5 ms·

Honest question: does it mean they were really guilty of it, or simply they have been offered a better deal than going through the trial? I guess if somebody ac

Honest question: does it mean they were really guilty of it, or simply they have been offered a better deal than going through the trial? I guess if somebody accuses me of 93 indictments, which potentially leads to a life sentence vs plead guilty and you'll only make 5 years, I'll plead guilty. I'm asking because there is an implication. If I run a website which does not facilitate human trafficking - but I can get accused and risk 25 years - I'll also plead guilty, even if my website is a fantasy football website.

mostlyskeptical 8y ago
There's a non insignificant number of people who plead guilty to murder for that same reason (to avoid death penalty) but are later exonerated via DNA evidence.
- iamaelephant 8y ago
  You can just say "significant".
  - ryan-allen 8y ago
    You can also not not say not insignificant.
  - axaxs 8y ago
    Off topic here. But, I see those phrases as different, as most people probably do. I see non insignificant as...a few. If they'd said 'significant', I'd assume a high percentage.
- danso 8y ago
  How many of those cases involve defendants who can afford the lawyers that Backpage.com's execs can afford?
eof 8y ago
shows an incredible faith in our justice system.
- openmosix 8y ago
  It is not a made up thing, there is plenty of literature on the subject - http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-peop...
  - eof 8y ago
    i didn't mean to imply your faith was unjustified. more that it's indicative of a problem
- ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
  As long as you are judged by a 'jury of your peers,' there will always be people who take plea deals if they feel the evidence against them might be enough to convince a jury. I'm not sure there exists a 'fair' system that can operate without some sort of jury, but as long as there's a human element no trial has a guaranteed outcome.
  - jonathanyc 8y ago
    Plea deals are orthogonal to jury trials, by definition. You could have plea deals in a system without jury trials, and vice versa. In addition, you’re oversimplifying why people agree to plea deals. Lawyers are expensive, and a poor person might prefer to just go to jail for a short time rather than spend thousands of dollars for an uncertain outcome. Even if they are confident they would win in a jury trial, that’s still thousands of dollars in fees to their lawyer.
    - ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
      >poor person might prefer to just go to jail for a short time rather than spend thousands of dollars for an uncertain outcome. This was literally my point, jury trials are uncertain. Except it applies even in cases where people have millions of dollars to burn. A possible 40 years in prison or 5 years under house arrest? Though of course, as I was typing I was reminded of the Android case. And countless other cases where a judge was the unknown factor, so really, it doesn't matter how much lawyers cost. Any trial will always be an unknown until someone can code a deterministic judge bot.
md224 8y ago
Not sure what happened in this case, but I believe what you’re talking about is known as an Alford plea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford_plea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford_plea
azinman2 8y ago
Back page was anything but fantasy football.
tptacek 8y ago
I can't find a NY indictment, but the CA one is easy to find. Backpage principals are charged with: * Systemic _knowing_ commercial promotion of prostitution. * An elaborate internal management process focused on concealing evidence of their knowledge of prostitution, including internal employee training. * _Knowing_ commercial promotion of child sex trafficking, in ads that included photos, in which their policy was to strip out keywords indicative of child sex trafficking while still running the ads. * A long series of money laundering schemes to collect money from sex traffickers without routing those transactions through banks and credit card processing services. * An elaborate series of financial moves designed to conceal their assets from prosecutors. This isn't Craigslist. They ran the site like a criminal conspiracy, which is what it was. I imagine they've plead guilty because they would have lost calamitously at trial, and the sentences they'd have received after a jury conviction would have been horrific. I'd imagine that if you were Carl Ferrer, you'd be thinking, "the prosecutors are going to show the jury a bunch of ads depicting children known to have been trafficked, with evidence that we knowingly massaged the ad to ensure it could be published for our profit".
- scottie_m 8y ago
  Reading the indictment and doing some reading beyond that was tough to get through. Your bullet points lay it all out, and I just keep running through... There must have been quite a few people involved in something that complex. I find it mind-boggling that so many people could live with themselves while profiting from, and enabling child sex trafficking. I accept that they clearly could, but assuming it’s not just staffed by sociopaths, it’s hard to imagine how they could. How did they rationalize it? How did they sleep at night? I try to imagine the answers, but I guess I lack the mental horsepower to pull that off. I keep defaulting to anger or sorrow or confusion, and just hoping that they’re all sick. I don’t really believe that though, so I’m left wondering “how” a lot.
- woah 8y ago
  If you're not of the opinion that prostitution is immoral and must be outlawed, then the only problematic bullet point is the one about child sex trafficking. But looking into it, they were stripping out hundreds of words from ads. This was being done to avoid prosecution for allowing prostitution ads on their platform. However, the senate's report and all the media focus on 5 or 6 words that have underage connotations, in an effort to scandalize you. Read for yourself: https://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2017.01.10%20Backpage%20Report.pdf https://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2017.01.10%20... It sounds like you are morally outraged and quite shocked to imagine that such a thing as prostitution could exist, and that you are clamoring for the government to sweep it under the rug. Banning and hiding prostitution does not make it go away, it just makes it more dangerous for the prostitutes. Your analysis here is based on moral outrage and your credulous reading of a report sensationalized to make some prosecutor's career.

mostlyskeptical 8y ago

There's a non insignificant number of people who plead guilty to murder for that same reason (to avoid death penalty) but are later exonerated via DNA evidence.

iamaelephant 8y ago
You can just say "significant".
- ryan-allen 8y ago
  You can also not not say not insignificant.
- axaxs 8y ago
  Off topic here. But, I see those phrases as different, as most people probably do. I see non insignificant as...a few. If they'd said 'significant', I'd assume a high percentage.
danso 8y ago
How many of those cases involve defendants who can afford the lawyers that Backpage.com's execs can afford?

eof 8y ago

shows an incredible faith in our justice system.

openmosix 8y ago
It is not a made up thing, there is plenty of literature on the subject - http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-peop...
- eof 8y ago
  i didn't mean to imply your faith was unjustified. more that it's indicative of a problem
ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
As long as you are judged by a 'jury of your peers,' there will always be people who take plea deals if they feel the evidence against them might be enough to convince a jury. I'm not sure there exists a 'fair' system that can operate without some sort of jury, but as long as there's a human element no trial has a guaranteed outcome.
- jonathanyc 8y ago
  Plea deals are orthogonal to jury trials, by definition. You could have plea deals in a system without jury trials, and vice versa. In addition, you’re oversimplifying why people agree to plea deals. Lawyers are expensive, and a poor person might prefer to just go to jail for a short time rather than spend thousands of dollars for an uncertain outcome. Even if they are confident they would win in a jury trial, that’s still thousands of dollars in fees to their lawyer.
  - ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
    >poor person might prefer to just go to jail for a short time rather than spend thousands of dollars for an uncertain outcome. This was literally my point, jury trials are uncertain. Except it applies even in cases where people have millions of dollars to burn. A possible 40 years in prison or 5 years under house arrest? Though of course, as I was typing I was reminded of the Android case. And countless other cases where a judge was the unknown factor, so really, it doesn't matter how much lawyers cost. Any trial will always be an unknown until someone can code a deterministic judge bot.

md224 8y ago

Not sure what happened in this case, but I believe what you’re talking about is known as an Alford plea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford_plea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford_plea

azinman2 8y ago

Back page was anything but fantasy football.

tptacek 8y ago

I can't find a NY indictment, but the CA one is easy to find. Backpage principals are charged with: * Systemic _knowing_ commercial promotion of prostitution. * An elaborate internal management process focused on concealing evidence of their knowledge of prostitution, including internal employee training. * _Knowing_ commercial promotion of child sex trafficking, in ads that included photos, in which their policy was to strip out keywords indicative of child sex trafficking while still running the ads. * A long series of money laundering schemes to collect money from sex traffickers without routing those transactions through banks and credit card processing services. * An elaborate series of financial moves designed to conceal their assets from prosecutors. This isn't Craigslist. They ran the site like a criminal conspiracy, which is what it was. I imagine they've plead guilty because they would have lost calamitously at trial, and the sentences they'd have received after a jury conviction would have been horrific. I'd imagine that if you were Carl Ferrer, you'd be thinking, "the prosecutors are going to show the jury a bunch of ads depicting children known to have been trafficked, with evidence that we knowingly massaged the ad to ensure it could be published for our profit".

scottie_m 8y ago
Reading the indictment and doing some reading beyond that was tough to get through. Your bullet points lay it all out, and I just keep running through... There must have been quite a few people involved in something that complex. I find it mind-boggling that so many people could live with themselves while profiting from, and enabling child sex trafficking. I accept that they clearly could, but assuming it’s not just staffed by sociopaths, it’s hard to imagine how they could. How did they rationalize it? How did they sleep at night? I try to imagine the answers, but I guess I lack the mental horsepower to pull that off. I keep defaulting to anger or sorrow or confusion, and just hoping that they’re all sick. I don’t really believe that though, so I’m left wondering “how” a lot.
woah 8y ago
If you're not of the opinion that prostitution is immoral and must be outlawed, then the only problematic bullet point is the one about child sex trafficking. But looking into it, they were stripping out hundreds of words from ads. This was being done to avoid prosecution for allowing prostitution ads on their platform. However, the senate's report and all the media focus on 5 or 6 words that have underage connotations, in an effort to scandalize you. Read for yourself: https://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2017.01.10%20Backpage%20Report.pdf https://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2017.01.10%20... It sounds like you are morally outraged and quite shocked to imagine that such a thing as prostitution could exist, and that you are clamoring for the government to sweep it under the rug. Banning and hiding prostitution does not make it go away, it just makes it more dangerous for the prostitutes. Your analysis here is based on moral outrage and your credulous reading of a report sensationalized to make some prosecutor's career.