4 ms·

Would it work to institute a fixed maximum limit in the number of words/characters in a criminal indictment, as well as restrictions on plea bargains?

• krenoten 14y ago
  As with filter bypassing, what prevents splitting one big indictment into several smaller ones?
• rayiner 14y ago
  No, because very often criminal indictments really do need to include a lot of information. Think of charges being brought against gang bosses or mob bosses.
• bcoates 14y ago
  There's no need for more bureaucratic rules, we just need to appoint judges willing to identify these avalanche-of-paperwork techniques and respond with "TL; DR; dismissed with prejudice"
• dmckeon 14y ago
  Simple (& naïve - NAL) fix: Equal budgets for more equal justice. If assets are frozen, require the prosecution to estimate what they will spend prosecuting the case and to unfreeze assets of the defendants' choice at least equal to the prosecution's estimate, to be allocated to provide for the defendants' defense. Let the court require weekly up-to-date accounting from the prosecution, with a proviso that if the prosecution submits inaccurate reports or goes over their estimated budget the case is decided in the defendant's favor. Note also that a large percentage of convictions involve a defendant pleading to a lesser offense.
  • maxharris 14y ago
    That's not enough. Assets, however large, should not be frozen at all prior to trial. Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?"
    • rayiner 14y ago
      The law has never been so black and white and simplistic. For hundreds of years there has been due consideration given to the fact that litigation must to an extent freeze the status quo ante to account for the fact that it takes finite time.
    • jlujan 14y ago
      The supporting argument is that, if proven guilty, there might not be enough assets left over to compensate victims. Also, in some cases to prevent the alleged perpetrator form fleeing. The problem is scenarios as described in the article. The issues that I see in this is a)that funds unrelated to any crime are frozen/held and b)there is no recourse when proven innocent. There almost needs to be some mechanism to hold funds while leveraging them for defense, in the similar way to a bail bond. As far as rich mobsters, having prosecutors resorting to vague statutes of unrelated crimes (wire fraud instead of murder) is indicative of a larger issue with the criminal justice system (as well as many other scenarios in comments here.) Creating obscure, vague, all encompassing statues to snare criminals, and ever more frequently, the ignorent and unwary white-collar, is not representative of an effective and fair social justice system.
  • sethg 14y ago
    Or, as others here have suggested, simply give public defenders’ offices a budget comparable to the prosecutors’ offices. If the interests of justice make it worth spending $100K of taxpayer money to prosecute someone charged with a relatively simple crime, then it’s also worth giving that person access to $100K worth of defense lawyering. If the government wants to spend $5M to prosecute an alleged mobster, that alleged mobster should have access to $5M worth of defense. If the mobster has allegedly ill-gotten gains and the government wants to freeze them, then $5M of those gains would be placed in escrow; if the defendant is acquitted or later proves that the money was earned legitimately, then it would be deposited back into the public defenders’ fund.
    • AnthonyMouse 14y ago
      >If the mobster has allegedly ill-gotten gains and the government wants to freeze them, then $5M of those gains would be placed in escrow; if the defendant is acquitted or later proves that the money was earned legitimately, then it would be deposited back into the public defenders’ fund. I read this wrong the first time, but the thing I thought it said is an I idea I'm now very happy with: We should make all asset seizures from guilty defendants (which don't have identifiable victims) go to the public defenders' office. That would in one fell swoop provide a significant amount of funding for the chronically underfunded public defenders' office, and deprive law enforcement of the perverse incentive to engage in de facto theft by asset seizure solely for the purposes of padding their own budgets (because at present that is often where it goes).
      • sethg 14y ago
        Genius!
      • ajb 14y ago
        Except that the public defenders office would now have perverse incentives.
        • AnthonyMouse 14y ago
          The public defenders' office doesn't have the power to seize anyone's assets.