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> [Public Defenders'] work is as noble as ours. But we have an obligation to fight like hell on behalf of the People. It should go without saying that this must

> [Public Defenders'] work is as noble as ours. But we have an obligation to fight like hell on behalf of the People. It should go without saying that this must be done ethically and evenhandedly. I was on Jury Duty last year and every day I had to walk past a tiny decrepit Public Defender office and then past sprawling, spotless floors of Attorney General offices. I probably have the wrong terms, the specifics are fading, but the general meaning of the signs seemed clear enough. What a shameful disgrace. Society doesn't have a thumb on the scale, it has a foot on the scale. No, I don't think shifting the extreme imbalance even further towards Prosecution is going to fix crime. Maybe things are different in Chicago, but I'd want to hear from Defense before just believing a rant from Prosecution.

ddingus 3y ago
Yup. Anyone charged with a crime would be well advised to do whatever it takes to seek council directly, as in finding a way to pay for it. Public defenders are doing noble work. They are also denied the resources necessary to perform that work with the same zeal seen in the prosecution side of the justice system.
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  No, we are not. I’ve worked as a defense attorney. It is was terrifying to see how much leeway and how many extra chances were given to violent criminals. The DAs job is impossible.
  - hgomersall 3y ago
    Maybe you should try being a defendant to actually get a balanced perspective (a good thing to try would be to get yourself arrested for something that you didn't do but is just your word against theirs). For extra experience try doing that whilst being black. For reference, I have being on the receiving end of an entirely unwarranted accusation for a trivial crime in the UK (which is often held up as being a good example of a fair system). It occupied an unbelievable amount of headspace and was hugely stressful. I'm educated, reasonably well off and white. The system felt very very powerful and unpredictable from my position and I was never even arrested (just accused, which is enough for the police to treat you as a perpetrator). If the prosecution had happened and had gone anywhere (it didn't) and I'd been convicted I would have got a small fine, but I was still far too worried that my innocence was insufficient to protect me. All the way through you're treated as though you are guilty, and the accuser is the "victim". Honestly, the only victim in the whole sorry affair was me. I can't imagine what it must feel like if you're on the receiving end of an unwarranted accusation for a more serious crime. Especially if everyone thinks you're guilty because your have priors and "look guilty".
  - 93po 3y ago
    People who commit violent crimes are almost always a victim of a fucked up system themselves that led them to those actions. Putting them in prison perpetuates and worsens the cycle. It is still less harm on the whole to give them leeway and extra chances. The solution is fixing the social safety net for the poor and disadvantaged. Not throwing people in prison for trying to survive and making mistakes along the way.
    - anthony_d 3y ago
      That looks a lot like satire but I can’t quite tell. So, to clarify: if someone is clearly a violent criminal, are you really saying we should feel bad for them and assume they are a victim of “the system”? Do we drop charges? What’s the actionable plan for reducing violent crime?
      - 93po 3y ago
        > are you really saying we should feel bad for them and assume they are a victim of “the system”? Yes, absolutely. 100%. We should feel bad for people who find themselves in circumstances and life experiences that have driven them to violence. We should feel bad for sociopaths who inflict violence because the life and experience of a sociopath is objectively a sad thing. We should feel bad for non-sociopaths who were driven to desperation and extremes due to a lack of healthy coping mechanisms for stress and anger or anything else. > Do we drop charges? What’s the actionable plan for reducing violent crime? My comment isn't suggesting that dropping charges is going to fix the problem - it's the opposite. It's that we need a system of accountability that is a net-positive for society. Incarceration as-is in the US worsens the problem severely. It needs reform to be a place of actual rehabilitation and many people who need rehabilitation due to violent offenses absolutely need to be forced into doing so. But it needs to not be at the expense of their families, it needs to not further generational harm, and it needs to not harm the people being incarcerated. Harm for harm is a fucked up concept that doesn't help anyone except shallow people who crave a sense of justice, who are themselves inflicting violence too. People should leave prison in a better position than when they entered (in terms of dealing with their life better and in more healthy ways) and the opposite is happening. We're actively harming peaceful society with prisons today.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    With conviction rates being about 75% depending on jurisdiction and grading, I'd say it doesn't seem so impossible.
  - ddingus 3y ago
    Well, the Defense attorneys I know differ in their opinion of public defenders. And defense in general? Necessary, unless we intend on jailing lots of people who do not deserve it. I also feel we need to break this down too. There is a big difference between felony violent criminals and the average Joe who gets caught up in a resisting or interfering charge.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    This you? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016632 Bluntly, I think you're lying.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- iudqnolq 3y ago
  Not necessarily. A PD might well be much better than an affordable private counsel. It's definitely better to go private if you're rich, it depends on specifics if you aren't.
  - ddingus 3y ago
    Maybe. I have not seen that in my experience. But, it is a big nation. Perhaps this varies considerably.
  - ddingus 3y ago
    You know when I faced this I called around and talked to three attorneys. Your comment may be more accurate then I realized at first. One attorney I talked to was relatively inexpensive but I can tell I had a grudge against the cops and the justice system in general. They were not going to be a good pick The second attorney I talked to said for $10,000 they can make this all go away. And they wouldn't file a tort. That seems more like a formalized punishment that I choose than justice. And the last one was 2500 bucks she said I needed a trial told me why and that's the one I picked and it was a good experience overall. We filed the tort I got my money back and it was a couple of years and I came out clean. So yeah, it does depend on specifics. And you're right to say that people shouldn't rule the public defender out. Good comment.
whartung 3y ago
The applicable quote I heard once is “while you are presumed innocent, the system is designed to convict you”. I think I heard that on some random YT video I’ve seen through the years.
- bradleyjg 3y ago
  As purely factual matter do you believe that most people arrested have or haven’t actually committed a crime?
  - giantg2 3y ago
    How does that apply? I don't think there's a good way to measure that. If you go by conviction rate, it's something like 75% +/-10% depending on jurisdiction and grading. Then you'd have to adjust for the 2-10% of wrongful convictions for the incarcerated. Then adjust for the people who commited a crime but were not convicted, but I haven't seen stats on that.
    - bradleyjg 3y ago
      How does that apply? Even if we all agree that minimizing type I errors (false positives) is of paramount importance, the optimal design of the system depends heavily on the true positive rate at the top of the funnel.
      - giantg2 3y ago
        But then you need to go a step higher and look at how many crimes have been cleared. Even if we have a high true positive rate at the arrest stage, the system may not be working well if the overall clearance rate is low.
    - iudqnolq 3y ago
      You can't use the results of the system to validate the system. Your 2-10% wrongful conviction rate matches the rate capital defendants are legally found to have been wrongfully convicted[3]. They're a good subset to focus on because they're the cases get the most resources and attention, and are the only category of defendants who regularly get volunteer lawyers for postconviction review. But that can't prove that the system doesn't wrongfully convict at a higher rate. If public defenders are underfunded that will reduce their ability to prove wrongful convictions, for example. Note that a successful postconviction petition is much harder without a good record established by the original trial counsel. The Glossip case is a good example of how "innocence is not enough" to get exoneration. (Your stats are also off by a bit. The average state conviction rate is around 80%, but there's way more than 10% variance. California is up at 94% while Florida is at 55%. [1] Meanwhile the feds are all the way up at 99.6%. [2] [1]: Table B-1 on https://www.paperprisons.org/statistics.html https://www.paperprisons.org/statistics.html [2]: https://www.doarlaw.com/blog/2021/04/what-you-should-know-about-the-federal-governments-conviction-rate/ https://www.doarlaw.com/blog/2021/04/what-you-should-know-ab... [3]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1306417111 https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1306417111 Edit: I forgot cite 3
masklinn 3y ago
> Maybe things are different in Chicago, but I'd want to hear from Defense before just believing a rant from Prosecution. Given the contents of the rant, especially as it pertains to bail reform, I don’t think it is.
djha-skin 3y ago
I wouldn't call this well thought out letter a rant. Further he is putting his money where his mouth is: he is leaving so that his son can live in a safer situation. Your experience about jury duty is important, but it was not in Chicago. I grew up there. I get what he's talking about. Depending on the neighborhood, things can get very unsafe very quickly. No one talks about "what a disgrace" when they can hear gunfire three blocks away.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  I would be interested to hear where he is moving to, and how the safety of Chicago compares.
cat_plus_plus 3y ago
Then fund public defenders better, this has nothing to do with abolishing bail or releasing people who need to be locked up for a good reason. Free representation may be important for individual justice, but impact on public safety is not huge. Vast majority of those arrested are guilty of something, what some deserve is reduced charges that indicate what they have actually done, not what can be pinned on them without a good lawyer.
soderfoo 3y ago
Worked at the public defender's office prior to working as a developer. Despite the salary schedules being the same (or similar), the State will always have more resources; they have forensic labs, and an army of investigators. The multifaceted mission of a prosecutor's office necessitates the resource disparity. The Public Defender's priorities are much more focused; (1) provide criminal defense services for those in need, mainly the indigent, (2) influence criminal justice policy through by identifying judiciable appellate matters; and, (3) working with private defense attorneys to challenge prosecutorial policy on a broader level. With offers from various state attorneys general and public defender offices, I selected the latter for the more focused mission. Yes, resources were scarce, dollars had to be selectively spent on experts to get the most bang for our buck. But you would be surprised at what a feisty PD can do with a handful of retired state police investigators to assist.
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  > The Public Defender's priorities are much more focused; (1) provide criminal defense services for those in need, mainly the indigent, (2) influence criminal justice policy through by identifying judiciable appellate matters; and, (3) working with private defense attorneys to challenge prosecutorial policy on a broader level. I would call this broad. How is the prosecutor's mission more multifaceted?
flerovium 3y ago
It's not zero-sum: the plaintiff and the defense can both do their job. This is the fundamental misunderstanding of anti-plaintiff reform. Justice isn't served when neither the plaintiff nor defense are doing anything.

ddingus 3y ago

Yup. Anyone charged with a crime would be well advised to do whatever it takes to seek council directly, as in finding a way to pay for it. Public defenders are doing noble work. They are also denied the resources necessary to perform that work with the same zeal seen in the prosecution side of the justice system.

Slava_Propanei 3y ago
No, we are not. I’ve worked as a defense attorney. It is was terrifying to see how much leeway and how many extra chances were given to violent criminals. The DAs job is impossible.
- hgomersall 3y ago
  Maybe you should try being a defendant to actually get a balanced perspective (a good thing to try would be to get yourself arrested for something that you didn't do but is just your word against theirs). For extra experience try doing that whilst being black. For reference, I have being on the receiving end of an entirely unwarranted accusation for a trivial crime in the UK (which is often held up as being a good example of a fair system). It occupied an unbelievable amount of headspace and was hugely stressful. I'm educated, reasonably well off and white. The system felt very very powerful and unpredictable from my position and I was never even arrested (just accused, which is enough for the police to treat you as a perpetrator). If the prosecution had happened and had gone anywhere (it didn't) and I'd been convicted I would have got a small fine, but I was still far too worried that my innocence was insufficient to protect me. All the way through you're treated as though you are guilty, and the accuser is the "victim". Honestly, the only victim in the whole sorry affair was me. I can't imagine what it must feel like if you're on the receiving end of an unwarranted accusation for a more serious crime. Especially if everyone thinks you're guilty because your have priors and "look guilty".
- 93po 3y ago
  People who commit violent crimes are almost always a victim of a fucked up system themselves that led them to those actions. Putting them in prison perpetuates and worsens the cycle. It is still less harm on the whole to give them leeway and extra chances. The solution is fixing the social safety net for the poor and disadvantaged. Not throwing people in prison for trying to survive and making mistakes along the way.
  - anthony_d 3y ago
    That looks a lot like satire but I can’t quite tell. So, to clarify: if someone is clearly a violent criminal, are you really saying we should feel bad for them and assume they are a victim of “the system”? Do we drop charges? What’s the actionable plan for reducing violent crime?
    - 93po 3y ago
      > are you really saying we should feel bad for them and assume they are a victim of “the system”? Yes, absolutely. 100%. We should feel bad for people who find themselves in circumstances and life experiences that have driven them to violence. We should feel bad for sociopaths who inflict violence because the life and experience of a sociopath is objectively a sad thing. We should feel bad for non-sociopaths who were driven to desperation and extremes due to a lack of healthy coping mechanisms for stress and anger or anything else. > Do we drop charges? What’s the actionable plan for reducing violent crime? My comment isn't suggesting that dropping charges is going to fix the problem - it's the opposite. It's that we need a system of accountability that is a net-positive for society. Incarceration as-is in the US worsens the problem severely. It needs reform to be a place of actual rehabilitation and many people who need rehabilitation due to violent offenses absolutely need to be forced into doing so. But it needs to not be at the expense of their families, it needs to not further generational harm, and it needs to not harm the people being incarcerated. Harm for harm is a fucked up concept that doesn't help anyone except shallow people who crave a sense of justice, who are themselves inflicting violence too. People should leave prison in a better position than when they entered (in terms of dealing with their life better and in more healthy ways) and the opposite is happening. We're actively harming peaceful society with prisons today.
- giantg2 3y ago
  With conviction rates being about 75% depending on jurisdiction and grading, I'd say it doesn't seem so impossible.
- ddingus 3y ago
  Well, the Defense attorneys I know differ in their opinion of public defenders. And defense in general? Necessary, unless we intend on jailing lots of people who do not deserve it. I also feel we need to break this down too. There is a big difference between felony violent criminals and the average Joe who gets caught up in a resisting or interfering charge.
- flangola7 3y ago
  This you? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016632 Bluntly, I think you're lying.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
iudqnolq 3y ago
Not necessarily. A PD might well be much better than an affordable private counsel. It's definitely better to go private if you're rich, it depends on specifics if you aren't.
- ddingus 3y ago
  Maybe. I have not seen that in my experience. But, it is a big nation. Perhaps this varies considerably.
- ddingus 3y ago
  You know when I faced this I called around and talked to three attorneys. Your comment may be more accurate then I realized at first. One attorney I talked to was relatively inexpensive but I can tell I had a grudge against the cops and the justice system in general. They were not going to be a good pick The second attorney I talked to said for $10,000 they can make this all go away. And they wouldn't file a tort. That seems more like a formalized punishment that I choose than justice. And the last one was 2500 bucks she said I needed a trial told me why and that's the one I picked and it was a good experience overall. We filed the tort I got my money back and it was a couple of years and I came out clean. So yeah, it does depend on specifics. And you're right to say that people shouldn't rule the public defender out. Good comment.

whartung 3y ago

The applicable quote I heard once is “while you are presumed innocent, the system is designed to convict you”. I think I heard that on some random YT video I’ve seen through the years.

bradleyjg 3y ago
As purely factual matter do you believe that most people arrested have or haven’t actually committed a crime?
- giantg2 3y ago
  How does that apply? I don't think there's a good way to measure that. If you go by conviction rate, it's something like 75% +/-10% depending on jurisdiction and grading. Then you'd have to adjust for the 2-10% of wrongful convictions for the incarcerated. Then adjust for the people who commited a crime but were not convicted, but I haven't seen stats on that.
  - bradleyjg 3y ago
    How does that apply? Even if we all agree that minimizing type I errors (false positives) is of paramount importance, the optimal design of the system depends heavily on the true positive rate at the top of the funnel.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      But then you need to go a step higher and look at how many crimes have been cleared. Even if we have a high true positive rate at the arrest stage, the system may not be working well if the overall clearance rate is low.
  - iudqnolq 3y ago
    You can't use the results of the system to validate the system. Your 2-10% wrongful conviction rate matches the rate capital defendants are legally found to have been wrongfully convicted[3]. They're a good subset to focus on because they're the cases get the most resources and attention, and are the only category of defendants who regularly get volunteer lawyers for postconviction review. But that can't prove that the system doesn't wrongfully convict at a higher rate. If public defenders are underfunded that will reduce their ability to prove wrongful convictions, for example. Note that a successful postconviction petition is much harder without a good record established by the original trial counsel. The Glossip case is a good example of how "innocence is not enough" to get exoneration. (Your stats are also off by a bit. The average state conviction rate is around 80%, but there's way more than 10% variance. California is up at 94% while Florida is at 55%. [1] Meanwhile the feds are all the way up at 99.6%. [2] [1]: Table B-1 on https://www.paperprisons.org/statistics.html https://www.paperprisons.org/statistics.html [2]: https://www.doarlaw.com/blog/2021/04/what-you-should-know-about-the-federal-governments-conviction-rate/ https://www.doarlaw.com/blog/2021/04/what-you-should-know-ab... [3]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1306417111 https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1306417111 Edit: I forgot cite 3

masklinn 3y ago

> Maybe things are different in Chicago, but I'd want to hear from Defense before just believing a rant from Prosecution. Given the contents of the rant, especially as it pertains to bail reform, I don’t think it is.

djha-skin 3y ago

I wouldn't call this well thought out letter a rant. Further he is putting his money where his mouth is: he is leaving so that his son can live in a safer situation. Your experience about jury duty is important, but it was not in Chicago. I grew up there. I get what he's talking about. Depending on the neighborhood, things can get very unsafe very quickly. No one talks about "what a disgrace" when they can hear gunfire three blocks away.

rootusrootus 3y ago
I would be interested to hear where he is moving to, and how the safety of Chicago compares.

cat_plus_plus 3y ago

Then fund public defenders better, this has nothing to do with abolishing bail or releasing people who need to be locked up for a good reason. Free representation may be important for individual justice, but impact on public safety is not huge. Vast majority of those arrested are guilty of something, what some deserve is reduced charges that indicate what they have actually done, not what can be pinned on them without a good lawyer.

soderfoo 3y ago

Worked at the public defender's office prior to working as a developer. Despite the salary schedules being the same (or similar), the State will always have more resources; they have forensic labs, and an army of investigators. The multifaceted mission of a prosecutor's office necessitates the resource disparity. The Public Defender's priorities are much more focused; (1) provide criminal defense services for those in need, mainly the indigent, (2) influence criminal justice policy through by identifying judiciable appellate matters; and, (3) working with private defense attorneys to challenge prosecutorial policy on a broader level. With offers from various state attorneys general and public defender offices, I selected the latter for the more focused mission. Yes, resources were scarce, dollars had to be selectively spent on experts to get the most bang for our buck. But you would be surprised at what a feisty PD can do with a handful of retired state police investigators to assist.

pseudalopex 3y ago
> The Public Defender's priorities are much more focused; (1) provide criminal defense services for those in need, mainly the indigent, (2) influence criminal justice policy through by identifying judiciable appellate matters; and, (3) working with private defense attorneys to challenge prosecutorial policy on a broader level. I would call this broad. How is the prosecutor's mission more multifaceted?

flerovium 3y ago

It's not zero-sum: the plaintiff and the defense can both do their job. This is the fundamental misunderstanding of anti-plaintiff reform. Justice isn't served when neither the plaintiff nor defense are doing anything.