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I think the disturbing question that this brings up is: Given that so many judges are willing to abuse stun belts and turn them into a morbid torture device, ho

by vivekd 7y ago

I think the disturbing question that this brings up is: Given that so many judges are willing to abuse stun belts and turn them into a morbid torture device, how can we trust these people to adequately decide important criminal cases. In my opinion, the answer in an alarmingly many number of cases is we can't. This could be solved quickly if we require the prosecutor and criminal lawyer or self represented defendant to agree on a judge before going to trial. If there are judges out there that very few of one side or the other is willing to agree to, those judges should be reviewed for making biased decisions and be at risk of losing their judgeship. Or we could pay judges by the number of cases they get and hope the ones who don't get many agreements will go away on their own. This can be a workable system: Just require that the parties keep going if their first choice is not available. For example: we could have 6 judges at random and give each party 3 vetoes to get rid of judges they don't want. We could even just let the parties choose a judge and only have the court intervene when they are unable to select a judge who is available in a reasonable amount of time. I can almost guarantee that the fear of random choice will make most litigants cooperate to pick a good judge. In any case, the current system of having old lawyers with almost no accountability be judges is wanting.

pasabagi 7y ago
I think the point is, you don't trust judges. Their decisions are open to appeal - and if they're found to be contrary to the law, they're regularly overturned. The problem is more with non-lethal weapons. If you don't really heavily regulate them, they're obviously going to be used to torture people into compliance, because that's what they are for. A taser electrocutes somebody until they cannot resist. Pepper spray causes so much pain people stop doing whatever they are doing. There's simply a very subtle distinction between using a torture device to stop somebody from doing something dangerous to themselves or others, and using it to stop them from doing something that's simply problematic or against the law. Non-lethal weapons ask their users to make these distinctions every day, in stressful situations. If the job in general blurs the line, then you can expect their decisions to be equally blurry.

by vivekd 7y ago

pasabagi 7y ago

I think the point is, you don't trust judges. Their decisions are open to appeal - and if they're found to be contrary to the law, they're regularly overturned. The problem is more with non-lethal weapons. If you don't really heavily regulate them, they're obviously going to be used to torture people into compliance, because that's what they are for. A taser electrocutes somebody until they cannot resist. Pepper spray causes so much pain people stop doing whatever they are doing. There's simply a very subtle distinction between using a torture device to stop somebody from doing something dangerous to themselves or others, and using it to stop them from doing something that's simply problematic or against the law. Non-lethal weapons ask their users to make these distinctions every day, in stressful situations. If the job in general blurs the line, then you can expect their decisions to be equally blurry.