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Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. 90% of it is about extorting the population for funding for

Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. 90% of it is about extorting the population for funding for the courts and cops. If you can't afford a lawyer, they will provide you with a joke. And if you can afford a lawyer, now its just a question if you are willing to spend more on your lawyer than the state is hoping to extort from you. If you are, you will get off no problem, if you aren't or can't, most courts are going to try and screw you over. Oh whats that, you want to actually fight your charges in court? Now you better not lose because you are on the hook for all of the money the court wants to believe it cost them to prosecute you. Oh you don't want to risk that and just settle for whatever minor fine the law says you might owe? Don't worry, the courts will still fuck you with the addition in mandatory minimum court fees, additional fees and fines not stipulated under the law you broke, inflated "programs" that they get kickbacks from, and an even better excuse for cops in the future to try and screw you over by painting you as some wanton criminal. Just like healthcare, US justice is only for people with money.

almostgotcaught 2y ago
> Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. and just like re healthcare, this is the rub of communicating about this: 90% (to pick a random number out of thin air) of hn's target demo has had perfect/sheltered lives and has never come into contact with the "law". so they believe all the political and institutional rhetoric around it. the other 10% know it's a myth but fail to be able to convince the 90% because it would cause deep cognitive dissonance to accept that the US is deeply deeply inequitable and unfair and that it's not accidental but systematic. when i was younger i was in jail a handful of times (not prison thankfully). it's impossible to explain to someone how fucked up it is that's never experienced it. i stopped talking about the "justice system" a long time ago to co-workers/friends/etc and i don't tell anyone about my experience (only my wife knows).
- sorcerer-mar 2y ago
  I think the most inconvenient thing is actually that it’s both (largely) accidental and systematic. If you go looking for the source of “evil” breaking these systems, you’ll surely find a few bad folks purposely fucking it up, but removing them is almost certainly not going to fix anything. The vast majority of these systems’ behavior (good or bad) is effectively not driven by individuals whatsoever.
  - almostgotcaught 2y ago
    i wish people, before they commented on really really serious things, did a bit of reflection. > effectively not driven by individuals whatsoever the agency of individuals in totalitarian/authoritarian institutions has been examined/analyzed/written about at enormous length since the rise of fascism in the early 1900s. the short answer is you're wrong but i'm not going to try to convince you (you have to want to learn to be receptive). instead i recommend a book: https://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039881 https://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-C... EDIT: i'm being rate limited. to the guy below > how even a system full of good intentions you're just proving all of my points - you just can't fathom that the laws really were written with immoral intentions because "the law" is sacrosanct for you. i note again: the 13th amendment abolished slavery except for in prisons. it's written explicitly in section 1 (no bad faith interpretation needed). please discuss for me the "good intentions" therein.
    - sorcerer-mar 2y ago
      The vast majority of bad outcomes of big systems are not because they’re principally designed for evil and just lacking a few dissenters. Most systems today are intended to produce outcomes that most people agree would be good, and they’re full of people trying to achieve those outcomes, and yet reliably failing to produce them. There have been books written about this topic as well, but it’s not as flashy as comparing “every system that produces some bad results” to actual Nazis, I have to admit.
      - balamatom 2y ago
- newZWhoDis 2y ago
  It sounds like… you did get caught?
- psd1 2y ago
  Absolutely flabbergasted in the canteen one day when my colleague said, unironically, "well, if they stop you, you were probably doing _something_”... White South African Yes, working eyeballs
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Some other White South Africans have taken sides with the same political grouping (I don't know their position on that issue).
- SauciestGNU 2y ago
  Forget actual legal culpability, the range of outcomes in the American legal system ranges from cops killing you at worst, to the stacked legal system making you wish they had only killed you at best.
- redczar 2y ago
  Part of the problem as I see it is that we Americans are incredibly vengeful and seek retribution. We are particularly incensed when someone poorer (or otherwise different than us) seemingly gets a “light sentence”.
kubb 2y ago
Is this where the whole Europe bashing on social media comes from? US needing to believe that a better society, rule of law, social services isn’t real in Europe and impossible in general?
- SauciestGNU 2y ago
  Not only that, but it explains the disdain for Europe in the current American government. European society proves that Americans could have true freedom and quality of life if it weren't for corporations and oligarchs effectively owning our government. Fascists hate a counterexample.
  - ranger_danger 2y ago
    Seems like "they hate us for our freedom!" has done a complete 180 as of late.
    - SauciestGNU 2y ago
      Yes and it's verifiable via the leaked signal messages from VP Vance and SecDef Hegseth.
    - watwut 2y ago
      Like US is supporting fascist moments in Europe and sight heiling.
  - tpm 2y ago
    Corporations and oligarchs effectively own European governments too. Just possibly a bit less than in the US.
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      They own European governments far more. They just have several hundred years of extra practice at being subtle.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
My understanding is the root of the evil is in our overcriminalisation of day to day life. Is this accurate? Or would reducing the prison population through reduced sentencing not alleviate the worst of the problems? (Reduced sentencing loads mean you can raise standards for court-appointed counsel, possibly ban plea deals, et cetera.)
- BrenBarn 2y ago
  I think it is less to with "overcriminalization" in the sense of legislation, and more to do with the enforcement process. In some sense I think we need more criminalization, in that the types of malfeasance described in the article (e.g., keeping people imprisoned beyond their sentence, failing to provide an attorney, etc.) should result in long jail sentences for the officials who perpetrated them. The problem is that in the US we have become accustomed to an enormous gap between the law and its implementation.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    You can’t add more criminal laws to deal with systematic refusal by law enforcement to obey and hold other law enforcement officials accountable for obeying existing law, because that relies on the same people whose behavior you are trying to correct to auddenly behave differently to have any effect. The US, in fact, has a comprehensive federal and civil and criminal prohibition applicable to such behavior (the prohibition on deprivation of rights under color of law and conspiracy against rights), but the criminal prohibition is consistently inadequately enforced, and the civil prohibiition has been neutered by applying qualified immunity against it, which arguably is inconsistent with the letter of the statute.
    - BrenBarn 2y ago
      There's some truth to that, but I think that changes in such laws have resulted in slight improvements over time. Also, passing such laws at a higher jurisdictional level can allow comparatively "good" people at that level to disrupt local bad behavior like the stuff in the article. There are also other kinds of legal changes that can help, like transparency requirements and bans on certain kinds of police union contract provisions. More controversially I think there should be laws that shift the burden of proof (something along the lines of "every police officer is assumed to be unfit for their job unless they affirmatively demonstrate otherwise"). I think one thing that is needed is a "viral" kind of law that criminalizes essentially all attempts to perpetuate, conceal, aid or abet the underlying malfeasance. So that if you can get some people wedged in who do want to do the right thing, they can bring the whole house crashing down by convicting the whole network of corrupt officials. Ultimately you're right though that there does need to be some cooperation from "inside the system". The question is just what can we do do lower that threshold.
chasil 2y ago
I agree that this is unfair, and far violates constitutional rights. I would willingly donate to their cause. However, mass violation of the constitutional rights of citizens seems to me the venue for a class action?
dguest 2y ago
You forgot that the prosecution will go over the top on charges, as bargaining chips for a plea deal. None of these would ever stick in a real court, but if you're facing sexual assault charges (and a lifetime on the sex offender registry) for allegedly peeing in a park, pleading guilty to a lesser crime sounds pretty good. Everyone has a right to a trial by jury in theory, but if you waste the prosecutor's time by exercising it it might just ruin your life.
- rafram 2y ago
  > if you're facing sexual assault charges (and a lifetime on the sex offender registry) for allegedly peeing in a park People repeat this anecdote all the time, but I'd challenge you to find a single person who has ever been put on the sex offender registry for nothing more than public urination. (Let alone being charged with sexual assault, which is nonsensical -- look up how that crime is defined in US law.)
  - 6stringmerc 2y ago
    Tarrant County. Mentally ill but competent to stand trial. I’m sure there’s more than one. Source: 1 year in lockup (solitary) with them, often criminal trespass or public urination charges.
    - rafram 2y ago
      Not sure what you mean. Are you referring to a specific case?
      - MSFT_Edging 2y ago
        This person's source is someone they spent a year in jail with. Cases this small probably don't get articles written about them often. That's why we have the phrase "falling through the cracks"
        rafram 2y ago
dguest 2y ago
Some defense lawyers have a flat rate (a few thousand USD) for drunk driving cases. They call up a few "experts" who can brandish a threat of paperwork at the prosecution and reliably get charges dropped to negligent operations or similar. So if you are in the know a bit of drunk driving is a 2k fine. If not, you loose your drivers license and likely your livelihood.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  Same as speeding tickets. Nobody who knows what's what and has even a little cash to spare gets an actual moving violation out of a speeding ticket for less than a crazy amount over the speed limit, unless somebody in the court system is pissed off at them. The reason is that a moving violation fucks up your insurance rates and costs a ton of money over time, so it ends up being in everyone's interest to pay a lawyer (takes a cut of what would have been paid in higher insurance rates) to ask their colleague's golfing buddy ("hey, Jim says your short game's getting better!") to accept a plea (less work, hooray!) for a non-moving violation that, gee, would you look at that, just happens to have a fine double what the speeding ticket would have (another cut of the would-have-been-higher-insurance-rates goes here) so sure, the city government and courts are perfectly happy with that arrangement.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  I almost never see any experts being called by the defense. It's practically unheard of except for the luckiest defendants or the ones with deep pockets. source: thousands of hours observing criminal courts
bryanrasmussen 2y ago
there are decent public defenders, but they have to sort of pick and choose how hard they will work for you, because of the unbearable case load. I knew a guy who if you were not a death penalty case you got the joke, and if you were a death penalty case you got the all out work his ass off to save you. He took a lot of death penalty cases.
A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
I agree 100%. I've written about this here before, but I've been involved in two civil lawsuits in my life. One was in the USA, the other was in mainland China. I should stress that I am an American, and I wasn't even in China when the lawsuit over there was moving along. The Chinese process was very fast -- it went before a judge who reached a verdict in something like ten months -- and it was extremely inexpensive. Total fees were less than $10k. What's more, the court attained the right outcome, and I won the case. Still better, the court itself enforced the verdict, and I was able to attain the monetary damages it decided were owed me. The US process was interminably slow. A year on, we were barely past the starting line. Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system. At that point bills far exceeded $150,000. I realized that I was looking at spending >$1M and taking five or ten years to fight the case, and, though I was sure I would have won in the end, decided that I had to settle and get the hell out. The US civil legal system is basically a game of financial attrition. This is why the big corporations seem to get away with whatever they want, whereas being dragged to court can be life-ruining for smaller entities and persons. I don't know how things are in Europe, and hope I never have to find out, but the Chinese civil system is truly something like 20x better than the US system. (>10x cheaper, >2-5x faster.)
- johnisgood 2y ago
  Pretty much what OP said, at least here in Hungary.
- lurk2 2y ago
  > Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system. It’s a part of most common law legal systems.
- lawn 2y ago
  > I don't know how things are in Europe, and hope I never have to find out In Sweden at least this level of insanity is only heard about as anecdotes online...
  - 2y ago
thaumasiotes 2y ago
I have a bigger conceptual problem with the workflow of: 1. The police are looking for someone. They arrest you, a second, different person. 2. They determine you are not the person they were looking for. 3. They bill you for their time.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  We once had a purse stolen out of a car (our bad, shouldn't have been left out there, and we left the car unlocked, total fuckup on our part). A credit card from it was used twice at a gas station (cameras galore) that is not near anything—except it's the last gas station on the route to the local, rural-located (little other reason to be out there) Amazon distribution center. We lived in a typical dead-end shitty suburban neighborhood where nobody ever passes through who doesn't live there, except delivery drivers. It was an Amazon delivery driver who stole it, I'm not even Sherlock Holmes and I figured that out in about two minutes with one CC statement and a Maps search. The cops took a report, didn't give a fuck about the fact that it'd almost certainly take take comically little work to catch the perp and informed us they didn't intend to even try, then... fucking charged us for a copy of the police report we needed for the CC companies. Definitely didn't feel protected, and only "served" in the sense of "you got served!" I can only assume resistance to the "defund the police" movement comes entirely from people who've never dealt with them. Ok, our issue was pretty minor, sure it was about the easiest damn case to investigate in all of history but they only have so many people—but I've got a half-dozen other stories like that, from employers, relatives, and friends, and they're all the same, even with much bigger-ticket and serial(!) thefts. They're completely useless, the amount I'm happy to pay them unless they significantly improve is zero dollars. That's before even factoring in their fucked-up "warrior culture", normalized rampant civil rights violations, and lots of murders. Like, putting aside the abuse, they're just goddamn useless at their supposed primary function.
  - mjevans 2y ago
    Reform is necessary. In a literal and figurative sense both. Reform the Police should be the message. Make the Police force live up to that old line "to serve and protect", to provide justice. Yeah, to get proper value out of a service it usually needs a little more funding, not less.
energy123 2y ago
System designed by lawyers is good for lawyers
CrossVR 2y ago
> Now you better not lose because you are on the hook for all of the money the court wants to believe it cost them to prosecute you. In a criminal case you aren't liable for the legal costs of the prosecution. I think you're confusing criminal court with civil court.
- treis 2y ago
  Many jurisdictions add fines for various parts of the process. Lab fees, probation fees, rehab fees, jail fees, and on and on. Some do even charge a prosecution fee to fund the district attorney.
nukem222 2y ago
Let's not forget how the Massachusetts AG (Carmen Ortiz) (hopefully) unintentionally drove Aaron Schwartz to suicide to protect the sanctity of elsevier's IP. Even our most obviously rotten institutions are placed on a higher pedestal than human life and recognizable justice.
- infinghxsg 2y ago
  [dead]
- geodel 2y ago
  So AGs are suppose to flout or ignore the laws as long offense is against a disliked company and defendant is an activist?
  - nukem222 2y ago
    [dead]
netcan 2y ago
> Just like healthcare, US justice is only for people with money. In most times and places, this is true. Ancient times, recent history, autocracies, democracies... Justice is expensive. Justice, and the legal college as an ideal often specifically negates this. Equality before the law. Blind justice, etc. That said... justice is inevitably ridden with contradiction, hypocrisy and whatnot. That's what justice is. Degrees vary, but the structure is usually constant. Say you are a ceo, fund manager or whatnot. You are in dispute with your employer over $10m of compensation. Your bonus, performance-based compensation. Now imagine that you are a normie, with a dispute over $10k. Those to legal processes are entirely dissimilar. One will have teams of lawyers, many proceedings. Completely different aspects of justice will come into play. It's a different justice. There's no way around this.
- nukem222 2y ago
  > In most times and places, this is true. Thankfully most of the instances of it not being true exist right now. Let's stay grounded in current reality or just agree not to discuss the topic. Saying "welp what do you expect" is downright worse than ignoring it entirely.
  - netcan 2y ago
    Where is this untrue currently?
    - nukem222 2y ago
      Wherever people think their justice system hasn't failed them so completely. So, this includes many people in the developed world. Approximation of justice was always a matter of degree, not a boolean.
      - netcan 2y ago
        People think their justice system sucks or is wonderful, because the king is from their tribe. Or... when media fashion is to venerate rather than critique. Or when religious attitudes preference one or the other position. It can (usually does) have nothing to do with how well the justice system works, or whether it favors those who can afford a good lawyer. Anyway... name a country. Where's this country with just justice?
sixothree 2y ago
One of the most repulsive and eye-opening experiences I have had is sitting in my local traffic court for 4 hours. It became clear to me that court was filled with people trying to go to work or live their lives but end up being saddled with thousands of dollars in fines. The worst part of the experience for me was agreeing to pay my $150 fine. This was the amount stated by the judge. But of course when you actually go to pay, the cost if $400 because of the fees. I'd rather just pay a lawyer next time.
- fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
  Back when I was too broke to afford a lawyer, my favorite part of traffic court the couple times I went was all the people video calling in from the local jail who are in jail because they didn't pay tickets they couldn't afford and then inform the court that no they still can't pay them because they are in jail.
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    The bail payments are awful too. For a few years before Illinois did away with cash bail they had a rule you could pay your bail off $5/day by... sitting in jail. So if you sat in jail for a year you might actually save up enough credit to be able to bail out.
user9999999999 2y ago
The state has nearly unlimited power and resources to build a case against you. They also have nearly zero risk to the outcome. Merely being taken to court is already material loss to you. How is that fair?
ForOldHack 2y ago
Agreed. There is an assumption that all the Sheriffs and judges are good, while in the south, and Pennsylvania, this was shown not to be the case. In the south, it was a sheriff who was jailing kids, and in Pennsylvania it was a judge who put kids in jail for a kickback. In Southern California a family law judge was actually censured for putting deceased people's real property on his name. He retired with full pension. I would like to cite this, but my cell phone search engine and small screen prevent it. Anyone here who keeps chiming in about a specific case... Please use Google... West Law and Lexis are available for free at most law libraries. I want names, dates, case summaries, court locations, judgement summaries, contact information. For both parties.etc..etc...etc.

almostgotcaught 2y ago

> Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. and just like re healthcare, this is the rub of communicating about this: 90% (to pick a random number out of thin air) of hn's target demo has had perfect/sheltered lives and has never come into contact with the "law". so they believe all the political and institutional rhetoric around it. the other 10% know it's a myth but fail to be able to convince the 90% because it would cause deep cognitive dissonance to accept that the US is deeply deeply inequitable and unfair and that it's not accidental but systematic. when i was younger i was in jail a handful of times (not prison thankfully). it's impossible to explain to someone how fucked up it is that's never experienced it. i stopped talking about the "justice system" a long time ago to co-workers/friends/etc and i don't tell anyone about my experience (only my wife knows).

sorcerer-mar 2y ago
I think the most inconvenient thing is actually that it’s both (largely) accidental and systematic. If you go looking for the source of “evil” breaking these systems, you’ll surely find a few bad folks purposely fucking it up, but removing them is almost certainly not going to fix anything. The vast majority of these systems’ behavior (good or bad) is effectively not driven by individuals whatsoever.
- almostgotcaught 2y ago
  i wish people, before they commented on really really serious things, did a bit of reflection. > effectively not driven by individuals whatsoever the agency of individuals in totalitarian/authoritarian institutions has been examined/analyzed/written about at enormous length since the rise of fascism in the early 1900s. the short answer is you're wrong but i'm not going to try to convince you (you have to want to learn to be receptive). instead i recommend a book: https://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039881 https://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-C... EDIT: i'm being rate limited. to the guy below > how even a system full of good intentions you're just proving all of my points - you just can't fathom that the laws really were written with immoral intentions because "the law" is sacrosanct for you. i note again: the 13th amendment abolished slavery except for in prisons. it's written explicitly in section 1 (no bad faith interpretation needed). please discuss for me the "good intentions" therein.
  - sorcerer-mar 2y ago
    The vast majority of bad outcomes of big systems are not because they’re principally designed for evil and just lacking a few dissenters. Most systems today are intended to produce outcomes that most people agree would be good, and they’re full of people trying to achieve those outcomes, and yet reliably failing to produce them. There have been books written about this topic as well, but it’s not as flashy as comparing “every system that produces some bad results” to actual Nazis, I have to admit.
    - balamatom 2y ago
newZWhoDis 2y ago
It sounds like… you did get caught?
psd1 2y ago
Absolutely flabbergasted in the canteen one day when my colleague said, unironically, "well, if they stop you, you were probably doing _something_”... White South African Yes, working eyeballs
- mmooss 2y ago
  Some other White South Africans have taken sides with the same political grouping (I don't know their position on that issue).
SauciestGNU 2y ago
Forget actual legal culpability, the range of outcomes in the American legal system ranges from cops killing you at worst, to the stacked legal system making you wish they had only killed you at best.
redczar 2y ago
Part of the problem as I see it is that we Americans are incredibly vengeful and seek retribution. We are particularly incensed when someone poorer (or otherwise different than us) seemingly gets a “light sentence”.

kubb 2y ago

Is this where the whole Europe bashing on social media comes from? US needing to believe that a better society, rule of law, social services isn’t real in Europe and impossible in general?

SauciestGNU 2y ago
Not only that, but it explains the disdain for Europe in the current American government. European society proves that Americans could have true freedom and quality of life if it weren't for corporations and oligarchs effectively owning our government. Fascists hate a counterexample.
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  Seems like "they hate us for our freedom!" has done a complete 180 as of late.
  - SauciestGNU 2y ago
    Yes and it's verifiable via the leaked signal messages from VP Vance and SecDef Hegseth.
  - watwut 2y ago
    Like US is supporting fascist moments in Europe and sight heiling.
- tpm 2y ago
  Corporations and oligarchs effectively own European governments too. Just possibly a bit less than in the US.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    They own European governments far more. They just have several hundred years of extra practice at being subtle.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

My understanding is the root of the evil is in our overcriminalisation of day to day life. Is this accurate? Or would reducing the prison population through reduced sentencing not alleviate the worst of the problems? (Reduced sentencing loads mean you can raise standards for court-appointed counsel, possibly ban plea deals, et cetera.)

BrenBarn 2y ago
I think it is less to with "overcriminalization" in the sense of legislation, and more to do with the enforcement process. In some sense I think we need more criminalization, in that the types of malfeasance described in the article (e.g., keeping people imprisoned beyond their sentence, failing to provide an attorney, etc.) should result in long jail sentences for the officials who perpetrated them. The problem is that in the US we have become accustomed to an enormous gap between the law and its implementation.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  You can’t add more criminal laws to deal with systematic refusal by law enforcement to obey and hold other law enforcement officials accountable for obeying existing law, because that relies on the same people whose behavior you are trying to correct to auddenly behave differently to have any effect. The US, in fact, has a comprehensive federal and civil and criminal prohibition applicable to such behavior (the prohibition on deprivation of rights under color of law and conspiracy against rights), but the criminal prohibition is consistently inadequately enforced, and the civil prohibiition has been neutered by applying qualified immunity against it, which arguably is inconsistent with the letter of the statute.
  - BrenBarn 2y ago
    There's some truth to that, but I think that changes in such laws have resulted in slight improvements over time. Also, passing such laws at a higher jurisdictional level can allow comparatively "good" people at that level to disrupt local bad behavior like the stuff in the article. There are also other kinds of legal changes that can help, like transparency requirements and bans on certain kinds of police union contract provisions. More controversially I think there should be laws that shift the burden of proof (something along the lines of "every police officer is assumed to be unfit for their job unless they affirmatively demonstrate otherwise"). I think one thing that is needed is a "viral" kind of law that criminalizes essentially all attempts to perpetuate, conceal, aid or abet the underlying malfeasance. So that if you can get some people wedged in who do want to do the right thing, they can bring the whole house crashing down by convicting the whole network of corrupt officials. Ultimately you're right though that there does need to be some cooperation from "inside the system". The question is just what can we do do lower that threshold.

chasil 2y ago

I agree that this is unfair, and far violates constitutional rights. I would willingly donate to their cause. However, mass violation of the constitutional rights of citizens seems to me the venue for a class action?

dguest 2y ago

You forgot that the prosecution will go over the top on charges, as bargaining chips for a plea deal. None of these would ever stick in a real court, but if you're facing sexual assault charges (and a lifetime on the sex offender registry) for allegedly peeing in a park, pleading guilty to a lesser crime sounds pretty good. Everyone has a right to a trial by jury in theory, but if you waste the prosecutor's time by exercising it it might just ruin your life.

rafram 2y ago
> if you're facing sexual assault charges (and a lifetime on the sex offender registry) for allegedly peeing in a park People repeat this anecdote all the time, but I'd challenge you to find a single person who has ever been put on the sex offender registry for nothing more than public urination. (Let alone being charged with sexual assault, which is nonsensical -- look up how that crime is defined in US law.)
- 6stringmerc 2y ago
  Tarrant County. Mentally ill but competent to stand trial. I’m sure there’s more than one. Source: 1 year in lockup (solitary) with them, often criminal trespass or public urination charges.
  - rafram 2y ago
    Not sure what you mean. Are you referring to a specific case?
    - MSFT_Edging 2y ago
      This person's source is someone they spent a year in jail with. Cases this small probably don't get articles written about them often. That's why we have the phrase "falling through the cracks"
      - rafram 2y ago

dguest 2y ago

Some defense lawyers have a flat rate (a few thousand USD) for drunk driving cases. They call up a few "experts" who can brandish a threat of paperwork at the prosecution and reliably get charges dropped to negligent operations or similar. So if you are in the know a bit of drunk driving is a 2k fine. If not, you loose your drivers license and likely your livelihood.

alabastervlog 2y ago
Same as speeding tickets. Nobody who knows what's what and has even a little cash to spare gets an actual moving violation out of a speeding ticket for less than a crazy amount over the speed limit, unless somebody in the court system is pissed off at them. The reason is that a moving violation fucks up your insurance rates and costs a ton of money over time, so it ends up being in everyone's interest to pay a lawyer (takes a cut of what would have been paid in higher insurance rates) to ask their colleague's golfing buddy ("hey, Jim says your short game's getting better!") to accept a plea (less work, hooray!) for a non-moving violation that, gee, would you look at that, just happens to have a fine double what the speeding ticket would have (another cut of the would-have-been-higher-insurance-rates goes here) so sure, the city government and courts are perfectly happy with that arrangement.
qingcharles 2y ago
I almost never see any experts being called by the defense. It's practically unheard of except for the luckiest defendants or the ones with deep pockets. source: thousands of hours observing criminal courts

bryanrasmussen 2y ago

there are decent public defenders, but they have to sort of pick and choose how hard they will work for you, because of the unbearable case load. I knew a guy who if you were not a death penalty case you got the joke, and if you were a death penalty case you got the all out work his ass off to save you. He took a lot of death penalty cases.

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago

I agree 100%. I've written about this here before, but I've been involved in two civil lawsuits in my life. One was in the USA, the other was in mainland China. I should stress that I am an American, and I wasn't even in China when the lawsuit over there was moving along. The Chinese process was very fast -- it went before a judge who reached a verdict in something like ten months -- and it was extremely inexpensive. Total fees were less than $10k. What's more, the court attained the right outcome, and I won the case. Still better, the court itself enforced the verdict, and I was able to attain the monetary damages it decided were owed me. The US process was interminably slow. A year on, we were barely past the starting line. Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system. At that point bills far exceeded $150,000. I realized that I was looking at spending >$1M and taking five or ten years to fight the case, and, though I was sure I would have won in the end, decided that I had to settle and get the hell out. The US civil legal system is basically a game of financial attrition. This is why the big corporations seem to get away with whatever they want, whereas being dragged to court can be life-ruining for smaller entities and persons. I don't know how things are in Europe, and hope I never have to find out, but the Chinese civil system is truly something like 20x better than the US system. (>10x cheaper, >2-5x faster.)

johnisgood 2y ago
Pretty much what OP said, at least here in Hungary.
lurk2 2y ago
> Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system. It’s a part of most common law legal systems.
lawn 2y ago
> I don't know how things are in Europe, and hope I never have to find out In Sweden at least this level of insanity is only heard about as anecdotes online...
- 2y ago

thaumasiotes 2y ago

I have a bigger conceptual problem with the workflow of: 1. The police are looking for someone. They arrest you, a second, different person. 2. They determine you are not the person they were looking for. 3. They bill you for their time.

alabastervlog 2y ago
We once had a purse stolen out of a car (our bad, shouldn't have been left out there, and we left the car unlocked, total fuckup on our part). A credit card from it was used twice at a gas station (cameras galore) that is not near anything—except it's the last gas station on the route to the local, rural-located (little other reason to be out there) Amazon distribution center. We lived in a typical dead-end shitty suburban neighborhood where nobody ever passes through who doesn't live there, except delivery drivers. It was an Amazon delivery driver who stole it, I'm not even Sherlock Holmes and I figured that out in about two minutes with one CC statement and a Maps search. The cops took a report, didn't give a fuck about the fact that it'd almost certainly take take comically little work to catch the perp and informed us they didn't intend to even try, then... fucking charged us for a copy of the police report we needed for the CC companies. Definitely didn't feel protected, and only "served" in the sense of "you got served!" I can only assume resistance to the "defund the police" movement comes entirely from people who've never dealt with them. Ok, our issue was pretty minor, sure it was about the easiest damn case to investigate in all of history but they only have so many people—but I've got a half-dozen other stories like that, from employers, relatives, and friends, and they're all the same, even with much bigger-ticket and serial(!) thefts. They're completely useless, the amount I'm happy to pay them unless they significantly improve is zero dollars. That's before even factoring in their fucked-up "warrior culture", normalized rampant civil rights violations, and lots of murders. Like, putting aside the abuse, they're just goddamn useless at their supposed primary function.
- mjevans 2y ago
  Reform is necessary. In a literal and figurative sense both. Reform the Police should be the message. Make the Police force live up to that old line "to serve and protect", to provide justice. Yeah, to get proper value out of a service it usually needs a little more funding, not less.

energy123 2y ago

System designed by lawyers is good for lawyers

CrossVR 2y ago

> Now you better not lose because you are on the hook for all of the money the court wants to believe it cost them to prosecute you. In a criminal case you aren't liable for the legal costs of the prosecution. I think you're confusing criminal court with civil court.

treis 2y ago
Many jurisdictions add fines for various parts of the process. Lab fees, probation fees, rehab fees, jail fees, and on and on. Some do even charge a prosecution fee to fund the district attorney.

nukem222 2y ago

Let's not forget how the Massachusetts AG (Carmen Ortiz) (hopefully) unintentionally drove Aaron Schwartz to suicide to protect the sanctity of elsevier's IP. Even our most obviously rotten institutions are placed on a higher pedestal than human life and recognizable justice.

infinghxsg 2y ago
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geodel 2y ago
So AGs are suppose to flout or ignore the laws as long offense is against a disliked company and defendant is an activist?
- nukem222 2y ago
  [dead]

netcan 2y ago

> Just like healthcare, US justice is only for people with money. In most times and places, this is true. Ancient times, recent history, autocracies, democracies... Justice is expensive. Justice, and the legal college as an ideal often specifically negates this. Equality before the law. Blind justice, etc. That said... justice is inevitably ridden with contradiction, hypocrisy and whatnot. That's what justice is. Degrees vary, but the structure is usually constant. Say you are a ceo, fund manager or whatnot. You are in dispute with your employer over $10m of compensation. Your bonus, performance-based compensation. Now imagine that you are a normie, with a dispute over $10k. Those to legal processes are entirely dissimilar. One will have teams of lawyers, many proceedings. Completely different aspects of justice will come into play. It's a different justice. There's no way around this.

nukem222 2y ago
> In most times and places, this is true. Thankfully most of the instances of it not being true exist right now. Let's stay grounded in current reality or just agree not to discuss the topic. Saying "welp what do you expect" is downright worse than ignoring it entirely.
- netcan 2y ago
  Where is this untrue currently?
  - nukem222 2y ago
    Wherever people think their justice system hasn't failed them so completely. So, this includes many people in the developed world. Approximation of justice was always a matter of degree, not a boolean.
    - netcan 2y ago
      People think their justice system sucks or is wonderful, because the king is from their tribe. Or... when media fashion is to venerate rather than critique. Or when religious attitudes preference one or the other position. It can (usually does) have nothing to do with how well the justice system works, or whether it favors those who can afford a good lawyer. Anyway... name a country. Where's this country with just justice?

sixothree 2y ago

One of the most repulsive and eye-opening experiences I have had is sitting in my local traffic court for 4 hours. It became clear to me that court was filled with people trying to go to work or live their lives but end up being saddled with thousands of dollars in fines. The worst part of the experience for me was agreeing to pay my $150 fine. This was the amount stated by the judge. But of course when you actually go to pay, the cost if $400 because of the fees. I'd rather just pay a lawyer next time.

fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
Back when I was too broke to afford a lawyer, my favorite part of traffic court the couple times I went was all the people video calling in from the local jail who are in jail because they didn't pay tickets they couldn't afford and then inform the court that no they still can't pay them because they are in jail.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  The bail payments are awful too. For a few years before Illinois did away with cash bail they had a rule you could pay your bail off $5/day by... sitting in jail. So if you sat in jail for a year you might actually save up enough credit to be able to bail out.

user9999999999 2y ago

The state has nearly unlimited power and resources to build a case against you. They also have nearly zero risk to the outcome. Merely being taken to court is already material loss to you. How is that fair?

ForOldHack 2y ago

Agreed. There is an assumption that all the Sheriffs and judges are good, while in the south, and Pennsylvania, this was shown not to be the case. In the south, it was a sheriff who was jailing kids, and in Pennsylvania it was a judge who put kids in jail for a kickback. In Southern California a family law judge was actually censured for putting deceased people's real property on his name. He retired with full pension. I would like to cite this, but my cell phone search engine and small screen prevent it. Anyone here who keeps chiming in about a specific case... Please use Google... West Law and Lexis are available for free at most law libraries. I want names, dates, case summaries, court locations, judgement summaries, contact information. For both parties.etc..etc...etc.