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We can both agree that transparency is the ideal and still recognize that’s not how incentives are aligned. In general, there are far more downsides and risks t

by bumby 3y ago

We can both agree that transparency is the ideal and still recognize that’s not how incentives are aligned. In general, there are far more downsides and risks to PDs regarding open sharing of information so they generally should be expected to act accordingly. E.g., I’d like to live in a works where lawyers are concerned with justice rather than “winning” but I’m not shocked when they act like winning is the goal.

kitchen_sink 3y ago
To be fair, the way legal system works means if a lawyer isn’t trying to ‘win’ your case, they’re not being a good lawyer - the assumption your client is innocent and you need to defend them is kinda fundamental. How morality informs the law and the ways lawyers should behave (i.e, should they phone it in/decline the case in if they disagree ethically) is interesting but more difficult as a topic
- bumby 3y ago
  I think this is mostly correct. Not only are lawyers who aren't trying to "win" not good lawyers, they are possibly breaching their oath. The lawyer has an obligation to try and win, but only after they have done a preliminary investigation before filing the case. There are also some guardrails; your lawyer can't lie about facts they've found out during that investigation, for example. If they do, they can be sanctioned for it. So they can't just try and win at all costs. With all that said, I think the original point still stands: in most people's minds, an 'ideal' system is one where all the lawyers are trying to seek justice. We just create a less-than-ideal adversarial system as a weak proxy for that given that human nature tends to make the ideal an unreliable expectation. I don't think that's fundamentally different from the PD transparency issue.
firebat45 3y ago
"Winning" as the goal is the only way lawyers can be truly objective. Otherwise the justice system turns into a popularity contest. The problem is that any single person/lawyer might ~think~ they know who is guilty or innocent, but they may very well be wrong. If a defense lawyer knows that his client is guilty, and successfully defends him anyways, that means there was not sufficient evidence to convict. Don't blame the defense lawyer for doing his job rigorously. Blame the prosecution for failing at theirs.
- bumby 3y ago
  >If a defense lawyer knows that his client is guilty, and successfully defends him anyways, that means there was not sufficient evidence to convict. This assumes the jury is rational and objective. There's plenty of behavioral psychology that goes against this, but a more glaring observation is that lawyers do not seek to maximize the objectivity of the jury during selection. It's usually very much the opposite. The goal of the district/trial court system is finding of fact. That's objective. Winning is about swaying the jury, which pulls on the levers of subjectivity. The system is, in part, designed to protect the rights of the innocent. Take the Blackstone ratio, which assumes it is better to let 10 guilty people go than convict 1 innocent. Verdicts cannot be purely objective in a system designed to be asymmetrical.
deadbeeves 3y ago
It seems to me that the incentives of police departments should be irrelevant, and that an organization with that much responsibility should not be able to simply refuse to give out at least certain types of information.
- bumby 3y ago
  Ignoring incentives takes us into a fairy-tale. Human behavior is largely governed by incentives. That’s partially my point. Ideally, yes, humans should act impartially and irrespective of incentive. That’s not the world we live in, though.
  - deadbeeves 3y ago
    I think you're missing my point. I'm saying they shouldn't be allowed to give their incentives higher priority. They should be more tightly scrutinized so that their incentives don't matter.

by bumby 3y ago

kitchen_sink 3y ago

To be fair, the way legal system works means if a lawyer isn’t trying to ‘win’ your case, they’re not being a good lawyer - the assumption your client is innocent and you need to defend them is kinda fundamental. How morality informs the law and the ways lawyers should behave (i.e, should they phone it in/decline the case in if they disagree ethically) is interesting but more difficult as a topic

bumby 3y ago
I think this is mostly correct. Not only are lawyers who aren't trying to "win" not good lawyers, they are possibly breaching their oath. The lawyer has an obligation to try and win, but only after they have done a preliminary investigation before filing the case. There are also some guardrails; your lawyer can't lie about facts they've found out during that investigation, for example. If they do, they can be sanctioned for it. So they can't just try and win at all costs. With all that said, I think the original point still stands: in most people's minds, an 'ideal' system is one where all the lawyers are trying to seek justice. We just create a less-than-ideal adversarial system as a weak proxy for that given that human nature tends to make the ideal an unreliable expectation. I don't think that's fundamentally different from the PD transparency issue.

firebat45 3y ago

"Winning" as the goal is the only way lawyers can be truly objective. Otherwise the justice system turns into a popularity contest. The problem is that any single person/lawyer might ~think~ they know who is guilty or innocent, but they may very well be wrong. If a defense lawyer knows that his client is guilty, and successfully defends him anyways, that means there was not sufficient evidence to convict. Don't blame the defense lawyer for doing his job rigorously. Blame the prosecution for failing at theirs.

bumby 3y ago
>If a defense lawyer knows that his client is guilty, and successfully defends him anyways, that means there was not sufficient evidence to convict. This assumes the jury is rational and objective. There's plenty of behavioral psychology that goes against this, but a more glaring observation is that lawyers do not seek to maximize the objectivity of the jury during selection. It's usually very much the opposite. The goal of the district/trial court system is finding of fact. That's objective. Winning is about swaying the jury, which pulls on the levers of subjectivity. The system is, in part, designed to protect the rights of the innocent. Take the Blackstone ratio, which assumes it is better to let 10 guilty people go than convict 1 innocent. Verdicts cannot be purely objective in a system designed to be asymmetrical.

deadbeeves 3y ago

It seems to me that the incentives of police departments should be irrelevant, and that an organization with that much responsibility should not be able to simply refuse to give out at least certain types of information.

bumby 3y ago
Ignoring incentives takes us into a fairy-tale. Human behavior is largely governed by incentives. That’s partially my point. Ideally, yes, humans should act impartially and irrespective of incentive. That’s not the world we live in, though.
- deadbeeves 3y ago
  I think you're missing my point. I'm saying they shouldn't be allowed to give their incentives higher priority. They should be more tightly scrutinized so that their incentives don't matter.