7 ms·

This seems like the first time in quite a while someone's rights have been protected (as far as what's in the news goes, anyway). Unless the guy is convicted, h

This seems like the first time in quite a while someone's rights have been protected (as far as what's in the news goes, anyway). Unless the guy is convicted, he still has all of those pesky things -- regardless of how obvious his guilt may or may not be to anyone -- and it's a lot better for all of us if they're actually taken seriously once in a while.

rayiner 13y ago
What you don't see in the news is the zillions of times a day the system protects peoples' rights through criminal appeals, etc, and the massive overhead that arises from actual criminals abusing those protections in order to try and get out on technicalities. My friends who have clerked for judges talk about how frustrating it is to deal with appeal after appeal from people who are clearly guilty and just abusing the system. You have to take what you see in the news in context of the reality of the people who work within the system every day. It is a system, after all, and systems involve balancing competing interests, but the tech media rarely tackles the complexities of that process.
- rhizome 13y ago
  Isn't the case in the story also one of "technicalities," since the police seem reasonably sure the material is on one of the drives, just not exactly which one? People who clerk have a skewed view of the judicial system compared to someone who has been convicted.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    People who clerk have a skewed view of the judicial system compared to someone who has been convicted. No they don't, just a different one. Read a lot of appeals and it's obvious that a lot of the arguments are completely, utterly bogus. There are technicalities that are unfair to people who are appealing, like having appeals rejected for failure to timely file when the appellant didn't have access to admissible evidence in time to file, and so forth. Those are the kind of cases that tend to work their way up through en banc review and onto the SC eventually. But a lot of other appeals are so ridiculous as to be desperate or amount to judicial trolling. The fact is that some prisoners have nothing better to do than file appeals to make the time go by faster.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    > People who clerk have a skewed view of the judicial system compared to someone who has been convicted. I'd argue it's a much less biased view that incorporates more and better information.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      I am pretty sure clerks are seeing only a fraction of the people who were arrested or convicted, and that that fraction is strongly biased towards people who have money to spend on lawyers. The overwhelming majority of the millions of prisoners we have in America never had a trial. I do not know where you got the idea that our criminal justice system is serving its purpose. It may be great at putting criminals in prison, but it is meant to protect innocent.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        > I am pretty sure clerks are seeing only a fraction of the people who were arrested or convicted, and that that fraction is strongly biased towards people who have money to spend on lawyers. The bulk of nearly any judge's case load is criminal appeals from run of the mill criminals. They might be pro se, they might have a public defender, they might have a cheap local lawyer, but they're not deep pocketed by any means. Indeed, clerks see a skewed picture of things, but one that is if anything skewed towards seeing fewer actually guilty people, not more, for the obvious reason that actually innocent people are more likely to file an appeal than actually guilty ones. > I do not know where you got the idea that our criminal justice system is serving its purpose. It may be great at putting criminals in prison, but it is meant to protect innocent. The purpose of the criminal justice system is to protect the law-abiding public by putting criminals in prison. That is its sole reason for existing. An important constraint in doing so is protecting the innocent, but that's not its purpose. If it were, then you could design the perfect justice system simply by never putting any people in prison. But the world has bad people, lots of them, and that's not a tenable option. You design a justice system the same way you design any system. You pick a false-positive rate you can live with, then design the rest of the system to maximize throughput while still hitting that false-positive target. It's the only sane way to design something that works as opposed to a non-working platonic ideal.
- gnaritas 13y ago
  > What you don't see in the news is the zillions of times a day the system protects peoples' rights through criminal appeals, etc, and the massive overhead that arises from actual criminals abusing those protections in order to try and get out on technicalities. Good. Better criminals abuse the system than the system abuse people. > My friends who have clerked for judges talk about how frustrating it is to deal with appeal after appeal from people who are clearly guilty and just abusing the system. I don't trust your friends view of clearly guilty, sounds like bias to me.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    > Good. Better criminals abuse the system than the system abuse people. That's a trope. In reality, the justice system is about striking a balance between the need to preserve order and security and the need to protect peoples' rights. That's why the Constitution uses "balance-y" words like "reasonable" when talking about 4th amendment rights. > I don't trust your friends view of clearly guilty, sounds like bias to me. I'm sorry to break it to you, but most people the police catch are "clearly guilty." Even my PD friends acknowledge that most of their clients are "clearly guilty" (they see their jobs as more watching out for the ones that aren't and making sure the ones that are get at least a proportionate punishment). The media likes to cover edge cases, but for every one of those, there are a dozens of people who rob a liquor store and leave video evidence of themselves doing it. It is interesting to note that even most of the cases that are central to defining 4th amendment rights, ones where judges have come down in favor of the defendant, are nonetheless ones where the defendant did actually commit the crime he was accused of committing. Ernesto Miranda was convicted the second time around, for rape, even with his confession excluded, served time, and was ultimately killed in a bar fight.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      Except that we are talking about 5th amendment rights, which are not about striking a balance. The 5th amendment does not use compromise words, it is very clear: "No person shall be...compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself..." Nothing in there about being "reasonable" or about being "clearly guilty." The 5th amendment makes exactly one exception, which applies only to the military, only during a time of war or danger to the public, and has nothing to do with self-incriminating.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
notJim 13y ago
I served on a jury late last year [1] and the defendant invoked his 5th-amendment right. It was emphasized over and over again during the jury selection and in the instructions to the jury before we deliberated that we were not to hold this against him, and that it was his constitutional right. I feel confident that as the jury, we held to that. [1]: By the way, if you get called for jury duty do not try to get out of it! It's an incredibly interesting and rewarding experience, not to mention the whole thing where it's your duty as a citizen.

rayiner 13y ago

What you don't see in the news is the zillions of times a day the system protects peoples' rights through criminal appeals, etc, and the massive overhead that arises from actual criminals abusing those protections in order to try and get out on technicalities. My friends who have clerked for judges talk about how frustrating it is to deal with appeal after appeal from people who are clearly guilty and just abusing the system. You have to take what you see in the news in context of the reality of the people who work within the system every day. It is a system, after all, and systems involve balancing competing interests, but the tech media rarely tackles the complexities of that process.

rhizome 13y ago
Isn't the case in the story also one of "technicalities," since the police seem reasonably sure the material is on one of the drives, just not exactly which one? People who clerk have a skewed view of the judicial system compared to someone who has been convicted.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  People who clerk have a skewed view of the judicial system compared to someone who has been convicted. No they don't, just a different one. Read a lot of appeals and it's obvious that a lot of the arguments are completely, utterly bogus. There are technicalities that are unfair to people who are appealing, like having appeals rejected for failure to timely file when the appellant didn't have access to admissible evidence in time to file, and so forth. Those are the kind of cases that tend to work their way up through en banc review and onto the SC eventually. But a lot of other appeals are so ridiculous as to be desperate or amount to judicial trolling. The fact is that some prisoners have nothing better to do than file appeals to make the time go by faster.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > People who clerk have a skewed view of the judicial system compared to someone who has been convicted. I'd argue it's a much less biased view that incorporates more and better information.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    I am pretty sure clerks are seeing only a fraction of the people who were arrested or convicted, and that that fraction is strongly biased towards people who have money to spend on lawyers. The overwhelming majority of the millions of prisoners we have in America never had a trial. I do not know where you got the idea that our criminal justice system is serving its purpose. It may be great at putting criminals in prison, but it is meant to protect innocent.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      > I am pretty sure clerks are seeing only a fraction of the people who were arrested or convicted, and that that fraction is strongly biased towards people who have money to spend on lawyers. The bulk of nearly any judge's case load is criminal appeals from run of the mill criminals. They might be pro se, they might have a public defender, they might have a cheap local lawyer, but they're not deep pocketed by any means. Indeed, clerks see a skewed picture of things, but one that is if anything skewed towards seeing fewer actually guilty people, not more, for the obvious reason that actually innocent people are more likely to file an appeal than actually guilty ones. > I do not know where you got the idea that our criminal justice system is serving its purpose. It may be great at putting criminals in prison, but it is meant to protect innocent. The purpose of the criminal justice system is to protect the law-abiding public by putting criminals in prison. That is its sole reason for existing. An important constraint in doing so is protecting the innocent, but that's not its purpose. If it were, then you could design the perfect justice system simply by never putting any people in prison. But the world has bad people, lots of them, and that's not a tenable option. You design a justice system the same way you design any system. You pick a false-positive rate you can live with, then design the rest of the system to maximize throughput while still hitting that false-positive target. It's the only sane way to design something that works as opposed to a non-working platonic ideal.
gnaritas 13y ago
> What you don't see in the news is the zillions of times a day the system protects peoples' rights through criminal appeals, etc, and the massive overhead that arises from actual criminals abusing those protections in order to try and get out on technicalities. Good. Better criminals abuse the system than the system abuse people. > My friends who have clerked for judges talk about how frustrating it is to deal with appeal after appeal from people who are clearly guilty and just abusing the system. I don't trust your friends view of clearly guilty, sounds like bias to me.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > Good. Better criminals abuse the system than the system abuse people. That's a trope. In reality, the justice system is about striking a balance between the need to preserve order and security and the need to protect peoples' rights. That's why the Constitution uses "balance-y" words like "reasonable" when talking about 4th amendment rights. > I don't trust your friends view of clearly guilty, sounds like bias to me. I'm sorry to break it to you, but most people the police catch are "clearly guilty." Even my PD friends acknowledge that most of their clients are "clearly guilty" (they see their jobs as more watching out for the ones that aren't and making sure the ones that are get at least a proportionate punishment). The media likes to cover edge cases, but for every one of those, there are a dozens of people who rob a liquor store and leave video evidence of themselves doing it. It is interesting to note that even most of the cases that are central to defining 4th amendment rights, ones where judges have come down in favor of the defendant, are nonetheless ones where the defendant did actually commit the crime he was accused of committing. Ernesto Miranda was convicted the second time around, for rape, even with his confession excluded, served time, and was ultimately killed in a bar fight.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    Except that we are talking about 5th amendment rights, which are not about striking a balance. The 5th amendment does not use compromise words, it is very clear: "No person shall be...compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself..." Nothing in there about being "reasonable" or about being "clearly guilty." The 5th amendment makes exactly one exception, which applies only to the military, only during a time of war or danger to the public, and has nothing to do with self-incriminating.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

notJim 13y ago

I served on a jury late last year [1] and the defendant invoked his 5th-amendment right. It was emphasized over and over again during the jury selection and in the instructions to the jury before we deliberated that we were not to hold this against him, and that it was his constitutional right. I feel confident that as the jury, we held to that. [1]: By the way, if you get called for jury duty do not try to get out of it! It's an incredibly interesting and rewarding experience, not to mention the whole thing where it's your duty as a citizen.