7 ms·

I think it's been mentioned on hn before, but it sure seems like we should look twice at anyone who gets charged with child pornography - could be someone getti

I think it's been mentioned on hn before, but it sure seems like we should look twice at anyone who gets charged with child pornography - could be someone getting framed.

sneak 6y ago
Forget the charge - we should strive to presume the innocence of anyone charged with anything. Bringing charges is not evidence.
- Fluid_Mechanics 6y ago
  Humans are quite dimwitted unfortunately.
  - billsnow 6y ago
    yeah that's not the lesson from this
- rayiner 6y ago
  Charges are based on evidence shown to a grand jury. The law presumes people are innocent until proven guilty, and we should give people the benefit of the doubt, but it’s totally reasonable to talk about the charges in a news context. Charges being filed means some meaningful threshold has been passed.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    "means some meaningful threshold has been passed." In UK we've been putting innocent people in jail for 20 years, because of bugs in accounting software. It was going unnoticed and noone would believe them untill recently. We are talking hundreds of people. If it happened to a single person, noone would ever find oit the truth. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/0138cd7d-9673-436b-86a1-33704b29eb60 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/0138cd7d-967...
    - azalemeth 6y ago
      This Financial Times article is paywalled, and, moreover, the FT didn't actually do any of the investigative journalism required to show this. Private Eye, however, did, and their report is free online: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/justice-lost-in-the-post https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/justice-lost-i... -- Private Eye was very good at banging the drum for many years and eventually the mainstream media cottoned on and -- following that -- several miscarriages of justice were reversed. Note that in Britain, following a Tory amendment to the law, you can only get legal aid if you have assets less then £37.5k -- so if you own a home, and are charged (incorrectly!) with criminal proceedings, which you then win, expect to sell it to pay the legal bills. Once you win, you'll get...nothing. No fees. Just a "release the defendant from the dock" and you're good to go. If you get imprisoned, and THEN are found innocent later on, maybe, say, 30 years later (as has happened!) expect to get....nothing. I really recommend "The Secret Barrister" both as a book and a blog. Nobody stands up for funding criminal justice properly -- because what politician wants to support the rights of the accused? -- but it's badly breaking. https://thesecretbarrister.com/2016/02/02/mr-gove-must-now-hammer-the-final-nail-into-graylings-legacy-and-abolish-the-innocence-tax/ https://thesecretbarrister.com/2016/02/02/mr-gove-must-now-h...
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    Charges filed means they've pissed off someone powerful, no more no less. It's up to you to evaluate the evidence based on what's publicly known. Generally when the government doesn't show its evidence, it should be treated with extreme skepticism.
    - wahern 6y ago
      Prosecutors aren't supposed to publicize their evidence as doing so is prejudicial to the defense. Of course, they sometimes do so, precisely for that effect.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      The DOJ press release had a link right at the bottom to the 47 page indictment “showing the evidence.” https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1347146/download https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1347146/downl...
      - tehjoker 6y ago
        I don't mean necessarily in this case, but I did mean in general. However, simply pointing out a section heading isn't enough (and I didn't see anything on page 47). What do you think of the evidence they presented? Additionally, grand juries are well known to simply be tools of the prosecution with >90% of grand jury presentations voting to indict, in part because the prosecutor can present whatever narrative they want, in secret, without any checks other than their conscience without a counter narrative.
        rayiner 6y ago
        I’m not pointing to page 47 I’m pointing out that there is 47 pages of the government describing the evidence it has. That’s typical for an indictment. The government doesn’t “in general” refuse to show the evidence. That’s just not how it works. Grand juries aren’t “known to be tools of the prosecution.” That’s just something defense lawyers and public interest people say. A grand jury is just a group of ordinary people tasked with deciding whether there is enough evidence to even bring a case. The secrecy is there to protect the defendant as much as it’s there for the government. If the prosecutor’s case is weak, then the allegations don’t even become public. Grand juries do vote to indict at a very high rate. That’s because prosecutors only bring cases they know they can win (and indeed they have an ethical obligation not to bring cases they don’t think they can win). There is a lot of misinformation about how the justice system works. I have seen it from the inside, working for a judge. These cases are buttoned up top to bottom. They’ll arrest a guy for robbing a store. They have him on security camera. They have tracking information from his cell phone. They have his text messages with the guy who he fenced the goods to. They searched his car and found stolen items. Wrongful convictions are rare. The legal clinics that help wrongfully convicted people actually spend tremendous amounts of time screening cases to find ones that are meritorious. And a lot of those are from the era before DNA testing came into routine use. See: https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&context=scholarship https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&con... > Based on a careful review of the available empirical literature, it is possible to assemble the component parts of a wrongful conviction rate calculation by looking at error rates at trial, the ratio of wrongful convictions obtained through trials versus plea bargains, and the percentage of cases resolved through pleas. Combining empirically based estimates for each of these three factors, a reasonable (and possibly overstated) calculation of the wrongful conviction rate appears, tentatively, to be somewhere in the range of 0.016%–0.062%
  - mantap 6y ago
    What percentage of grand juries throw out the charges?
    - rayiner 6y ago
      That’s not a meaningful number because in practice prosecutors don’t bring cases to grand juries where the evidence isn’t sufficient to indict.
  - sneak 6y ago
    Grand juries, in practice, mean approximately nothing. We should always presume innocence when law enforcement makes an accusation.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  The degree to which charges predict things is the degree to which they serve as "evidence" for the purposes of prediction.
  - jbay808 6y ago
    Perhaps, but once you've been falsely accused of something and have no alibi to clear your name, it will probably reshape for the rest of your life how you make decisions on such evidence.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  But crimes of mere "possession" (e.g. child pornography, drugs) are especially susceptible to framing because the existence of the contraband in a person's personal effects are all that is needed to presume guilt. Child pornography, or really any digital asset, is doubly suspect because it is so much easier to "place" these digital assets on someone's computer or phone, whereas with drugs you'd need physical access to someone's home or personal effects.
  - indolering 6y ago
    I have brown friends who get searched every time they are pulled over or go through airport security. I have had friends who were told to STFU and take a frequenting ticket or spend the night in jail (and thus risk losing their minimum wage job). I even had a friend who was led to a cop car by the FBI but (thankfully) he refused to get in because there was a mysterious baggie in the back (which was surreptitiously spirited away on camera). Nothing happened in any of these cases. Sigh - you can't trust cops even with physical possession and cameras rolling [1]. [1]: https://www.topic.com/runningfromcops https://www.topic.com/runningfromcops
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - sillysaurusx 6y ago
      Since we're cherrypicking, I was reading over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_roulette#Notable_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_roulette#Notable_incid... and found this gem: On July 24, 1973, Dallas Police Officer Darrell L. Cain fatally shot Santos Rodriguez, a 12-year-old Mexican-American child, while interrogating him and his brother about a burglary. Cain shot Rodriguez while conducting Russian roulette on the brothers in an attempt to force a confession from them. In fairness, that was the 70s. But the 70s were also "one generation ago," so it's not exactly ancient history. (I could imagine myself being skeptical about your comment before having wised up a little, so I thought I'd chime in to say yes, this really does happen.)
      - 6y ago
- m-p-3 6y ago
  And being charged publicly is basically a mandatory social sentence, even if you end up being acquitted.
DarthGhandi 6y ago
> The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception... COINTELPRO tactics are still used to this day and have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination. According to a senate report, the FBI's motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order" The court of public opinion is far more important than real courts. You only have to look at enlightened HN comments on Ross Ulbright to see it in action, nearly all are convinced he's guilty of a charge that never went to trial and was dismissed with prejudice, which is rare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://legaldictionary.net/dismissed-with-prejudice/ https://legaldictionary.net/dismissed-with-prejudice/

I think it's been mentioned on hn before, but it sure seems like we should look twice at anyone who gets charged with child pornography - could be someone getting framed.

sneak 6y ago

Forget the charge - we should strive to presume the innocence of anyone charged with anything. Bringing charges is not evidence.

Fluid_Mechanics 6y ago
Humans are quite dimwitted unfortunately.
- billsnow 6y ago
  yeah that's not the lesson from this
rayiner 6y ago
Charges are based on evidence shown to a grand jury. The law presumes people are innocent until proven guilty, and we should give people the benefit of the doubt, but it’s totally reasonable to talk about the charges in a news context. Charges being filed means some meaningful threshold has been passed.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  "means some meaningful threshold has been passed." In UK we've been putting innocent people in jail for 20 years, because of bugs in accounting software. It was going unnoticed and noone would believe them untill recently. We are talking hundreds of people. If it happened to a single person, noone would ever find oit the truth. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/0138cd7d-9673-436b-86a1-33704b29eb60 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/0138cd7d-967...
  - azalemeth 6y ago
    This Financial Times article is paywalled, and, moreover, the FT didn't actually do any of the investigative journalism required to show this. Private Eye, however, did, and their report is free online: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/justice-lost-in-the-post https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/justice-lost-i... -- Private Eye was very good at banging the drum for many years and eventually the mainstream media cottoned on and -- following that -- several miscarriages of justice were reversed. Note that in Britain, following a Tory amendment to the law, you can only get legal aid if you have assets less then £37.5k -- so if you own a home, and are charged (incorrectly!) with criminal proceedings, which you then win, expect to sell it to pay the legal bills. Once you win, you'll get...nothing. No fees. Just a "release the defendant from the dock" and you're good to go. If you get imprisoned, and THEN are found innocent later on, maybe, say, 30 years later (as has happened!) expect to get....nothing. I really recommend "The Secret Barrister" both as a book and a blog. Nobody stands up for funding criminal justice properly -- because what politician wants to support the rights of the accused? -- but it's badly breaking. https://thesecretbarrister.com/2016/02/02/mr-gove-must-now-hammer-the-final-nail-into-graylings-legacy-and-abolish-the-innocence-tax/ https://thesecretbarrister.com/2016/02/02/mr-gove-must-now-h...
- tehjoker 6y ago
  Charges filed means they've pissed off someone powerful, no more no less. It's up to you to evaluate the evidence based on what's publicly known. Generally when the government doesn't show its evidence, it should be treated with extreme skepticism.
  - wahern 6y ago
    Prosecutors aren't supposed to publicize their evidence as doing so is prejudicial to the defense. Of course, they sometimes do so, precisely for that effect.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    The DOJ press release had a link right at the bottom to the 47 page indictment “showing the evidence.” https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1347146/download https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1347146/downl...
    - tehjoker 6y ago
      I don't mean necessarily in this case, but I did mean in general. However, simply pointing out a section heading isn't enough (and I didn't see anything on page 47). What do you think of the evidence they presented? Additionally, grand juries are well known to simply be tools of the prosecution with >90% of grand jury presentations voting to indict, in part because the prosecutor can present whatever narrative they want, in secret, without any checks other than their conscience without a counter narrative.
      - rayiner 6y ago
        I’m not pointing to page 47 I’m pointing out that there is 47 pages of the government describing the evidence it has. That’s typical for an indictment. The government doesn’t “in general” refuse to show the evidence. That’s just not how it works. Grand juries aren’t “known to be tools of the prosecution.” That’s just something defense lawyers and public interest people say. A grand jury is just a group of ordinary people tasked with deciding whether there is enough evidence to even bring a case. The secrecy is there to protect the defendant as much as it’s there for the government. If the prosecutor’s case is weak, then the allegations don’t even become public. Grand juries do vote to indict at a very high rate. That’s because prosecutors only bring cases they know they can win (and indeed they have an ethical obligation not to bring cases they don’t think they can win). There is a lot of misinformation about how the justice system works. I have seen it from the inside, working for a judge. These cases are buttoned up top to bottom. They’ll arrest a guy for robbing a store. They have him on security camera. They have tracking information from his cell phone. They have his text messages with the guy who he fenced the goods to. They searched his car and found stolen items. Wrongful convictions are rare. The legal clinics that help wrongfully convicted people actually spend tremendous amounts of time screening cases to find ones that are meritorious. And a lot of those are from the era before DNA testing came into routine use. See: https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&context=scholarship https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&con... > Based on a careful review of the available empirical literature, it is possible to assemble the component parts of a wrongful conviction rate calculation by looking at error rates at trial, the ratio of wrongful convictions obtained through trials versus plea bargains, and the percentage of cases resolved through pleas. Combining empirically based estimates for each of these three factors, a reasonable (and possibly overstated) calculation of the wrongful conviction rate appears, tentatively, to be somewhere in the range of 0.016%–0.062%
- mantap 6y ago
  What percentage of grand juries throw out the charges?
  - rayiner 6y ago
    That’s not a meaningful number because in practice prosecutors don’t bring cases to grand juries where the evidence isn’t sufficient to indict.
- sneak 6y ago
  Grand juries, in practice, mean approximately nothing. We should always presume innocence when law enforcement makes an accusation.
threatofrain 6y ago
The degree to which charges predict things is the degree to which they serve as "evidence" for the purposes of prediction.
- jbay808 6y ago
  Perhaps, but once you've been falsely accused of something and have no alibi to clear your name, it will probably reshape for the rest of your life how you make decisions on such evidence.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
But crimes of mere "possession" (e.g. child pornography, drugs) are especially susceptible to framing because the existence of the contraband in a person's personal effects are all that is needed to presume guilt. Child pornography, or really any digital asset, is doubly suspect because it is so much easier to "place" these digital assets on someone's computer or phone, whereas with drugs you'd need physical access to someone's home or personal effects.
- indolering 6y ago
  I have brown friends who get searched every time they are pulled over or go through airport security. I have had friends who were told to STFU and take a frequenting ticket or spend the night in jail (and thus risk losing their minimum wage job). I even had a friend who was led to a cop car by the FBI but (thankfully) he refused to get in because there was a mysterious baggie in the back (which was surreptitiously spirited away on camera). Nothing happened in any of these cases. Sigh - you can't trust cops even with physical possession and cameras rolling [1]. [1]: https://www.topic.com/runningfromcops https://www.topic.com/runningfromcops
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - sillysaurusx 6y ago
    Since we're cherrypicking, I was reading over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_roulette#Notable_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_roulette#Notable_incid... and found this gem: On July 24, 1973, Dallas Police Officer Darrell L. Cain fatally shot Santos Rodriguez, a 12-year-old Mexican-American child, while interrogating him and his brother about a burglary. Cain shot Rodriguez while conducting Russian roulette on the brothers in an attempt to force a confession from them. In fairness, that was the 70s. But the 70s were also "one generation ago," so it's not exactly ancient history. (I could imagine myself being skeptical about your comment before having wised up a little, so I thought I'd chime in to say yes, this really does happen.)
    - 6y ago
m-p-3 6y ago
And being charged publicly is basically a mandatory social sentence, even if you end up being acquitted.

DarthGhandi 6y ago

> The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception... COINTELPRO tactics are still used to this day and have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination. According to a senate report, the FBI's motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order" The court of public opinion is far more important than real courts. You only have to look at enlightened HN comments on Ross Ulbright to see it in action, nearly all are convinced he's guilty of a charge that never went to trial and was dismissed with prejudice, which is rare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://legaldictionary.net/dismissed-with-prejudice/ https://legaldictionary.net/dismissed-with-prejudice/