7 ms·

How does such an attorney and judge feel after such a trial? Do they feel satisfied, fulfilled? Taking away 5 years of someone's life over a little mistake that

How does such an attorney and judge feel after such a trial? Do they feel satisfied, fulfilled? Taking away 5 years of someone's life over a little mistake that didn't hurt anyone? I don't get it: why does a free people like the Americans allow for that kind of sinister figures to be their prosecutors and judges?

sexoffender 9y ago
You're thinking under the assumption that there's no corruption in the judicial system, and also that every judge and jury and attorney intend to act for the good of every individual person, rather than for some other agenda. That's the kind of naivety I had too. That's not how the world works. The world is a horrifyingly evil place.
chasing 9y ago
Do you notice the color of the woman's skin? There you go.
- trhway 9y ago
  voting while black. Or poor. Rephrasing that old saying - steal a vote and you get 5 years in prison, steal an election and you get to be the President.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- notafxn 9y ago
  I'm not racist, so no, I don't notice it. :-)
  - tarboreus 9y ago
    Seriously? It's 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/color-blindness-is-counterproductive/405037/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/color-b...
    - pentagonpapers 9y ago
      give it two more years and the script will have been flipped again by white professors who don't actually know black people
  - root_axis 9y ago
    I would argue that it is not racist to notice someone's skin color.
  - s2g 9y ago
    In this case steadfastly ignoring patterns is part of the problem.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
chubasco 9y ago
It may also be worth noting that judges in Texas are elected, not appointed, the same way as any other politician.
- s2g 9y ago
  Elected judges are one of the most absurd ideas the US has ever used. Just shockingly bad. this guy will probably run on his tough on crime crackdown on voter fraud.
pixl97 9y ago
>How does such an attorney and judge feel after such a trial? They feel ecstatic. They won. The good guys won again, yay! You have a 10oz pot brownie (with a very small amount of mj in it), that's distribution amounts, 30 years in jail for you. Yay! The good guys won again. * I see I have downvoters... Maybe you don't believe me? I've been working around both the prosecution and defense for around 20 years now, have many family members that work for law enforcement and judges. This is exactly how many of them think.
- dwc 9y ago
  Even from the outside this is obviously true. They consider themselves the good guys by definition, because they see themselves as representing justice, as defined by the criminal code. A noble calling. Once you accept that, pure job performance (convictions) becomes an easy metric. The thought of ruining some individual's (or family's) life over recreational amounts of pot is either justified or compartmented away. Or like aaronsw...once the prosecutors are on it, there's no more question of proportion or actual justice, it's a matter of looking for the conviction. Edit: I want to amend this a bit. It is something of a noble calling. In a better world, the executive legal function could depend a lot more on legislative and judicial functions to produce a criminal code that served justice better, and just worry about prosecuting what they can according to the law. But in so many cases now, the law is an ass.
- s2g 9y ago
  There was a story a month or 2 back about some guy who pissed off a local sheriff. They raided his house and found that he made pot butter. They tried to charge him based on the weight of the butter. So his small amount of weed suddenly became a pound and he was facing ridiculous jail time. But yeah, this judge is probably quite happy to be guarding the integrity of the voting system by tossing a woman who did nothing wrong into jail for 5 fucking years. What a piece of shit.
- gnulinux 9y ago
  I think you have downvoters not because people don't believe you, but because there still are people who believe people you sarcastically ridiculed as "good guys" are actually good guys.
megous 9y ago
Not only that, her children would lose a mother for a few more years.
maxlybbert 9y ago
I would assume that if they had doubts about the job they would change careers. So I would guess that either they feel like she’s an unfortunate victim of an imperfect system that works correctly in other cases, or that she must be guilty of something else but that something else was never discovered. Currently there is a lawsuit to overturn life sentences for juvenile offenders. One of the leaders in that movement is a judge who gave a teenage murderer a life sentence with the comment “I feel the same thing you felt for your victims: nothing.” She doesn’t admit to having changed her mind on harsh punishment in general, but based her change of heart on new scientific beliefs about how morally developed teenagers are.
hnal943 9y ago
Vote fraud is an extremely serious crime in a democracy.
- macintux 9y ago
  This is probably the least serious vote fraud imaginable. It's not at all obvious that depriving any citizen the right to vote is ethical or constitutional.
stevenwoo 9y ago
Prosecutors are zealously committed to convict, Texas has some pretty infamous wrongful convictions. https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/the-innocent-man-part-one/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/the-innocent-man-part-... Rick Perry had a death sentence carried out in spite of exonerating evidence - it turned out most of Texas arson investigators were trained incorrectly. https://www.innocenceproject.org/cameron-todd-willingham-wrongfully-convicted-and-executed-in-texas/ https://www.innocenceproject.org/cameron-todd-willingham-wro...
SilasX 9y ago
I agree that the exact level of punishment may be disproportionate, but where do you get "hurt no one"? An invalid vote cancels a valid one. Is disenfranchisement not a big deal anymore?
- stctgion 9y ago
  Why should criminals be denied representation? Does committing a crime suddenly make you no longer human?
  - SilasX 9y ago
    Right, I can understand arguments for "you shouldn't lose the vote in that case", but that's a separate issue from "given that her vote wasn't valid, she was disenfranchising someone". And "no franchise" does not imply "not human", unless you're saying that every country should allow foreigners to vote in their election or else they're deeming them non-human.
    - abiox 9y ago
      this seems to be devolving to word games. your use of the word "hurt" appears to be quite distinct from how "hurt" seemed to be used by the op.
      - SilasX 9y ago
        It's not a word game; it's progressed into forcing the OP into clarifying why disenfranchisement can be such an atrocity but not "hurting" in any relevant sense, or (if I understand you) why all non-physical crimes should have some really low cap on punishment. Seems like progress to me, and unlike a word game.
- scarecrowbob 9y ago
  Her vote was provisional and removed on review: "Ultimately, her vote didn’t even count. Provisional ballots are subject to review, which ultimately led to an investigation of Mason."
s73v3r_ 9y ago
Easy. This woman was black. And I'm only half joking here. There's a similar case where a white woman purposely tried to impersonate her mother so that she could vote for Trump twice, and she was not charged.

sexoffender 9y ago

You're thinking under the assumption that there's no corruption in the judicial system, and also that every judge and jury and attorney intend to act for the good of every individual person, rather than for some other agenda. That's the kind of naivety I had too. That's not how the world works. The world is a horrifyingly evil place.

chasing 9y ago

Do you notice the color of the woman's skin? There you go.

trhway 9y ago
voting while black. Or poor. Rephrasing that old saying - steal a vote and you get 5 years in prison, steal an election and you get to be the President.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
notafxn 9y ago
I'm not racist, so no, I don't notice it. :-)
- tarboreus 9y ago
  Seriously? It's 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/color-blindness-is-counterproductive/405037/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/color-b...
  - pentagonpapers 9y ago
    give it two more years and the script will have been flipped again by white professors who don't actually know black people
- root_axis 9y ago
  I would argue that it is not racist to notice someone's skin color.
- s2g 9y ago
  In this case steadfastly ignoring patterns is part of the problem.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

chubasco 9y ago

It may also be worth noting that judges in Texas are elected, not appointed, the same way as any other politician.

s2g 9y ago
Elected judges are one of the most absurd ideas the US has ever used. Just shockingly bad. this guy will probably run on his tough on crime crackdown on voter fraud.

pixl97 9y ago

>How does such an attorney and judge feel after such a trial? They feel ecstatic. They won. The good guys won again, yay! You have a 10oz pot brownie (with a very small amount of mj in it), that's distribution amounts, 30 years in jail for you. Yay! The good guys won again. * I see I have downvoters... Maybe you don't believe me? I've been working around both the prosecution and defense for around 20 years now, have many family members that work for law enforcement and judges. This is exactly how many of them think.

dwc 9y ago
Even from the outside this is obviously true. They consider themselves the good guys by definition, because they see themselves as representing justice, as defined by the criminal code. A noble calling. Once you accept that, pure job performance (convictions) becomes an easy metric. The thought of ruining some individual's (or family's) life over recreational amounts of pot is either justified or compartmented away. Or like aaronsw...once the prosecutors are on it, there's no more question of proportion or actual justice, it's a matter of looking for the conviction. Edit: I want to amend this a bit. It is something of a noble calling. In a better world, the executive legal function could depend a lot more on legislative and judicial functions to produce a criminal code that served justice better, and just worry about prosecuting what they can according to the law. But in so many cases now, the law is an ass.
s2g 9y ago
There was a story a month or 2 back about some guy who pissed off a local sheriff. They raided his house and found that he made pot butter. They tried to charge him based on the weight of the butter. So his small amount of weed suddenly became a pound and he was facing ridiculous jail time. But yeah, this judge is probably quite happy to be guarding the integrity of the voting system by tossing a woman who did nothing wrong into jail for 5 fucking years. What a piece of shit.
gnulinux 9y ago
I think you have downvoters not because people don't believe you, but because there still are people who believe people you sarcastically ridiculed as "good guys" are actually good guys.

megous 9y ago

Not only that, her children would lose a mother for a few more years.

maxlybbert 9y ago

I would assume that if they had doubts about the job they would change careers. So I would guess that either they feel like she’s an unfortunate victim of an imperfect system that works correctly in other cases, or that she must be guilty of something else but that something else was never discovered. Currently there is a lawsuit to overturn life sentences for juvenile offenders. One of the leaders in that movement is a judge who gave a teenage murderer a life sentence with the comment “I feel the same thing you felt for your victims: nothing.” She doesn’t admit to having changed her mind on harsh punishment in general, but based her change of heart on new scientific beliefs about how morally developed teenagers are.

hnal943 9y ago

Vote fraud is an extremely serious crime in a democracy.

macintux 9y ago
This is probably the least serious vote fraud imaginable. It's not at all obvious that depriving any citizen the right to vote is ethical or constitutional.

stevenwoo 9y ago

Prosecutors are zealously committed to convict, Texas has some pretty infamous wrongful convictions. https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/the-innocent-man-part-one/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/the-innocent-man-part-... Rick Perry had a death sentence carried out in spite of exonerating evidence - it turned out most of Texas arson investigators were trained incorrectly. https://www.innocenceproject.org/cameron-todd-willingham-wrongfully-convicted-and-executed-in-texas/ https://www.innocenceproject.org/cameron-todd-willingham-wro...

SilasX 9y ago

I agree that the exact level of punishment may be disproportionate, but where do you get "hurt no one"? An invalid vote cancels a valid one. Is disenfranchisement not a big deal anymore?

stctgion 9y ago
Why should criminals be denied representation? Does committing a crime suddenly make you no longer human?
- SilasX 9y ago
  Right, I can understand arguments for "you shouldn't lose the vote in that case", but that's a separate issue from "given that her vote wasn't valid, she was disenfranchising someone". And "no franchise" does not imply "not human", unless you're saying that every country should allow foreigners to vote in their election or else they're deeming them non-human.
  - abiox 9y ago
    this seems to be devolving to word games. your use of the word "hurt" appears to be quite distinct from how "hurt" seemed to be used by the op.
    - SilasX 9y ago
      It's not a word game; it's progressed into forcing the OP into clarifying why disenfranchisement can be such an atrocity but not "hurting" in any relevant sense, or (if I understand you) why all non-physical crimes should have some really low cap on punishment. Seems like progress to me, and unlike a word game.
scarecrowbob 9y ago
Her vote was provisional and removed on review: "Ultimately, her vote didn’t even count. Provisional ballots are subject to review, which ultimately led to an investigation of Mason."

s73v3r_ 9y ago

Easy. This woman was black. And I'm only half joking here. There's a similar case where a white woman purposely tried to impersonate her mother so that she could vote for Trump twice, and she was not charged.