13 ms·

A 1950s-Era New York Knife Law Has Landed Thousands in Jail

108 points by bra-ket 8y ago

rmusial 8y ago
Vice News just did a story about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2S_4G103Ik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2S_4G103Ik It's short and worth watching. It shows how the law could definitely be used in an unequal manner, the background, and how Doug Ritter and the Knife Rights group works with groups like The Legal Aid Society.
TillE 8y ago
> She still feels sick about the conviction she was compelled to hand out It occurs to me that the entire jury system is basically the Milgram experiment writ large. It's the only thing that helps explain how people can so consistently be persuaded to abandon their own sense of moral judgement and just follow instructions.
- classicsnoot 8y ago
  This one is so fascinating, given that the Milgram Experiment(s) (it was actually a full battery of tests under many different circumstances with a control group) showed categorically that people do not, in fact, follow through with torture just because they were ordered to. However, in one of the tests, the subjects persisted. This instance, for obvious reasons, gets the lion's share of attention, and the actual data generated from the study is rendered inconsequential. A thousand people can do the right thing with no monetary or status gain, but one person acts in 'disgusting' self interest, and 40 years of exposés will be written about the easy fallibility of the average Joe. All this to say, most people feel guilt in one of two ways: in the commission of an act (or the prior contemplation there of) or upon critical review of the act. Not a profound observation, granted, but which crowd is present during The Review will have a heavy influence on the introspection that occurs. Food for thought.
  - firic 8y ago
    Do you have a source for that? Wikipedia makes it seem like most of the people followed through with the experiment.
    - nyolfen 8y ago
      op may be referring to this: >“The notion that we somehow automatically obey authority, that we are somehow programmed, doesn’t account for the variability [in rates of obedience] across conditions,” he said; in some iterations of Milgram’s study, the rate of compliance was close to 100 percent, while in others it was closer to zero. “We need an account that can explain the variability—when we obey, when we don’t.” https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinkin... the experiment has recently come under more critical attention (along with much of social psychology)
    - classicsnoot 8y ago
      Originally, i heard about it here[1]. You can read about the variability here[2]. But i would recommend searching for the raw data of the experiment, which i personally have not done. I would also recommend you read [3]. It is equally fascinating and horrifying. What is more, it is eerily prescient about where society has developed since Merloo wrote his book. To summarize (criminally), people do bad shit when they are forcefully conditioned to do so, and even then they fight back against this conditioning. You can hear it for yourself in the original recordings of the Milgram experiments; the actors tasked with being the "scientists" had to prod the subjects into doing the dirty. Make no mistake, i am a conservative that is deeply committed to the concept of the "fallen nature of man," rather, people are fundamentally flawed. We need very little assistance in acting selfishly. But history, science, and life is painfully clear: if you want to get people to hurt others without a selfishly motivated decision to do so, you have to work very hard. [1]https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/180092-the-bad-show/ https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/180092-the-bad-show/ (~14:00) [2]https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-look-at-milgrams-shocking-obedience-study https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-loo... [3]https://www.amazon.com/Rape-Mind-Psychology-Menticide-Brainwashing/dp/1614277877 https://www.amazon.com/Rape-Mind-Psychology-Menticide-Brainw...
- twblalock 8y ago
  I was on a jury, and I know several other people who were also on juries, and we didn't really follow the instructions. Everybody approached the case with their own point of view, and we had to argue a bit to get to a unanimous verdict even though it was obvious what the law said about what the defendant was charged with, and the defendant was obviously guilty. Some people considered stuff we were told by the judge to disregard -- it didn't made a difference in the outcome in the case I was on, but I have no doubt it does in other cases. The judge also warned us indirectly about jury nullification, which he said happened most often in marijuana cases. Judges mention it because they know it happens frequently. Juries don't just follow instructions.
  - api_or_ipa 8y ago
    > The judge also warned us indirectly about jury nullification, which he said happened most often in marijuana cases. What did the judge say? I was under the impression that nullification was a legal, if inconvenient, option for a jury to return.
BCM43 8y ago
If it's not obvious to others, this is from 2014. I'm not sure how things have changed since then.
- kxyvr 8y ago
  Looks like Cuomo vetoed it, twice: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/nyregion/gravity-knife-cuomo-veto.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/nyregion/gravity-knife-cu...
bradknowles 8y ago
The article is from 2014, but it’s still a good one.
adventured 8y ago
It's interesting to watch London implementing stop and frisk policies while practically outlawing all carrying of knives. That doesn't seem to have elicitied much of a reponse from the liberal media in the US of course. I thought the inherently wise Western European policies were the ones the US is supposed to be following.
- tialaramex 8y ago
  "Sus" (the practice of searching people purely because a police officer decides they're suspicious, which ends up invariably distorted by racial biases) ended years ago. New laws about untargetted searches are of course controversial. London, like the entire rest of England forbids carrying weapons in public without a lawful purpose. The person from this article had, as I understand it, a lawful purpose. It also isn't generally legal to sell the weapons which the law says have no lawful purpose, such as brass knuckles, and various weapons familiar from martial arts movies. So you can't easily end up owning them and not realising you won't be allowed to carry them anywhere. If you take your big fishing knife to go out drinking and there's a fight so the police are called, then yeah, there's a good chance you'll get done for having the knife without a lawful purpose - ain't no fishing inside the bar, should have left that at home.
  - robk 8y ago
    What about a chef who is of color in a bad neighborhood? Who is the arbiter of "purpose"?
    - tialaramex 8y ago
      At arrest, a police officer. It's their choice whether they think your excuse means they shouldn't arrest you. After that, a CPS prosecutor, whose job is to decide whether they should try to convict you of some crime or not based on the public interest tests. At trial, ultimately this would be a matter for a jury. But "bad neighbourhood" definitely doesn't come into it, "I need it for self defence" doesn't constitute a lawful purpose. The chef's defence gets to introduce any excuse the chef may believe he has, but it's like to be subject to fairly intense cross from the prosecutors. On the other hand sometimes these excuses are ludicrous, and the court is entitled to tell the jury that they don't have to credit such an excuse just because it wasn't explicitly rebutted by the prosecution. The main thrust of this article is that it's wrong to even be _arresting_ these people never mind jailing them. And you can't solve the former in the courts.
Lazare 8y ago
> Carla Glaser, 47, who served as a juror on a gravity-knife case in Manhattan, calls the situation “ludicrous.” She still feels sick about the conviction she was compelled to hand out, to a man who was initially stopped by police for being in a city park after nightfall. Although the law was, in her view, deeply flawed, she felt she had no choice but to vote with the majority. I wonder if she realises that she's actually culpable here? Juries should be a check on unjust laws, not an enabler of them. She had a choice; she just opted not to exercise it.
- dlwdlw 8y ago
  Judges specifically filter out for people who know about jury nullification. I suspect the entire systems subconsciously also filters FOR and AGAINST certain types of people in service of whatever the narrative of the time was. The people who speak out about injustice who have been part of the system are allies. If you expect perfect allies, then you make no change.
  - black_puppydog 8y ago
    > Judges specifically filter out for people who know about jury nullification. I guess you mean subconsciously? Directly asking someone if they know about jury nullification, then rejecting them on whatever grounds would intuitively sound very fishy to me. Rejecting them explicitely for knowledge of jury nullification would sound to me like a direct attack on the jury system itself. And I don't know how to find out if someone knows about it without asking them... Then again, I'm not a lawyer.
    - kasey_junk 8y ago
      There is case law suggesting that jurors can be removed if you suspect they are going to nullify the law. There is also case law supporting jury instructions against nullification and for preventing defense attorneys from using it as a tactic. I'd go so far as to say that there is an explicit bias against jury nullification in the courts system. The wikipedia article is particularly weak on this subject, but the reference list is good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#United_Stat...
JoeAltmaier 8y ago
I didn't find any true measure of 'racial bias' in the article. We learned that fewer white people are arrested. But we didn't learn what fraction of each profile group actually carried knives. I wouldn't be surprised at all if bias exists; I just didn't read it in the article.
pascalxus 8y ago
It makes you wonder how many other ridiculous laws there are out there, that just any innocent person could get arrested for. Considering this, I'd say we owe it to society to at the very least enform everyone what's legal and what's not. Maybe, make basic law part of the high school curriculum or something.

108 points by bra-ket 8y ago

Vice News just did a story about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2S_4G103Ik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2S_4G103Ik It's short and worth watching. It shows how the law could definitely be used in an unequal manner, the background, and how Doug Ritter and the Knife Rights group works with groups like The Legal Aid Society.

TillE 8y ago

> She still feels sick about the conviction she was compelled to hand out It occurs to me that the entire jury system is basically the Milgram experiment writ large. It's the only thing that helps explain how people can so consistently be persuaded to abandon their own sense of moral judgement and just follow instructions.

classicsnoot 8y ago
This one is so fascinating, given that the Milgram Experiment(s) (it was actually a full battery of tests under many different circumstances with a control group) showed categorically that people do not, in fact, follow through with torture just because they were ordered to. However, in one of the tests, the subjects persisted. This instance, for obvious reasons, gets the lion's share of attention, and the actual data generated from the study is rendered inconsequential. A thousand people can do the right thing with no monetary or status gain, but one person acts in 'disgusting' self interest, and 40 years of exposés will be written about the easy fallibility of the average Joe. All this to say, most people feel guilt in one of two ways: in the commission of an act (or the prior contemplation there of) or upon critical review of the act. Not a profound observation, granted, but which crowd is present during The Review will have a heavy influence on the introspection that occurs. Food for thought.
- firic 8y ago
  Do you have a source for that? Wikipedia makes it seem like most of the people followed through with the experiment.
  - nyolfen 8y ago
    op may be referring to this: >“The notion that we somehow automatically obey authority, that we are somehow programmed, doesn’t account for the variability [in rates of obedience] across conditions,” he said; in some iterations of Milgram’s study, the rate of compliance was close to 100 percent, while in others it was closer to zero. “We need an account that can explain the variability—when we obey, when we don’t.” https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinkin... the experiment has recently come under more critical attention (along with much of social psychology)
  - classicsnoot 8y ago
    Originally, i heard about it here[1]. You can read about the variability here[2]. But i would recommend searching for the raw data of the experiment, which i personally have not done. I would also recommend you read [3]. It is equally fascinating and horrifying. What is more, it is eerily prescient about where society has developed since Merloo wrote his book. To summarize (criminally), people do bad shit when they are forcefully conditioned to do so, and even then they fight back against this conditioning. You can hear it for yourself in the original recordings of the Milgram experiments; the actors tasked with being the "scientists" had to prod the subjects into doing the dirty. Make no mistake, i am a conservative that is deeply committed to the concept of the "fallen nature of man," rather, people are fundamentally flawed. We need very little assistance in acting selfishly. But history, science, and life is painfully clear: if you want to get people to hurt others without a selfishly motivated decision to do so, you have to work very hard. [1]https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/180092-the-bad-show/ https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/180092-the-bad-show/ (~14:00) [2]https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-look-at-milgrams-shocking-obedience-study https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-loo... [3]https://www.amazon.com/Rape-Mind-Psychology-Menticide-Brainwashing/dp/1614277877 https://www.amazon.com/Rape-Mind-Psychology-Menticide-Brainw...
twblalock 8y ago
I was on a jury, and I know several other people who were also on juries, and we didn't really follow the instructions. Everybody approached the case with their own point of view, and we had to argue a bit to get to a unanimous verdict even though it was obvious what the law said about what the defendant was charged with, and the defendant was obviously guilty. Some people considered stuff we were told by the judge to disregard -- it didn't made a difference in the outcome in the case I was on, but I have no doubt it does in other cases. The judge also warned us indirectly about jury nullification, which he said happened most often in marijuana cases. Judges mention it because they know it happens frequently. Juries don't just follow instructions.
- api_or_ipa 8y ago
  > The judge also warned us indirectly about jury nullification, which he said happened most often in marijuana cases. What did the judge say? I was under the impression that nullification was a legal, if inconvenient, option for a jury to return.

BCM43 8y ago

If it's not obvious to others, this is from 2014. I'm not sure how things have changed since then.

kxyvr 8y ago
Looks like Cuomo vetoed it, twice: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/nyregion/gravity-knife-cuomo-veto.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/nyregion/gravity-knife-cu...

bradknowles 8y ago

The article is from 2014, but it’s still a good one.

adventured 8y ago

It's interesting to watch London implementing stop and frisk policies while practically outlawing all carrying of knives. That doesn't seem to have elicitied much of a reponse from the liberal media in the US of course. I thought the inherently wise Western European policies were the ones the US is supposed to be following.

tialaramex 8y ago
"Sus" (the practice of searching people purely because a police officer decides they're suspicious, which ends up invariably distorted by racial biases) ended years ago. New laws about untargetted searches are of course controversial. London, like the entire rest of England forbids carrying weapons in public without a lawful purpose. The person from this article had, as I understand it, a lawful purpose. It also isn't generally legal to sell the weapons which the law says have no lawful purpose, such as brass knuckles, and various weapons familiar from martial arts movies. So you can't easily end up owning them and not realising you won't be allowed to carry them anywhere. If you take your big fishing knife to go out drinking and there's a fight so the police are called, then yeah, there's a good chance you'll get done for having the knife without a lawful purpose - ain't no fishing inside the bar, should have left that at home.
- robk 8y ago
  What about a chef who is of color in a bad neighborhood? Who is the arbiter of "purpose"?
  - tialaramex 8y ago
    At arrest, a police officer. It's their choice whether they think your excuse means they shouldn't arrest you. After that, a CPS prosecutor, whose job is to decide whether they should try to convict you of some crime or not based on the public interest tests. At trial, ultimately this would be a matter for a jury. But "bad neighbourhood" definitely doesn't come into it, "I need it for self defence" doesn't constitute a lawful purpose. The chef's defence gets to introduce any excuse the chef may believe he has, but it's like to be subject to fairly intense cross from the prosecutors. On the other hand sometimes these excuses are ludicrous, and the court is entitled to tell the jury that they don't have to credit such an excuse just because it wasn't explicitly rebutted by the prosecution. The main thrust of this article is that it's wrong to even be _arresting_ these people never mind jailing them. And you can't solve the former in the courts.

Lazare 8y ago

> Carla Glaser, 47, who served as a juror on a gravity-knife case in Manhattan, calls the situation “ludicrous.” She still feels sick about the conviction she was compelled to hand out, to a man who was initially stopped by police for being in a city park after nightfall. Although the law was, in her view, deeply flawed, she felt she had no choice but to vote with the majority. I wonder if she realises that she's actually culpable here? Juries should be a check on unjust laws, not an enabler of them. She had a choice; she just opted not to exercise it.

dlwdlw 8y ago
Judges specifically filter out for people who know about jury nullification. I suspect the entire systems subconsciously also filters FOR and AGAINST certain types of people in service of whatever the narrative of the time was. The people who speak out about injustice who have been part of the system are allies. If you expect perfect allies, then you make no change.
- black_puppydog 8y ago
  > Judges specifically filter out for people who know about jury nullification. I guess you mean subconsciously? Directly asking someone if they know about jury nullification, then rejecting them on whatever grounds would intuitively sound very fishy to me. Rejecting them explicitely for knowledge of jury nullification would sound to me like a direct attack on the jury system itself. And I don't know how to find out if someone knows about it without asking them... Then again, I'm not a lawyer.
  - kasey_junk 8y ago
    There is case law suggesting that jurors can be removed if you suspect they are going to nullify the law. There is also case law supporting jury instructions against nullification and for preventing defense attorneys from using it as a tactic. I'd go so far as to say that there is an explicit bias against jury nullification in the courts system. The wikipedia article is particularly weak on this subject, but the reference list is good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#United_Stat...

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

I didn't find any true measure of 'racial bias' in the article. We learned that fewer white people are arrested. But we didn't learn what fraction of each profile group actually carried knives. I wouldn't be surprised at all if bias exists; I just didn't read it in the article.

pascalxus 8y ago

It makes you wonder how many other ridiculous laws there are out there, that just any innocent person could get arrested for. Considering this, I'd say we owe it to society to at the very least enform everyone what's legal and what's not. Maybe, make basic law part of the high school curriculum or something.