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You of all people should know better than to give any credence to indictments. You know what purpose they serve, right?
by lawnchair_larry 12y ago
You of all people should know better than to give any credence to indictments. You know what purpose they serve, right?
- random42 12y agoWell.. I dont. what purposes do indictments serve?
- SideburnsOfDoom 12y agoTo indict.
- dredmorbius 12y agoIt's the prosecution making its strongest possible case against the defendant. It's not a court finding of fact or law, but the one-sided case made by the prosecutorial team.
- lambda 12y agoAn indictnment is a charge; it is the prosecutors formal presentation of the evidence collected so far that show's that there's enough evidence that a trial should be held. As such, it's fairly one-sided. It's just what the prosecutor has presented to a grand jury, and the grand jury has said "yeah, that looks like enough evidence that it's worth having a trial." Note also that grand juries these days pretty much always just rubber-stamp whatever the prosecutor puts in front of them.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoI've posted this before on the subject, but I particularly like the description given by Ken White at Popehat: "Rather than tread over the ground well-described by my colleagues in the criminal defense bar, today I'd like to describe something else for you: what a federal grand jury proceeding looks like. From 1995 through 2000, I presented cases of varying complexity to federal grand juries as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. That experience did not inspire confidence in the process. Rather, it taught me that the adage that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich is an understatement. A better description would be that the prosecution can show a grand jury a shit sandwich and they will indict it as ham without looking up from their newspapers. The notion that the Supreme Court relies upon — that the grand jury has a "historical role of protecting individuals from unjust persecution" — is not a polite fiction. A polite fiction would have some grounding in reality. It's an offensive fiction, an impudent fiction, a fiction that slaps you across the face and calls your mother a dirty bitch." http://www.popehat.com/2014/02/27/the-kaley-forfeiture-decision-what-it-looks-like-when-the-feds-make-their-ham-sandwich/ http://www.popehat.com/2014/02/27/the-kaley-forfeiture-decis...
- tptacek 12y agoThe indictment contains stipulated facts, which I took pains to pull out. You've ignored that, and instead chosen to beat up a straw man: the idea that I give credence to everything in the indictment, and that my argument depends on the reader believing the prosecutors.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jcc80 12y ago"You've ignored that, and instead chosen to beat up a straw man: the idea that I give credence to everything in the indictment..." They may have been confused by you writing, "Here's the indictment. It's quite straightforward." Either way, point is this is yet another NSA thread derailed by a smaller issue (insider trading vs. 4th amendment, domestic spying, etc). It's too bad people choose to engage and let it happen over and over.
- tptacek 12y agoI agree that Nacchio derailed the thread, but look at the timestamps: there was a sprawling and irrelevant Nacchio thread here before I got here.
- xnull2guest 12y agohttp://youtu.be/3jQoAYRKqhg?t=14m17s http://youtu.be/3jQoAYRKqhg?t=14m17s I'm not saying that this thread or even HN is a victim of this. I do want to use this opportunity to contribute that there are NSA programs designed to derail conversations.
- xnull2guest 12y agoPerhaps the person downvoting this could explain why it wasn't relevant to the branch of the conversation.