoying offenses like traffic violations that you're talking about, because it's just not worth the time and effort to overturn them. He didn't say, "It's cool to fine someone absent a conviction, and then when or if they successfully avoid a conviction, do not give them back their money."