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> “Judges, for example, measure the sincerity of a defendant’s allocution at sentencing,” Roberts wrote Sunday. “Nuance matters: Much can turn on a shaking hand
by darkerside 3y ago
> “Judges, for example, measure the sincerity of a defendant’s allocution at sentencing,” Roberts wrote Sunday. “Nuance matters: Much can turn on a shaking hand, a quivering voice, a change of inflection, a bead of sweat, a moment’s hesitation, a fleeting break in eye contact. And most people still trust humans more than machines to perceive and draw the right inferences from these clues.”
I'm not saying machines would do better, but this really lays bare how ridiculous the justice system is.
- watwut 3y agoYeah, it sounds like explanation why machine can be better after all, if it does not add or remove years of punishment based on sweat, moment of hesitation or fleeting break in eye contact.
- ryanklee 3y agoShouldn't a person's admittance of guilt and the sincerity of that admittance be a factor in determining their sentence?
- johngladtj 3y agoNo. You should not incentivise people to lie, or give a specific answer. Nor should you incentivise innocent people to proclaim their guilt
- ryanklee 3y agoI didn't say we should, I asked if someone's admittance of guilt and their sincerity is relevant to sentencing measures.
- johngladtj 3y agoIf it's relevant then people will be incentivise to lie to get better outcomes for themselves
- kaibee 3y agoNo, I don't think acting ability should factor into sentencing decisions.
- ryanklee 3y agoThat wasn't my question.
- cma 3y agoSomeone with low affect likely just gets seen as insincere, and a professional actor gets impunity?
- ceejayoz 3y agoHumans are not well equipped to accurately judge sincerity.
- ryanklee 3y agoThat has no relevance to my question. What I want to know is if admittance of guilt and sincerity is at all relevant to sentencing, not about whether a particular mechanism is fit to determine either point.
- ceejayoz 3y agoIf we can't accurately assess it, it should absolutely not be considered in sentencing. It's like giving someone a longer jail sentence for having a blue aura instead of a pink one.
- ryanklee 3y agoI think it's rather unfair to say that we can't accurately judge sincerity unless you talk about levels of precision. Because, for instance, accuracy in judgment of sincerity is a basic requirement of getting through any day for any human. In other words, we can certainly judge it accurately enough for many purposes.
- ceejayoz 3y agoGullible people and great liars abound. People fall for "we're the IRS and we need you to buy some iTunes gift cards" all the time, the entire country is deeply split on what's "fake news" and what isn't; we're clearly not cut out for these assessments. Normal life works reasonably OK, but sentencing isn't a "normal life" scenario; it's the sort of thing that sends people to jail wrongly for decades fairly frequently.
- ryanklee 3y agoYes, all of which sentencing is also based on human judgement of persons character, witness statements, expert statements, presentation of evidence, etc etc Judgement of sincerity is woven into the entirety of court procedures. Why would you exclude this additional relevant data point regarding sincerity of allocution?
- watwut 3y agoThese are not measures of sincerity. They are pop science at best, gut feelings based on nothing at worst.
- willcipriano 3y agoWorse yet, many of the judges are very elderly and don't have the vision to pick up on any of these things.
- twoodfin 3y agoIt’s not ridiculous, unless you have something so much better to propose that would put it in that light. For millennia, systems of justice—including the one Chief Justice Roberts heads—have been based in no small part on human judgment rather than ironclad objective rules. In a criminal context this leads to leniency as often as harshness. A purely mechanistic justice system would, I suspect, rapidly be seen to be not worthy of the name.
- johngladtj 3y ago>For millennia, systems of justice—including the one Chief Justice Roberts heads—have been based in no small part on human judgment rather than ironclad objective rules. In a criminal context this leads to leniency as often as harshness. And that's the entire problem. A priori certainty of legal outcomes isn't a problem to be "fixed", it's a basic requirement of any reliable legal system. If purely mechanical solutions lead to bad outcomes, that's a good thing! It means those solutions can be acknowledged as bad and removed or reworked. If instead you arbitrarily make the pain go away because it's convenient you're stuck with a bad solution.
- jncfhnb 3y agoHow can you write that a system based on human judgement leads to leniency as often as harshness and call that good? That sounds like the definition of unfair bias.
- brookst 3y agoNot the person you’re replying to, but I did not read that as a claim that variance due to judgment is the best possible outcome, just that it is a less bad outcome than the variances and abuses that rigid, mechanistic “justice” produces.
- lupusreal 3y agoBecause leniency when applying the law is often the most just course of action. Consider for instance a battered spouse who murders their abuser. Murder laws don't have built in leniency for every conceivable mitigating circumstance because it is expected that judges and juries will decide when it's appropriate to be lenient on a case-by-case basis.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]