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Sure. The Founders envisioned an extremely weak criminal justice system, especially for "their class of people." Defendants were given extremely strong protect

Sure. The Founders envisioned an extremely weak criminal justice system, especially for "their class of people." Defendants were given extremely strong protections, and convictions were the exception, not the rule. The Founders were more concerned about facing a duel than a criminal conviction. So they added other mechanisms for presidential accountability: impeachment, elections, and the weakness of the office. These other mechanisms have become weaker and weaker, while the criminal justice system has become stronger and stronger. Impeachment's happen, but not Senate convictions. The political parties have created a duopoloy on power which allow them to run weak candidates. Congress is less and less willing to hold presidents of their own party accountable. Dueling is prohibited not just criminally, but constitionally in most states. At the same time the criminal justice system is becoming more and more powerful. Convictions are in the high 90%. Juries are very weak and at the mercy of powerful prosecutors. The Constitution simply didn't envision a situation where the criminal justice system is more likley to hold someone accountable than an election or Congress. Impeachment, elections, and duels no longer deter bad conduct. Convictions do. So we have an edge case: a system that can only hold an ex-President accountable via a criminal charge. Edge cases are weird. They create "sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't" situations. And that's where we are now.

chadash 2y ago
> Convictions are in the high 90%. Juries are very weak and at the mercy of powerful prosecutors. This is a bit misleading. DAs have latitude about what to prosecute and if they don't think they can win, they dont have to bring it to court.
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  And even if they do think they can probably win, they'll usually leverage that into a plea deal.
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    And even when the case is a sure loser they'll often leverage that into a plea deal too, especially if the defendant is being held in pretrial detention.
glial 2y ago
> The Founders were more concerned about facing a duel than a criminal conviction. This is because "their class of people" were an honor-based society, in which reputation was the currency of power, and people with honor were expected to prioritize the national interests above their own. That is no longer the case. In other words, there hasn't been a duel. So there should be another enforcement mechanism for making Presidents prioritize the nation above themselves that actually works.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 2y ago
  A combination of meaningful threat to life, assets, family or freedom is what the duel accomplished. With the courts packed by unqualified partisan hacks it seems we’re facing an unprecedented danger to democracy and the American experiment.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    I'm sorry, I can't read "unqualified partisan hacks" uttered as a phrase by someone I assume believes that "emanations from penumbras" qualifies as good constitutional law. How exactly do you think a qualified, non-partisan judge should decide cases?
    - hobs 2y ago
      Generally a good first approach is to recuse oneself when conflicts of interest appear, a significant portion of this court has failed this test.
      - skissane 2y ago
        “Conflicts of interest” are often in the eye of the beholder. And my impression is a lot of people’s concern about this is very slanted by their pre-existing ideological commitments. You will hear the same people arguing that Justice Alito should l recuse himself due to his wife’s taste in flags, but Judge Merchan shouldn’t recuse himself from Trump’s trial and sentencing after having been revealed to have made (trivial) donations to anti-Trump political campaigns. It sure looks to me like people prioritising maximising the odds of their desired outcome over consistent principle.
jameshart 2y ago
This is an excellent point. Under the current ‘history and tradition’ doctrine of the Supreme Court the moment in the debate last week where Biden challenged Trump to a round of golf on condition he carry his own bag should be treated as a challenge to a duel. That is after all how the founders would have settled this sort of matter.
qarl 2y ago
> Convictions are in the high 90%. Juries are very weak and at the mercy of powerful prosecutors. If that were true then defendants would waive their right to a jury trial. They don't. The conviction rate is high because prosecutors don't bring weak cases.
- czl 2y ago
  That and juries are not informed they have a right to judge not just the defendant but also the fairness of the laws involved. Indeed anyone that mentions or admits this is removed from juries.
- dTal 2y ago
  >If that were true then defendants would waive their right to a jury trial. They don't. They do, overwhelmingly. Plea bargaining accounts for almost 98 percent of federal convictions and 95 percent of state convictions in the United States.
  - qarl 2y ago
    Well, no. That's a different situation. My point still stands. For cases that go to trial, if they jury is just a pawn for prosecution, the defendants would choose a bench trial. They do not, so this argument does not hold water.
    - pyuser583 2y ago
      I knew a guy who was charged with a crime he didn’t commit, and had strong proof of his innocence. He was advised to do a bench trial. The idea was the evidence was so strongly in his favor that only an idiot would find him guilty, and a judge was less likely to be an idiot than a jury. It worked out splendidly. The trial didn’t even finish. The judge halted the trial half way through and “advised” the prosecution to drop charges, which they did. This is of course not representative. But if I were ever in the same spot, I’d seriously consider a bench trial.
      - 2y ago
Red_Leaves_Flyy 2y ago
>The Constitution simply didn't envision a situation where the criminal justice system is more likley to hold someone accountable than an election or Congress The constitution didn’t envision a sprawling legal services market to secure the freedom of criminals despite overwhelming evidence while poor people are enslaved like cattle in a nakedly classist and racist exercise of state power to maintain class divisions that afford the empowered unearned wealth power and privilege by virtue of birth. Speaking of trends here-exceptions occur and get held up as some gotcha that only further betrays ignorance of the system and actually represents the calculated tokenization of the oppressed to act as a shield to scrutiny.
slongfield 2y ago
For what it's worth, conviction rates are not in the high 90%s. The DOJ has a high conviction rate, at 93%, but Federal cases are the minority of cases in the USA. Most cases are state-level, and the conviction rates vary pretty significantly (E.g., California has a conviction rate of ~65% for property crime: Table 6 of https://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/lr-2019-JC-disposition-of-criminal-cases-race-ethnicity-pc1170_45.pdf https://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/lr-2019-JC-disposition-o... )
LarsDu88 2y ago
The solution is simple. When one of the two old men besmirches the other, they shall challenge each other to a gentlemanly duel. The survivor, if any shall become the next president. Owing to the advanced age of both candidates and the advancements in firearms technology, the dueling weapons will be full auto drum magazine AR-15 assault rifles as per the American tradition.
- sramam 2y ago
  I am torn between marveling at the satire of this comment and crying at the truth it reveals
dudinax 2y ago
That's utter garbage. Juries acquit people when the cases are weak and defendents have the same rights they always have had probably more. Prosecutors don't go to trial unless they have a solid case especially against a former pres.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  I very rarely see prosecutors drop cases before trial. There's not much incentive for them to drop a case as only a tiny percent of cases go to trial (most are plea deals). It's often worth rolling the dice for the prosecution.
shiroiushi 2y ago
So America needs to re-legalize duels then?

chadash 2y ago

> Convictions are in the high 90%. Juries are very weak and at the mercy of powerful prosecutors. This is a bit misleading. DAs have latitude about what to prosecute and if they don't think they can win, they dont have to bring it to court.

BobaFloutist 2y ago
And even if they do think they can probably win, they'll usually leverage that into a plea deal.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  And even when the case is a sure loser they'll often leverage that into a plea deal too, especially if the defendant is being held in pretrial detention.

glial 2y ago

> The Founders were more concerned about facing a duel than a criminal conviction. This is because "their class of people" were an honor-based society, in which reputation was the currency of power, and people with honor were expected to prioritize the national interests above their own. That is no longer the case. In other words, there hasn't been a duel. So there should be another enforcement mechanism for making Presidents prioritize the nation above themselves that actually works.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 2y ago
A combination of meaningful threat to life, assets, family or freedom is what the duel accomplished. With the courts packed by unqualified partisan hacks it seems we’re facing an unprecedented danger to democracy and the American experiment.
- rayiner 2y ago
  I'm sorry, I can't read "unqualified partisan hacks" uttered as a phrase by someone I assume believes that "emanations from penumbras" qualifies as good constitutional law. How exactly do you think a qualified, non-partisan judge should decide cases?
  - hobs 2y ago
    Generally a good first approach is to recuse oneself when conflicts of interest appear, a significant portion of this court has failed this test.
    - skissane 2y ago
      “Conflicts of interest” are often in the eye of the beholder. And my impression is a lot of people’s concern about this is very slanted by their pre-existing ideological commitments. You will hear the same people arguing that Justice Alito should l recuse himself due to his wife’s taste in flags, but Judge Merchan shouldn’t recuse himself from Trump’s trial and sentencing after having been revealed to have made (trivial) donations to anti-Trump political campaigns. It sure looks to me like people prioritising maximising the odds of their desired outcome over consistent principle.

jameshart 2y ago

This is an excellent point. Under the current ‘history and tradition’ doctrine of the Supreme Court the moment in the debate last week where Biden challenged Trump to a round of golf on condition he carry his own bag should be treated as a challenge to a duel. That is after all how the founders would have settled this sort of matter.

qarl 2y ago

> Convictions are in the high 90%. Juries are very weak and at the mercy of powerful prosecutors. If that were true then defendants would waive their right to a jury trial. They don't. The conviction rate is high because prosecutors don't bring weak cases.

czl 2y ago
That and juries are not informed they have a right to judge not just the defendant but also the fairness of the laws involved. Indeed anyone that mentions or admits this is removed from juries.
dTal 2y ago
>If that were true then defendants would waive their right to a jury trial. They don't. They do, overwhelmingly. Plea bargaining accounts for almost 98 percent of federal convictions and 95 percent of state convictions in the United States.
- qarl 2y ago
  Well, no. That's a different situation. My point still stands. For cases that go to trial, if they jury is just a pawn for prosecution, the defendants would choose a bench trial. They do not, so this argument does not hold water.
  - pyuser583 2y ago
    I knew a guy who was charged with a crime he didn’t commit, and had strong proof of his innocence. He was advised to do a bench trial. The idea was the evidence was so strongly in his favor that only an idiot would find him guilty, and a judge was less likely to be an idiot than a jury. It worked out splendidly. The trial didn’t even finish. The judge halted the trial half way through and “advised” the prosecution to drop charges, which they did. This is of course not representative. But if I were ever in the same spot, I’d seriously consider a bench trial.
    - 2y ago

Red_Leaves_Flyy 2y ago

>The Constitution simply didn't envision a situation where the criminal justice system is more likley to hold someone accountable than an election or Congress The constitution didn’t envision a sprawling legal services market to secure the freedom of criminals despite overwhelming evidence while poor people are enslaved like cattle in a nakedly classist and racist exercise of state power to maintain class divisions that afford the empowered unearned wealth power and privilege by virtue of birth. Speaking of trends here-exceptions occur and get held up as some gotcha that only further betrays ignorance of the system and actually represents the calculated tokenization of the oppressed to act as a shield to scrutiny.

slongfield 2y ago

For what it's worth, conviction rates are not in the high 90%s. The DOJ has a high conviction rate, at 93%, but Federal cases are the minority of cases in the USA. Most cases are state-level, and the conviction rates vary pretty significantly (E.g., California has a conviction rate of ~65% for property crime: Table 6 of https://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/lr-2019-JC-disposition-of-criminal-cases-race-ethnicity-pc1170_45.pdf https://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/lr-2019-JC-disposition-o... )

LarsDu88 2y ago

The solution is simple. When one of the two old men besmirches the other, they shall challenge each other to a gentlemanly duel. The survivor, if any shall become the next president. Owing to the advanced age of both candidates and the advancements in firearms technology, the dueling weapons will be full auto drum magazine AR-15 assault rifles as per the American tradition.

sramam 2y ago
I am torn between marveling at the satire of this comment and crying at the truth it reveals

dudinax 2y ago

That's utter garbage. Juries acquit people when the cases are weak and defendents have the same rights they always have had probably more. Prosecutors don't go to trial unless they have a solid case especially against a former pres.

qingcharles 2y ago
I very rarely see prosecutors drop cases before trial. There's not much incentive for them to drop a case as only a tiny percent of cases go to trial (most are plea deals). It's often worth rolling the dice for the prosecution.

shiroiushi 2y ago

So America needs to re-legalize duels then?