5 ms·

I really hate that this is allowed.

by gte910h 14y ago

runako 14y ago
A person allegedly breaks several different laws in different jurisdictions; is prosecuted for each alleged violation in each jurisdiction. What's wrong with that? A more extreme counterexample would be that a case where a person broke into an office and stole a USB stick, kidnapping an employee and shooting a guard on the way out. There's IP theft (federal), kidnapping (federal), and homicide (local). Which should that person not be prosecuted for? How do you choose?
- arjunnarayan 14y ago
  There should be some kind of "reverse class-action" clause that enables a defendant to bring in every potential plaintiff into the suit: i.e. if I'm being prosecuted for stealing code by a federal prosecutor, I should be able to bind New York State to the same trial so that all the verdicts are delivered at the same time.
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  The problem is that it's two trials for one action. Your scenario is four actions. Breaking in, theft, kidnapping, shooting.
  - runako 14y ago
    This is splitting hairs. If a person steals cash and jewels, is that two actions? In any case, I'm not an attorney and this appears to be settled law and not really up for debate.
    - sgift 14y ago
      If "not really up for debate" follows from "settled law" - how do you change settled law (e.g. if it is a dumb law)?
      - runako 14y ago
        You convince a judge, not some guys in an online forum. That's what I meant by "not up for debate" : "not up for debate in this forum, by laypeople".
    - Dylan16807 14y ago
      Feel free to divide the actions arbitrarily if you really want to. Charge then with half the jewels federal, half the jewels state. It's when the charges overlap that I feel justice isn't best served. Also you'd need to try to mitigate nonlinearity in punishment somehow. At the very least figure out a way to punish any details like "armed robbery" only once.
      - runako 14y ago
        We can try to reinvent longstanding law here on HN, or we can look for a library on CPAN (or in a law library?) that already implements it. These questions have come up many times before, with many sets of specifics. This is what many smart people came up with, which has stood the test of time. Trying to unravel longstanding law is kind of like poking at a piece of code that's been running for 20 years and deciding you can do better. Then realizing that the only way to make it better is to rewrite it from scratch, because there are reasons for all of the funkiness in the code. And rewriting fails spectacularly in code much of the time (see TextMate 2, for instance). Imagine how much success non-programmers would have at rewriting a complex system from scratch. That's roughly how much success I'd expect HN users to achieve at rewriting longstanding law. I'm just saying, the outcomes may seem capricious, but picking at one string isn't going to improve things. If you think otherwise, you may have a bright career in the legislature.
        Dylan16807 14y ago
        You're right, trying to specify anything new is destined to fail. So I'll stick with this: Charging the same crime twice is unfair, where "same" is not something I am qualified to define in detail. There. That seems good. I am not suggesting what to do about it at this point in time. By the way, I find it rather hyperbolic of you to look at a report of an uncommon bug and claim it calls for a total rewrite. No way in hell do I want to change the entire legal system. But if you're afraid to adjust something at all it just gets clunkier over time.
        runako 14y ago
        I think the problem here is we're not lawyers. I have no idea how often this comes up. Is it an uncommon bug, or something that happens daily? I have no idea because I am not a lawyer. But, thinking as much like a lawyer as I can: you're never charged for the same "crime" more than once. There are overlapping laws, and one action can cause you to break more than one law (each of these is a separate "crime"). So I believe that legally speaking, Aleynikov is not being charged twice for the same crime, because he is not being charged again with breaking the same law. So I'm saying that your simple tweak that "seems good" may have other problems, and may cascade in ways that we cannot predict (because we're not seasoned jurists). Also, I'm saying that lots of smart people who have dedicated their lives to the study of problems like this just may have stumbled on the simple adjustment you have stumbled across in 3 minutes of armchair quarterbacking, and thrown it out for a reason that is not immediately obvious to the layperson. You may have had similar experiences with non-programmers trying to redesign the guts of software; it's about as productive as this exchange. So you might not need to redesign the legal system from scratch, but step one in making adjustments is certainly deep knowledge and experience with the existing statutes and their application. (Similarly, you wouldn't be allowed to commit to the mainline branch of Git if you don't know C.) If I had more time, I'd grope for an analogy in computers where two things appear the same to a layperson, but is actually different to programmers. I'm sure you can come up with several if you try.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- chollida1 14y ago
  To me the biggest problem for an individual is that they incur the cost of defending themselves twice. For state and federal governments the cost of 2 trials is inconsequential. For an individual the cost of two trials can easily push them into bankruptcy. Now if the individual is guilty you might not have that much sympathy for them, but consider that innocent people have to defend them selves in court as well.
  - runako 14y ago
    I agree with the general issue of the cost of defending oneself. But today, in New York alone, hundreds of poor people will be arrested and charged with crimes they may not be guilty of. Many will have been singled out because of their appearance. They will not have access to attorneys (except the public defender flunkies), and most will serve jail time. I have a lot more concern and sympathy for the breakage of the system for these guys than for the multimillionaire banker who was charged essentially only because he got caught.

I really hate that this is allowed.

by gte910h 14y ago

I really hate that this is allowed.

A person allegedly breaks several different laws in different jurisdictions; is prosecuted for each alleged violation in each jurisdiction. What's wrong with that? A more extreme counterexample would be that a case where a person broke into an office and stole a USB stick, kidnapping an employee and shooting a guard on the way out. There's IP theft (federal), kidnapping (federal), and homicide (local). Which should that person not be prosecuted for? How do you choose?

arjunnarayan 14y ago
There should be some kind of "reverse class-action" clause that enables a defendant to bring in every potential plaintiff into the suit: i.e. if I'm being prosecuted for stealing code by a federal prosecutor, I should be able to bind New York State to the same trial so that all the verdicts are delivered at the same time.
Dylan16807 14y ago
The problem is that it's two trials for one action. Your scenario is four actions. Breaking in, theft, kidnapping, shooting.
- runako 14y ago
  This is splitting hairs. If a person steals cash and jewels, is that two actions? In any case, I'm not an attorney and this appears to be settled law and not really up for debate.
  - sgift 14y ago
    If "not really up for debate" follows from "settled law" - how do you change settled law (e.g. if it is a dumb law)?
    - runako 14y ago
      You convince a judge, not some guys in an online forum. That's what I meant by "not up for debate" : "not up for debate in this forum, by laypeople".
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    Feel free to divide the actions arbitrarily if you really want to. Charge then with half the jewels federal, half the jewels state. It's when the charges overlap that I feel justice isn't best served. Also you'd need to try to mitigate nonlinearity in punishment somehow. At the very least figure out a way to punish any details like "armed robbery" only once.
    - runako 14y ago
      We can try to reinvent longstanding law here on HN, or we can look for a library on CPAN (or in a law library?) that already implements it. These questions have come up many times before, with many sets of specifics. This is what many smart people came up with, which has stood the test of time. Trying to unravel longstanding law is kind of like poking at a piece of code that's been running for 20 years and deciding you can do better. Then realizing that the only way to make it better is to rewrite it from scratch, because there are reasons for all of the funkiness in the code. And rewriting fails spectacularly in code much of the time (see TextMate 2, for instance). Imagine how much success non-programmers would have at rewriting a complex system from scratch. That's roughly how much success I'd expect HN users to achieve at rewriting longstanding law. I'm just saying, the outcomes may seem capricious, but picking at one string isn't going to improve things. If you think otherwise, you may have a bright career in the legislature.
      - Dylan16807 14y ago
        You're right, trying to specify anything new is destined to fail. So I'll stick with this: Charging the same crime twice is unfair, where "same" is not something I am qualified to define in detail. There. That seems good. I am not suggesting what to do about it at this point in time. By the way, I find it rather hyperbolic of you to look at a report of an uncommon bug and claim it calls for a total rewrite. No way in hell do I want to change the entire legal system. But if you're afraid to adjust something at all it just gets clunkier over time.
        runako 14y ago
        I think the problem here is we're not lawyers. I have no idea how often this comes up. Is it an uncommon bug, or something that happens daily? I have no idea because I am not a lawyer. But, thinking as much like a lawyer as I can: you're never charged for the same "crime" more than once. There are overlapping laws, and one action can cause you to break more than one law (each of these is a separate "crime"). So I believe that legally speaking, Aleynikov is not being charged twice for the same crime, because he is not being charged again with breaking the same law. So I'm saying that your simple tweak that "seems good" may have other problems, and may cascade in ways that we cannot predict (because we're not seasoned jurists). Also, I'm saying that lots of smart people who have dedicated their lives to the study of problems like this just may have stumbled on the simple adjustment you have stumbled across in 3 minutes of armchair quarterbacking, and thrown it out for a reason that is not immediately obvious to the layperson. You may have had similar experiences with non-programmers trying to redesign the guts of software; it's about as productive as this exchange. So you might not need to redesign the legal system from scratch, but step one in making adjustments is certainly deep knowledge and experience with the existing statutes and their application. (Similarly, you wouldn't be allowed to commit to the mainline branch of Git if you don't know C.) If I had more time, I'd grope for an analogy in computers where two things appear the same to a layperson, but is actually different to programmers. I'm sure you can come up with several if you try.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
chollida1 14y ago
To me the biggest problem for an individual is that they incur the cost of defending themselves twice. For state and federal governments the cost of 2 trials is inconsequential. For an individual the cost of two trials can easily push them into bankruptcy. Now if the individual is guilty you might not have that much sympathy for them, but consider that innocent people have to defend them selves in court as well.
- runako 14y ago
  I agree with the general issue of the cost of defending oneself. But today, in New York alone, hundreds of poor people will be arrested and charged with crimes they may not be guilty of. Many will have been singled out because of their appearance. They will not have access to attorneys (except the public defender flunkies), and most will serve jail time. I have a lot more concern and sympathy for the breakage of the system for these guys than for the multimillionaire banker who was charged essentially only because he got caught.