6 ms·

You are surprised? We already know that a prosecutor will try for higher sentences near an election and... well, they are elected. It isn't hard to imagine that

You are surprised? We already know that a prosecutor will try for higher sentences near an election and... well, they are elected. It isn't hard to imagine that an elected official works with other elected officials, especially if they want to do other things in government.

jimnotgym 5y ago
I live in the UK. I am very suprised yes
- Ekaros 5y ago
  As European, I find it insane that I could elect the prosecutor or even the police. And in some ways that politicians would have any word on this apart from deciding the funding and laws...
  - skywal_l 5y ago
    I don't disagree with your point but how a prosecutor must be selected then? If someone is not chosen by a public and popular vote, it must be chosen differently. Any mechanism of choice will have an inherent bias. For example, you could decide that a prosecutor is the best at knowing the law, so let's have a law exam where the one with the best score is named prosecutor. However, being a good prosecutor can't always be reduced to a technical know-how. And those good at laws might be those who were able to pay to go to the best universities, buy the textbooks, be allowed to study for years without working, etc. So you also have a bias on wealthy families. I don't think that the problem of allocation of power in our modern societies is a solved problem...
    - simonh 5y ago
      Just because any system could or do have biases, that’s no good defence of a system we know has terrible pernicious biases that are visibly compromising it’s integrity. I’m a Brit, and I’d have good expectations of being treated fairly if I faced prosecution as an innocent person here in the UK, in France, Germany, or plenty of other countries. I have no such confidence about the USA. Especially so if the crime I was accused of was politicised. I actually know someone in the US who’s life was destroyed by that system, he spent a year in prison and it took years more to clear his name. Politicisation is endemic to the US justice and policing system, it’s an absolute disgrace. I agree no system is perfect, we have miscarriages of justice here in the UK too, but perfection is not the enemy of the good and your system is below mediocre. You can do, and deserve, a lot better.
      - Ekaros 5y ago
        Specially when the public side is underfunded and defending yourself is insanely expensive. Not that law is cheap anywhere, but from recent cases like Kyle Rittenhouse and officer Potter it seems just stupid and broken.
        ziml77 5y ago
        After both looking into the details myself and watching LegalEagle's analysis of the case, I'm not convinced that there was anything wrong with the Rittenhouse trial. Rittenhouse was stupid for driving into the city in the first place, but each of the times he fired his gun seemed perfectly reasonable. And I had initially thought that he was looking for an excuse to shoot black people, but then found out that all 3 people he shot were white.
        JaimeThompson 5y ago
        What was wrong with the Potter case?
        Ekaros 5y ago
        That that sort of case would take weeks in court room and even longer outside and cost tens or hundreds of thousands to pay for defence.
        ttybird2 5y ago
        Did you disagree with the result of the Potter case? I am unfamiliar with it but it seems like they charged a police officer who "mistakenly used a handgun instead of a Taser"? Am I missing something here?
      - luckylion 5y ago
        Germany just had Pimmelgate (Pimmel is a synonym for penis). Hamburg's Senator of the Interior did something and some random guy wrote "you're such a dick" ("du bist so 1 pimmel"). The Senator apparently was very annoyed and asked the state attorney to go after the guy. They summoned him to the precinct, he went, said that he wrote that tweet and declined to say anything else without a lawyer present. They then got a judge to sign a search warrant against his ex-girlfriend (and mother of his children who live with her), and executed it, which was unnecessary (they knew who did it and he had already confessed) and meant to punish extra-judicially since the case would likely be thrown out in court. The state attorneys and police are part of the executive branch and subject to directives of the politician in charge. Theoretically, electing the state attorneys directly would motivate them to not just do whatever the administration wants, be that legally reasonable or not. In practice it probably does not matter.
    - rsynnott 5y ago
      It varies by country. For instance, in Ireland, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is a civil service bureaucracy. It's lead by the director, who's appointed by the government for a ten year term and must be an experienced barrister or solicitor. The director is a civil service executive, not a dictator, so the amount of damage a bad or corrupt one can do is somewhat limited. Until the 70s, the role was filled by the office of the attorney general, who's a direct government appointee (strictly speaking appointed by the president on direction of the government). The separate agency was created to defend against bias.
    - TomSwirly 5y ago
      > I don't disagree with your point but how a prosecutor must be selected then? The same way you select the heads of hospitals, or police chiefs, or head librarians? What a strange question. Only in the US do you VOTE for prosecutors!
    - abecedarius 5y ago
      The current setup where only official prosecutors can prosecute crimes is historically recent. I don't know what would be better, but these officials becoming too cozy with other officials is what you'd expect a priori.
- ttybird2 5y ago
  God save the queen https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508528
  - jimnotgym 5y ago
    ...from malicious US interference in the justice system?
- Talanes 5y ago
  Craig Murray only just got out of prison for court reporting while not part of the proper crowd, so is it really that different over there?
  - jimnotgym 5y ago
    Didn't Craig Murray go to prison for contempt of court? As Wikipedia recalls it, a judge in a sexual harassment and attempted rape trial issued an order to keep the accusers anonymous. Mr Murray was found to have broken that order. Unless you want to elaborate on the specifics, I think your comment is without merit
    - Talanes 5y ago
      "Jigsaw identification" is a nebulous broad claim that could have been applied equally to any reporting on the trial, but was only applied to one independent journalist who has been critical of the state.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I don't know why you're surprised. The courts have shown time and again that they are part of the establishment (that includes the civil service and government), and will act in accordance with government wishes most of the time. "Yes, Minister" was documentary not fiction (also, since we seem to be remaking/rebooting everything good, can we have an updated version of this, please?)
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    They did remake Yes Minister. It was Not Very Good. This, incidentally, is precisely the sort of thing that Humphrey would stop Hacker doing, if Hacker had the ability, which he didn’t. The only times Humphrey lets Hacker indulge in overreach are to put him in a situation that Humphrey can then save him from.
    - marcus_holmes 5y ago
      > They did remake Yes Minister. It was Not Very Good. Thanks, I must have missed it. I'll check it out (even if it's crap). I agree with your take on it, I was more indicating that the way Things Are Supposed To Work is almost not How They Actually Work, and usually that's How The Old Boy Network Want Them To Work.
- michaelt 5y ago
  Imagine the following situation: Someone anonymous on Twitter threatens to kill you. You go to the front desk of your local police and they say "You have our sympathies, but we have limited resources, and we don't know whether it's really a serious matter or not, or even if the perpetrator is within our jurisdiction." You threaten on Twitter to kill your MP. They go to the head of the local police force who decides it _is_ a serious matter, looks into it and finds you _are_ in their jurisdiction, and some police officers come knocking at your door. Is this the rule of law operating as intended, reflecting the reality that MPs have been murdered before, and in a world unfortunately constrained by finite policing budgets? Or is it a double-standard, where a wealth of usually-unenforced laws allow the powerful to oppress their opponents?
rsynnott 5y ago
In many countries, the executive trying to direct the public prosecutor would be a scandal that would end multiple careers. Actually, I would think that it would be in the US, too, if done on a _federal_ level.

jimnotgym 5y ago

I live in the UK. I am very suprised yes

Ekaros 5y ago
As European, I find it insane that I could elect the prosecutor or even the police. And in some ways that politicians would have any word on this apart from deciding the funding and laws...
- skywal_l 5y ago
  I don't disagree with your point but how a prosecutor must be selected then? If someone is not chosen by a public and popular vote, it must be chosen differently. Any mechanism of choice will have an inherent bias. For example, you could decide that a prosecutor is the best at knowing the law, so let's have a law exam where the one with the best score is named prosecutor. However, being a good prosecutor can't always be reduced to a technical know-how. And those good at laws might be those who were able to pay to go to the best universities, buy the textbooks, be allowed to study for years without working, etc. So you also have a bias on wealthy families. I don't think that the problem of allocation of power in our modern societies is a solved problem...
  - simonh 5y ago
    Just because any system could or do have biases, that’s no good defence of a system we know has terrible pernicious biases that are visibly compromising it’s integrity. I’m a Brit, and I’d have good expectations of being treated fairly if I faced prosecution as an innocent person here in the UK, in France, Germany, or plenty of other countries. I have no such confidence about the USA. Especially so if the crime I was accused of was politicised. I actually know someone in the US who’s life was destroyed by that system, he spent a year in prison and it took years more to clear his name. Politicisation is endemic to the US justice and policing system, it’s an absolute disgrace. I agree no system is perfect, we have miscarriages of justice here in the UK too, but perfection is not the enemy of the good and your system is below mediocre. You can do, and deserve, a lot better.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Specially when the public side is underfunded and defending yourself is insanely expensive. Not that law is cheap anywhere, but from recent cases like Kyle Rittenhouse and officer Potter it seems just stupid and broken.
      - ziml77 5y ago
        After both looking into the details myself and watching LegalEagle's analysis of the case, I'm not convinced that there was anything wrong with the Rittenhouse trial. Rittenhouse was stupid for driving into the city in the first place, but each of the times he fired his gun seemed perfectly reasonable. And I had initially thought that he was looking for an excuse to shoot black people, but then found out that all 3 people he shot were white.
      - JaimeThompson 5y ago
        What was wrong with the Potter case?
        Ekaros 5y ago
        That that sort of case would take weeks in court room and even longer outside and cost tens or hundreds of thousands to pay for defence.
      - ttybird2 5y ago
        Did you disagree with the result of the Potter case? I am unfamiliar with it but it seems like they charged a police officer who "mistakenly used a handgun instead of a Taser"? Am I missing something here?
    - luckylion 5y ago
      Germany just had Pimmelgate (Pimmel is a synonym for penis). Hamburg's Senator of the Interior did something and some random guy wrote "you're such a dick" ("du bist so 1 pimmel"). The Senator apparently was very annoyed and asked the state attorney to go after the guy. They summoned him to the precinct, he went, said that he wrote that tweet and declined to say anything else without a lawyer present. They then got a judge to sign a search warrant against his ex-girlfriend (and mother of his children who live with her), and executed it, which was unnecessary (they knew who did it and he had already confessed) and meant to punish extra-judicially since the case would likely be thrown out in court. The state attorneys and police are part of the executive branch and subject to directives of the politician in charge. Theoretically, electing the state attorneys directly would motivate them to not just do whatever the administration wants, be that legally reasonable or not. In practice it probably does not matter.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    It varies by country. For instance, in Ireland, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is a civil service bureaucracy. It's lead by the director, who's appointed by the government for a ten year term and must be an experienced barrister or solicitor. The director is a civil service executive, not a dictator, so the amount of damage a bad or corrupt one can do is somewhat limited. Until the 70s, the role was filled by the office of the attorney general, who's a direct government appointee (strictly speaking appointed by the president on direction of the government). The separate agency was created to defend against bias.
  - TomSwirly 5y ago
    > I don't disagree with your point but how a prosecutor must be selected then? The same way you select the heads of hospitals, or police chiefs, or head librarians? What a strange question. Only in the US do you VOTE for prosecutors!
  - abecedarius 5y ago
    The current setup where only official prosecutors can prosecute crimes is historically recent. I don't know what would be better, but these officials becoming too cozy with other officials is what you'd expect a priori.
ttybird2 5y ago
God save the queen https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508528
- jimnotgym 5y ago
  ...from malicious US interference in the justice system?
Talanes 5y ago
Craig Murray only just got out of prison for court reporting while not part of the proper crowd, so is it really that different over there?
- jimnotgym 5y ago
  Didn't Craig Murray go to prison for contempt of court? As Wikipedia recalls it, a judge in a sexual harassment and attempted rape trial issued an order to keep the accusers anonymous. Mr Murray was found to have broken that order. Unless you want to elaborate on the specifics, I think your comment is without merit
  - Talanes 5y ago
    "Jigsaw identification" is a nebulous broad claim that could have been applied equally to any reporting on the trial, but was only applied to one independent journalist who has been critical of the state.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
I don't know why you're surprised. The courts have shown time and again that they are part of the establishment (that includes the civil service and government), and will act in accordance with government wishes most of the time. "Yes, Minister" was documentary not fiction (also, since we seem to be remaking/rebooting everything good, can we have an updated version of this, please?)
- rsynnott 5y ago
  They did remake Yes Minister. It was Not Very Good. This, incidentally, is precisely the sort of thing that Humphrey would stop Hacker doing, if Hacker had the ability, which he didn’t. The only times Humphrey lets Hacker indulge in overreach are to put him in a situation that Humphrey can then save him from.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    > They did remake Yes Minister. It was Not Very Good. Thanks, I must have missed it. I'll check it out (even if it's crap). I agree with your take on it, I was more indicating that the way Things Are Supposed To Work is almost not How They Actually Work, and usually that's How The Old Boy Network Want Them To Work.
michaelt 5y ago
Imagine the following situation: Someone anonymous on Twitter threatens to kill you. You go to the front desk of your local police and they say "You have our sympathies, but we have limited resources, and we don't know whether it's really a serious matter or not, or even if the perpetrator is within our jurisdiction." You threaten on Twitter to kill your MP. They go to the head of the local police force who decides it _is_ a serious matter, looks into it and finds you _are_ in their jurisdiction, and some police officers come knocking at your door. Is this the rule of law operating as intended, reflecting the reality that MPs have been murdered before, and in a world unfortunately constrained by finite policing budgets? Or is it a double-standard, where a wealth of usually-unenforced laws allow the powerful to oppress their opponents?

rsynnott 5y ago

In many countries, the executive trying to direct the public prosecutor would be a scandal that would end multiple careers. Actually, I would think that it would be in the US, too, if done on a _federal_ level.