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your comment touches on something i often wonder about: the differences between US civil rights and the civil rights in our liberal democratic allies (e.g. Cana

your comment touches on something i often wonder about: the differences between US civil rights and the civil rights in our liberal democratic allies (e.g. Canada, the UK, France, et al). i had no idea that in Canada of all places "cops can use evidence even if seized illegally." i do know, however, that government censorship of the media is permissible in the UK. there's no single definition of "democracy" across the world. it's interesting that some in the US seem to think that, if an individual right is ever modified or restricted in the US, it means we're at "the end of democracy." while, at the same time, these very same rights are routinely restricted in other countries but we still consider those countries to be "democracies."

gruez 8y ago
>i had no idea that in Canada of all places "cops can use evidence even if seized illegally." according to [1], it's not a blanket yes or no. it's a balance of whichever choice would make the justice system look worse. ie. turning someone's home up-side down to find 1g of weed vs a serial murderer getting away with murder because the judge didn't fill out the paperwork properly. [1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canadian_Criminal_Procedure_and_Practice/Search_and_Seizure/Print_version#General_Principles_9 https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canadian_Criminal_Procedure_an...
- rikkus 8y ago
  That's quite a cynical way of explaining this. Is it possible to interpret this as it being allowed to use evidence seized illegally if, on balance, justice would be better served?
sandworm101 8y ago
The rule in Canada is that the evidence is admitted unless its admission will "bring the administration of justice into disrepute". So where the cops act like total jerks and break into someone's house for no good reason, the court can throw out the evidence. But the court isn't going to let a drug dealer go free because the cops didn't get a warrant before searching the trunk of his car. The perception of rights goes both ways. Canadians sometimes laugh at the US legal system. Canadians see crimes like felony-murder or misdemeanor-manslaughter as ridiculous. So too with the American tradition of supernatural punishment (ie "life plus twenty"). And the duel-sovereign thing, the risk of being tried in state and then again federal court, is very strange outside the US. The biggest cultural difference has to be the levels of incarceration. As the US increased punishment in recent years, Canada did the opposite. Have a look at their military prison. It is more often than not empty. https://globalnews.ca/news/4097208/military-prison-edmonton-empty/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4097208/military-prison-edmonton-...
- cgriswald 8y ago
  > So too with the American tradition of supernatural punishment (ie "life plus twenty"). This isn't "supernatural punishment". It's sentencing for more than one crime. Life, probably for murder, plus 20 for (say) armed robbery. It's not meaningless to tack on those 20 years. If the murder conviction is overturned, so is the life sentence, but not those 20 years, unless those convictions are also overturned.
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    Super = above. Natural = life. US criminals are regularly sentenced to things beyond any concept of their natural lives. There is no legitimate purpose behind these. If a charge is later dropped or overturned, in a normal country, the person is re-sentenced accordingly. Stacking life upon life, decade upon decade, is just scoring points. In countries like Canada or the UK these would be deemed indeterminate sentences meant to put people away for life for crimes that would not normally warrant such treatment. Some of these (10,000+ years) read like something from a harry potter novel, not a realworld justice system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_prison_sentences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_prison_sentenc...
    - cgriswald 8y ago
      You're conflating so many things it is difficult to know how to respond. Life + 20 is a completely different class of sentencing than the ones in the Wikipedia list. I don't see a large distinction between re-sentencing or not. The end result should still be 20 years, no? "Life without parole + $X years" is functionally equivalent to a "whole life order" in the UK. The extremes in the list are of two classes: 1. Mass murderers, serial murders, or others who have gone on large crime sprees. These generally carry life sentences without parole. So, they cannot be indeterminate no matter how many years are tacked on, unless they have a successful appeal of all convictions that result in life sentences. 2. The indeterminate sentences you're talking about. Generally speaking, these are pretty egregious, violent crimes with many victims or the same victim over a long period of time. In many cases, the convicted could have received a life sentence, or one would have been mandated depending on the crime and the state. But this isn't common by any stretch, except on TV crime dramas. A problem is the giving of life sentences to nonviolent offenders (e.g. California's three strikes law). Also problematic is the stacking of charges to compel plea bargain, which is exacerbated by cumulative sentencing. But "Life + 20" is just, effectively, a life sentence with a different label.
pjc50 8y ago
The contours of the state's relationship with the citizen vary, not just on which country you're in but who you are. The US takes an extremely textualist approach to rights. Other countries take more outcome-based approaches rooted in a human rights context, which pretty much post-dates WW2 and the need to avert its atrocities. The UK is kind of stuck in the middle; we don't have a foundational text to focus argument on like the US Constitution, but nor have we faced up to the worst incidents of our past. This makes discussions about what freedom means in the UK frequently degenerate into incoherency as people talk past each other. Theoretically the UK is a lot less free in some ways; practically you're a lot less likely to be shot by the police, and the justice system maintains a strong focus on fairness. I'm a big fan of Amartya Sen's calling it "capability": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_approach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_approach - how relevant is a freedom to do something that you're not practically able to achieve in your circumstances?

gruez 8y ago

>i had no idea that in Canada of all places "cops can use evidence even if seized illegally." according to [1], it's not a blanket yes or no. it's a balance of whichever choice would make the justice system look worse. ie. turning someone's home up-side down to find 1g of weed vs a serial murderer getting away with murder because the judge didn't fill out the paperwork properly. [1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canadian_Criminal_Procedure_and_Practice/Search_and_Seizure/Print_version#General_Principles_9 https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canadian_Criminal_Procedure_an...

rikkus 8y ago
That's quite a cynical way of explaining this. Is it possible to interpret this as it being allowed to use evidence seized illegally if, on balance, justice would be better served?

sandworm101 8y ago

The rule in Canada is that the evidence is admitted unless its admission will "bring the administration of justice into disrepute". So where the cops act like total jerks and break into someone's house for no good reason, the court can throw out the evidence. But the court isn't going to let a drug dealer go free because the cops didn't get a warrant before searching the trunk of his car. The perception of rights goes both ways. Canadians sometimes laugh at the US legal system. Canadians see crimes like felony-murder or misdemeanor-manslaughter as ridiculous. So too with the American tradition of supernatural punishment (ie "life plus twenty"). And the duel-sovereign thing, the risk of being tried in state and then again federal court, is very strange outside the US. The biggest cultural difference has to be the levels of incarceration. As the US increased punishment in recent years, Canada did the opposite. Have a look at their military prison. It is more often than not empty. https://globalnews.ca/news/4097208/military-prison-edmonton-empty/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4097208/military-prison-edmonton-...

cgriswald 8y ago
> So too with the American tradition of supernatural punishment (ie "life plus twenty"). This isn't "supernatural punishment". It's sentencing for more than one crime. Life, probably for murder, plus 20 for (say) armed robbery. It's not meaningless to tack on those 20 years. If the murder conviction is overturned, so is the life sentence, but not those 20 years, unless those convictions are also overturned.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  Super = above. Natural = life. US criminals are regularly sentenced to things beyond any concept of their natural lives. There is no legitimate purpose behind these. If a charge is later dropped or overturned, in a normal country, the person is re-sentenced accordingly. Stacking life upon life, decade upon decade, is just scoring points. In countries like Canada or the UK these would be deemed indeterminate sentences meant to put people away for life for crimes that would not normally warrant such treatment. Some of these (10,000+ years) read like something from a harry potter novel, not a realworld justice system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_prison_sentences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_prison_sentenc...
  - cgriswald 8y ago
    You're conflating so many things it is difficult to know how to respond. Life + 20 is a completely different class of sentencing than the ones in the Wikipedia list. I don't see a large distinction between re-sentencing or not. The end result should still be 20 years, no? "Life without parole + $X years" is functionally equivalent to a "whole life order" in the UK. The extremes in the list are of two classes: 1. Mass murderers, serial murders, or others who have gone on large crime sprees. These generally carry life sentences without parole. So, they cannot be indeterminate no matter how many years are tacked on, unless they have a successful appeal of all convictions that result in life sentences. 2. The indeterminate sentences you're talking about. Generally speaking, these are pretty egregious, violent crimes with many victims or the same victim over a long period of time. In many cases, the convicted could have received a life sentence, or one would have been mandated depending on the crime and the state. But this isn't common by any stretch, except on TV crime dramas. A problem is the giving of life sentences to nonviolent offenders (e.g. California's three strikes law). Also problematic is the stacking of charges to compel plea bargain, which is exacerbated by cumulative sentencing. But "Life + 20" is just, effectively, a life sentence with a different label.

pjc50 8y ago

The contours of the state's relationship with the citizen vary, not just on which country you're in but who you are. The US takes an extremely textualist approach to rights. Other countries take more outcome-based approaches rooted in a human rights context, which pretty much post-dates WW2 and the need to avert its atrocities. The UK is kind of stuck in the middle; we don't have a foundational text to focus argument on like the US Constitution, but nor have we faced up to the worst incidents of our past. This makes discussions about what freedom means in the UK frequently degenerate into incoherency as people talk past each other. Theoretically the UK is a lot less free in some ways; practically you're a lot less likely to be shot by the police, and the justice system maintains a strong focus on fairness. I'm a big fan of Amartya Sen's calling it "capability": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_approach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_approach - how relevant is a freedom to do something that you're not practically able to achieve in your circumstances?