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Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison
- chapel 16y agoThis is a great story of someone fighting against oppressive forces to gain his freedom. I really hope he wins his lawsuit against them, this being one of those cases where he really deserves something for the time lost. As an aside, I can see this being made into a movie already.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- rms 16y agoWarms my cold leftist heart.
- Locke1689 16y agoThis really highlights the unreliability of eyewitness testimony (well, and corruption in the DA's office and police department, but that's another story). Perhaps one upside to the coming ubiquity of cameras is an increased availability in actual evidence for crimes.
- joe_the_user 16y agoWell, While unbiased eye-witness testimony might be well unreliable, the story mostly shows DA and corruption. He got out of jail by showing the people who testified against him were quite biased indeed - They were "motivated" to act by police and DA threats and the DA had systematically lied concerning this process... It's also rather heart-rending to read how he had to engage in fraud to discover the truth and naturally this fraud was then held against his appeal....
- shrikant 16y ago[Interestingly] The judge Robert Holdman who shot down his appeal because of this fraud, has a (IMHO) history of being overly harsh. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZrFEGVEd8DsJ:www.judicialreports.com/2007/12/post_82.php http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZrFEGVE... (search for 'Holdman' on that page)
- joe_the_user 16y agoWhen I reading the story, that part was just screaming at me. In my limited knowledge of the law, the guy got incredibly lucky in having illegally gain evidence accepted in a court of law (from a defendant). It's mind blowing to think about being in a situation where the only way to get justice is to break the law. It sounds good in action movie but in real life, it's appalling...
- yxhuvud 16y agoBeing a foreigner, it's mind blowing that how evidence is procured matter. Evidence is evidence. If there were illegal actions while collecting it, then those actions should be prosecuted, but evidence is still evidence and should be used.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- eru 16y agoAs far as I know the legal system, in say, Germany doesn't recognize illegally gained evidence either.
- joe_the_user 16y agoThe story is slightly different in each country. "In Germany, statutory law mandates exclusion of statements obtained from suspects or witnesses by force, deception, hypnosis, or similar illicit methods of interrogation" http://law.jrank.org/pages/899/Criminal-Procedure-Comparative-Aspects-Control-police.html#ixzz199nYdqIC http://law.jrank.org/pages/899/Criminal-Procedure-Comparativ... But "Because deterrence of police misconduct is not the rationale for exclusion of evidence, German courts tend to admit evidence obtained through illegal searches "http://law.jrank.org/pages/899/Criminal-Procedure-Comparative-Aspects-Control-police.html#ixzz199noHnXO http://law.jrank.org/pages/899/Criminal-Procedure-Comparativ...
- WalterBright 16y agoI hope he does become an attorney.
- gallerytungsten 16y agoMe too. So many attorneys, so few good ones.
- Detrus 16y agoWhat are the typical consequences to the corrupt prosecutor and police department in a case like this?
- chapel 16y agoUnless they blatantly broke the law in some provable way, probably nothing. Though as with the guy in this case, he can sue the State/City for wrongful imprisonment and other issues.
- DanI-S 16y agoSo the guilty party suffers nothing, and the taxpayer foots the bill...
- Detrus 16y agoSo this guy proving his innocence by exposing corruption does not prove their corruption? There must be some fun technicalities there.
- rorrr 16y agoNobody is watching (or prosecuting) the prosecutors. That's very very sad.
- rlpb 16y ago> Unless they blatantly broke the law in some provable way, probably nothing. It seems to me that they should apply the same burden of proof. If a murderer can be convicted on eyewitness evidence, why should the same eyewitness evidence not be sufficient to demonstrate prosecutor corruption? On the other hand I can understand why they have immunity (although this doesn't affect guilt).
- rhizome 16y agoProsecutors have absolute immunity for their actions in office, and they also decide whether or not to charge the police on the rare chance that a case makes it past the police's own "internal investigation." In the grand scheme of things, the DA is dependent on the police and it's not common for a prosecutor to survive a loss of confidence by them.
- MichaelApproved 16y agoThis is an inspiring story and every time I hear about something like this I wonder how much money each year of my life would be worth behind bars. Years of not knowing when/if I'd ever be released. This man is suing for 60 million and will probably get a settlement for less but still large sum. If he were to get $10 million, would that be enough for 10 years behind bars?
- donaldc 16y agoThis man is suing for 60 million and will probably get a settlement for less but still large sum. If he were to get $10 million, would that be enough for 10 years behind bars? No. At least, not if it were me. But then again, if it were me, no amount of money would make me feel that justice was done. I'd want to see the prosecutor and anyone else involved in the frauds that got me convicted do some time themselves.
- edge17 16y agoI don't know what the price of time is, but from my own experience I can say that it's quite high. This comment reminded me of the Chekhov short story The Bet - http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Bet.shtml http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Bet.shtml If you reversed the statement, would you take $10m for 10 years of imprisonment? I definitely wouldn't. Life's for living.
- tibbon 16y agoWhy does 'the system' seem to make this process so painfully slow and seemingly reject requests for information/appeals arbitrarily? It seems much of the 15 years here was spent playing paperwork games with the legal system.
- anigbrowl 16y agoI don't know about the state of NY, but the entire federal court system only takes up about 2.5% of the federal budget - when you think about it, it's the least expensive branch of government by far. The flip side, though, is that there are far more cases to be heard at any given time than there are courts and personnel to hear them, and complex technical rules which have to be complied with. It seems very inefficient and arbitrary, but generally all of those rules were created in response to so some failing in the previous version. Every so often the 'legacy code' becomes unmanageable and a relevant part of the law is redrafted or similarly overhauled. For example, California switched over to a completely new set of jury instructions known as CALCRIM for criminal trials a few years ago, designed to eliminate a lot of unnecessary confusion and legalistic cruft which had accrued to the previous version, known as CALJIC. But even drafting those from scratch takes years. My reference copy of CALCRIM is about 2500 pages over 3 volumes. And that's just criminal - there's a lot more for civil trials. A LOT more. Think of it like encountering Unix as a complete newbie. You know what computers are for and what they can do, but but actually learning unix at the command line is pretty complicated, no?
- gersh 16y agoAre there too few judges? Is expanding the judiciary an option? Are too many lawyers incompetent?
- krakensden 16y agoThere is definitely a significant judicial shortage at the federal level, but most crimes don't wind up there.
- gallerytungsten 16y ago
- badmash69 16y agoHey HN, I mean no disrespect to any of the parties in this story -- but hey isn't this forum about HACKER NEWS ? The only inspirational stores I wanna read about HERE are about fellow hackers' finding Seed/ VC funding and their successful exits. Or about cool programs and code. Items pertaining to Technology , Free Markets and Capitalism. For all other life-affirming and inspirational stuff , I could always go to reddit.
- anigbrowl 16y agoGet used to it. Law has a good deal in common with programming, many hackers have a strong interest in and commitment to civil liberties, and this is a story about a man who overcame obstacles most entrepreneurs can barely imagine - by teaching himself how to hack the legal system. It's not just inspiring, but instructive.
- jkuria 16y agoYep, beside the obvious triumph of justice against near-insurmountable odds, it made me realize some of the setbacks I've faced as an entrepreneur are complete child's play compared to what this guy went through! I got off my ass, hit the treadmill for half an hour, cleaned up my space and have been working since!
- mcantor 16y agoFrom the HN guidelines at http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. I had no idea that you could lawyer your own way out of prison like that, and upon reading the title I was most assuredly curious.
- Symmetry 16y agoThe notion that you ought to be willing to become an expert in any field if your need is great enough is entirely in line with the ethos of Hacker News.
- schwit 16y agoThe DA and cops are in it for convictions not justice. Anyone in the police or DA's office who had a hand in railroading him should get 10 years in jail.
- jjcm 16y agoThis would make for a wonderful plot for a book/movie. I'd watch/read a much longer version of this article.
- rdl 16y agoThis is one of many reasons I oppose capital punishment. It is odd that conservatives, who claim government is often the problem, not the solution, would entrust the state with the power of life and death.
- gnaritas 16y agoNot really, as the conservative opinion has little to do with logic or consistency; it's all about maintaining the status quo. They simply dislike change, many seem to wish progress stopped around 1890 or so.
- philwelch 16y agoThat's a literal definition of "conservative", but there's plenty of instances of "conservatives" (in the US) trying to change things--conservatives were the most enthusiastic proponents of the War on Drugs, which changed the US legal system dramatically, as well as the War on Terrorism, which involved a whole mess of other "innovations". In many cases, conservatives are the ones wanting to change things and civil libertarians (i.e. liberals) were trying to maintain the status quo.
- gnaritas 16y agoThose are examples of them trying to change things back to how they think it used to be. In both cases, they see it them defending themselves and their values against those who disrupt their world. That's not trying to change things, that's trying to stop change, in the former case, stopping the invasion of the growing drug culture and in the latter the repulsion of those who want to destroy their freedom. Unfortunately, in these cases, they don't mind giving up other peoples rights in the name of safety, because their entire world view is dominated by fear. So yea, liberals tried to maintain the status quo of things like civil liberties, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. So it isn't just the literal definition of conservative, it's the prevailing attitude of nearly every one that I've met. They aren't just coincidentally called conservatives, nor are progressives coincidentally called such either. Both are fairly accurate descriptions of the general attitude of both groups; not everyone fits both groups, but most do, whether they admit to the label or not.
- ditojim 16y agomovie please.
- mobileed 16y agoI feel anyone who abstruct justice by withholding evidence should automatically go to jail. This guy was railroaded on so many levels, the DA should go sit in jail for same amount of time this innocent person did.
- c4urself 16y agofrom this story and others i read on HN: there is something really wrong with the justice system in america.
- danahn 16y agoThe headline is disappointing given the contents of the article