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They turn slowly for some crimes. If I was to find the prosecutor or judge who would one day be involved in indicting SBF and punch them in the face, I bet the

They turn slowly for some crimes. If I was to find the prosecutor or judge who would one day be involved in indicting SBF and punch them in the face, I bet the wheels would turn pretty quick for me.

arcticbull 4y ago
Well, in fairness, that's a very simple crime to prosecute :)
- baandam 4y ago
  Exactly. This isn't really that difficult to figure out that untangling a giant ponzi and money laundering scheme is several orders of magnitude more complex than assault.
ajross 4y ago
Right, because getting a judge to approve a warrant to arrest someone for assault is trivial if you have a witness, because that's the kind of thing that is clear and obvious. Even finding a lawyer capable of writing a warrant application for fraud like FTX is difficult, partly because the evidence is hard to find and hard to understand and frankly just because financial criminal law is a mess. Add to that that if you mess that part up you jeopardize the whole case (because any evidence that you collect with a bad warrant becomes subject to being thrown out, obviously). No one wants to get that wrong just to get a perp walk. Remember that what people are demanding here isn't punishment, it's just "an arrest". People who are arrested spend a few hours (maybe a day or two) being held before arraignment and then walk right back out of the jail.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Right, because getting a judge to approve a warrant to arrest someone for assault is trivial if you have a witness, because that's the kind of thing that is clear and obvious. And, more to the point: (1) its easy to convict on that kind of assault (delays are more often due to prosecutors not starting a case they dob’t feel adequate confidence they can win than prosecutors being unable to meet the much lower bar of probable cause), (2) prosecuting on such a case early is much less likely to foreclose other charges or obstruct attempts to identify and action on other crimes or recoverable property tied to them.
  - lesuorac 4y ago
    > (2) prosecuting on such a case early is much less likely to foreclose other charges or obstruct attempts to identify and action on other crimes or recoverable property tied to them. Please go into this more. Lets say an omniscient person can come up with 40 charges that could be brought against SBF. You the prosecutor only know of 3 of them right now. Why can't you charge SBF for the 3 you have, convict them, and while SBF is in prison figure out the other 37? While SBFs in prison I bet its 1000% times harder for him to hide stuff from you too. With programming, it's commit early and commit often. Why is the prosector trying to make a giant pull request over 3 years to shove through in a year? Target the low hanging fruit for a quick commit and get the restitution process going.
    - ajross 4y ago
      Programming doesn't have a fifth amendment double jeopardy clause. Imagine if your debugger locked you out if you failed to fix the bug on your first try. Prosecutors are conservative because our justice system is (for very good reasons) tilted strongly against the state, in favor of the accused. We've collectively decided that it's better on the whole to have some criminals go without punishment than to tolerate innocent people in jail. (Pause while everyone points out that innocent people get locked up all the time, which is true, but it's still something the constitution is trying to prevent)
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > You the prosecutor only know of 3 of them right now. Why can’t you charge SBF for the 3 you have, convict them, and while SBF is in prison figure out the other 37? If any of the 3 would be lesser included offenses of any of the 37, those of the 37 for which that would be true could not later be charged, because the application of the federal Constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy forecloses this. For state charges, this is may be even more restrictive, as many states exclude not only conviction in the same or separate prosecutions for “nested” offenses, but also preclude separate prosecutions after a conviction for the same conduct, or in some jurisdictions even for distinct conduct that forms part of the same transaction. > With programming, it’s commit early and commit often Criminal justice is very much not programming, and even to the extent they are loosely analogous, initiating a criminal prosecution isn’t analogous to a commit. EDIT: To make the reasoning more explicit, since even initiating such a prosecution impacts liberty interests, there a very significant reasons for rules against repeated add-on prosecution that states have, and there are even stronger reasons (because criminal penalties for greater offenses necessarily encompass any lesser included offenses) for the federal rule (also applicable to the states) preventing cumulative punishment for both a lesser included offense and an offense within which it is included.
_jal 4y ago
This is almost off-topic. Skip if that bugs you. It is interesting to think about the effect that coalitions of criminals have had on the criminal justice system. Impulsive face-punchers don't tend to have sophisticated attorneys, and at least many of them probably agree that face-punching should be illegal in general, even if they had their reasons in this case. Contrast with finance criminals. Many of them probably convince themselves they're in the right, and they have access to the best justice money can buy. So over time they've managed to raise the costs of prosecution so high that we see this - it takes multiple years to nail down a solid prosecution. There are other aspects of course - some financial crime really is difficult to prove. But what I mean is that if all the accounting frauds before Ken Lay had depended on overworked public defenders, prosecuting him would have been much simpler.
retconn 4y ago
>This is almost off-topic. Skip if that bugs you No, you're completely on topic : the phenomenon you describe of privatised systematic perpetrator defensive hurdles is called self regulation, which is precisely what SBF was most avidly lobbying for.

They turn slowly for some crimes. If I was to find the prosecutor or judge who would one day be involved in indicting SBF and punch them in the face, I bet the wheels would turn pretty quick for me.

arcticbull 4y ago

Well, in fairness, that's a very simple crime to prosecute :)

baandam 4y ago
Exactly. This isn't really that difficult to figure out that untangling a giant ponzi and money laundering scheme is several orders of magnitude more complex than assault.

ajross 4y ago

Right, because getting a judge to approve a warrant to arrest someone for assault is trivial if you have a witness, because that's the kind of thing that is clear and obvious. Even finding a lawyer capable of writing a warrant application for fraud like FTX is difficult, partly because the evidence is hard to find and hard to understand and frankly just because financial criminal law is a mess. Add to that that if you mess that part up you jeopardize the whole case (because any evidence that you collect with a bad warrant becomes subject to being thrown out, obviously). No one wants to get that wrong just to get a perp walk. Remember that what people are demanding here isn't punishment, it's just "an arrest". People who are arrested spend a few hours (maybe a day or two) being held before arraignment and then walk right back out of the jail.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> Right, because getting a judge to approve a warrant to arrest someone for assault is trivial if you have a witness, because that's the kind of thing that is clear and obvious. And, more to the point: (1) its easy to convict on that kind of assault (delays are more often due to prosecutors not starting a case they dob’t feel adequate confidence they can win than prosecutors being unable to meet the much lower bar of probable cause), (2) prosecuting on such a case early is much less likely to foreclose other charges or obstruct attempts to identify and action on other crimes or recoverable property tied to them.
- lesuorac 4y ago
  > (2) prosecuting on such a case early is much less likely to foreclose other charges or obstruct attempts to identify and action on other crimes or recoverable property tied to them. Please go into this more. Lets say an omniscient person can come up with 40 charges that could be brought against SBF. You the prosecutor only know of 3 of them right now. Why can't you charge SBF for the 3 you have, convict them, and while SBF is in prison figure out the other 37? While SBFs in prison I bet its 1000% times harder for him to hide stuff from you too. With programming, it's commit early and commit often. Why is the prosector trying to make a giant pull request over 3 years to shove through in a year? Target the low hanging fruit for a quick commit and get the restitution process going.
  - ajross 4y ago
    Programming doesn't have a fifth amendment double jeopardy clause. Imagine if your debugger locked you out if you failed to fix the bug on your first try. Prosecutors are conservative because our justice system is (for very good reasons) tilted strongly against the state, in favor of the accused. We've collectively decided that it's better on the whole to have some criminals go without punishment than to tolerate innocent people in jail. (Pause while everyone points out that innocent people get locked up all the time, which is true, but it's still something the constitution is trying to prevent)
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > You the prosecutor only know of 3 of them right now. Why can’t you charge SBF for the 3 you have, convict them, and while SBF is in prison figure out the other 37? If any of the 3 would be lesser included offenses of any of the 37, those of the 37 for which that would be true could not later be charged, because the application of the federal Constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy forecloses this. For state charges, this is may be even more restrictive, as many states exclude not only conviction in the same or separate prosecutions for “nested” offenses, but also preclude separate prosecutions after a conviction for the same conduct, or in some jurisdictions even for distinct conduct that forms part of the same transaction. > With programming, it’s commit early and commit often Criminal justice is very much not programming, and even to the extent they are loosely analogous, initiating a criminal prosecution isn’t analogous to a commit. EDIT: To make the reasoning more explicit, since even initiating such a prosecution impacts liberty interests, there a very significant reasons for rules against repeated add-on prosecution that states have, and there are even stronger reasons (because criminal penalties for greater offenses necessarily encompass any lesser included offenses) for the federal rule (also applicable to the states) preventing cumulative punishment for both a lesser included offense and an offense within which it is included.

_jal 4y ago

This is almost off-topic. Skip if that bugs you. It is interesting to think about the effect that coalitions of criminals have had on the criminal justice system. Impulsive face-punchers don't tend to have sophisticated attorneys, and at least many of them probably agree that face-punching should be illegal in general, even if they had their reasons in this case. Contrast with finance criminals. Many of them probably convince themselves they're in the right, and they have access to the best justice money can buy. So over time they've managed to raise the costs of prosecution so high that we see this - it takes multiple years to nail down a solid prosecution. There are other aspects of course - some financial crime really is difficult to prove. But what I mean is that if all the accounting frauds before Ken Lay had depended on overworked public defenders, prosecuting him would have been much simpler.

retconn 4y ago

>This is almost off-topic. Skip if that bugs you No, you're completely on topic : the phenomenon you describe of privatised systematic perpetrator defensive hurdles is called self regulation, which is precisely what SBF was most avidly lobbying for.