7 ms·

I find it very disturbing that you need tens of thousands of dollars at your disposal to get a "fair" trial. I say "fair", because the output obviously changes

• humanrebar 11y ago
  > How can this be considered normal? It's not acceptable, but nobody has any better ideas.
  • Coding_Cat 11y ago
    Socialized legal defense? Government funded legal defense, with a private choice of the law firm to reduce pro-government biasses. Similar to how certain socialized healthcare systems work. Of course, there are some glaring issues here, such as the fact that unfortunately there's a strong correlation between socio-economic status and the odds of you needing legal counsel... Something which also occurs in healthcare but to a much lesser degree I'm inclined to believe.
    • JoshTriplett 11y ago
      In the US, you're already entitled to an attorney for your defense. That doesn't necessarily mean you'll get a good attorney.
      • DasIch 11y ago
        That's why you should be able to chose the court appointed attorney within reason.
        • JoshTriplett 11y ago
          You'd need to pretty carefully define "within reason", though; it's not reasonable to select without regard to cost.
      • bhickey 11y ago
        Gideon v. Wainwright established that indigent defendants are entitled to free legal representation. There's no such right for non-indigent defendants.
        • kefka 11y ago
          Not even when the price of legal representation is above my means to pay?
          • pc86 11y ago
            If you need an attorney and cannot afford one, one is appointed. If you can afford one, you can't really say "I'd rather not pay that." In this context "afford" typically means you can still keep your home/apartment and go grocery shopping.
          • gknoy 11y ago
            Note that "Cannot pay" is often interpreted to mean "Has already mortgaged the house and liquidated all things", not "has an empty checking account".
          • bhickey 11y ago
            States establish indigence standards. Generally if your income exceeds 200% the federal poverty line, you aren't entitled to a court appointed attorney. Even then, if you're above 125% the poverty line, you can be forced to pay for your court appointed attorney. You can claim financial hardship, but the court isn't obliged to accept your claims.
    • Shivetya 11y ago
      You are provided counsel when defending yourself if you cannot afford it. It is when you lose and do not accept a court's verdict. Even plead guilty to a good number of the charges and was given a sentence lower than requested by the prosecution. there is a reason why non automatic appeals are not free, else those convicted could simply keep their cases open at cost to the tax payer when guilt had been properly assessed.
      • dragonwriter 11y ago
        > there is a reason why non automatic appeals are not free Neither are automatic appeals, or this whole thread wouldn't be happening. The appeal here is automatic.
    • DasIch 11y ago
      That's not an issue at all, if the government just acts as a lender to whoever is going to lose. That also has the added bonus of making people think twice about engaging people in civil suits and prevents people and bad prosecutors from using the legal system for blackmail.
      • Coding_Cat 11y ago
        Well, if you go with a "loser pays" system you run into the issue of false convictions and economic-disparity again. If I were to barely break even at the end of each month, and was tried for a crime I didn't commit I might still consider pleading guilty because the actual punishment would be less than the results of the financial penalty incurred by defending yourself and losing. If I were rich enough to easily pay the fees should I lose, I would risk it.
        • DasIch 11y ago
          That's certainly a problem but it's a problem that would impact society overall negatively. Therefore I think it would be reasonable to weaken the "loser pays" system slightly, so that a balance between actual punishment and financial penalty is reached that prevents the latter from becoming an incentive to plead guilty. This could simply be done by having the government pay in these cases.
        • dragonwriter 11y ago
          For criminal cases, that probably depends on the interest and repayment terms. If its means-contingent repayment without usurious interest, the incentive to plea guilty to avoid the cost of defense would be minimized, though the public expense would, correspondingly, be greater. OTOH, the expense would be going to assure that the guilty, and only the guilty, were punished and the government was less able to get away with punishing the poor-but-innocent to prevent a public image of dealing with problems while failing to actually get the guilty, so there is a public benefit (in addition to "protecting the rights of the accused") that comes from that public expense.
  • sambeau 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_aid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_aid A better idea is common throughout the world.
    • olalonde 11y ago
      That article says the US has legal aid...
    • dragonwriter 11y ago
      Legal aid (which the US has) does not fix the problem in all cases, though it mitigates it somewhat.
    • roel_v 11y ago
      Please show me one country where there is 'legal aid' to the tune of 200k where the legal case is basically 'yeah so I totally did what I was charged with, law is totally clear but I should still receive a lesser sentence because <political reason>'. Look, I'm fine with people advocating through the judicial process, but all things considered, of all people who are 'disadvantaged' in their legal proceedings and should 'deserving' of receiving government-sponsored legal aid (because there already is legal aid in this case, to the tune of <however much this amount in OP says right now>), this case's (and defendant's) scorecard looks pretty weak.
  • higherpurpose 11y ago
    What's causing the prices to be so high? Is it the complexity of U.S. law? Would it help if you had 5 pages laws instead of 500 pages laws, or would that make things worse? (more room for loopholes) I'm inclined to believe simpler laws would help, though, because a lawyer wouldn't have to know tens of thousands of pages of laws by heart (or close to it), or at least wouldn't have to research tens of thousands of pages. Would having to pay if you lose help, too? I imagine there would be fewer lawsuits then. I don't have any data to back it up, but it feels like the U.S. has the most lawsuits/capita. Other countries where you have to pay if you lose don't have that many. Anyway, it definitely doesn't feel fair that you need hundreds of thousands of dollars for a good defense. That's why most people tend to take the plea deal even if they are not guilty of the charges they bring, or if they are "guilty" but only through some twisted interpretations of the law and the prosecutors, which could be invalidated in a Court, but they can't risk it (especially when the prosecutors tend to charge them with 10 different offenses and 30 years in prison for the least violent of crimes just to scare them into taking the 6 months in prison plea deal). The U.S. prosecutors seem to be acting exactly like patent trolls - or the mafia: "We won't take you to Court if you just pay this small sum - or go to prison for this small amount of time."
    • netheril96 11y ago
      From my limited understanding, the US has rather simple statutory laws. In other words, the legislature only promulgates 5 pages of law. But given that reality is complex, these laws cannot cover all the cases. So the judicial branch makes certain decisions themselves, and these decisions become binding to later and lower courts (a.k.a precedents). These precedent based laws are very complicated and amount to 500 pages. So, I guess your idea won't work. Either the legislature thinks up front and publishes 500 pages, or the courts have to fill in the blanks between page 5 and page 500 themselves.
    • dragonwriter 11y ago
      What causes the prices to be high is supply and demand driven by a combination of wealth inequality and frequency of legal action. There are people with enough money, and enough at stake, to offer the best attorneys lots of money, therefore quality legal services are quite expensive.
• roghummal 11y ago
  Only tens of thousands?
• rayiner 11y ago
  Your point is well-taken in the abstract, but I don't think it applies here. This is one of those cases where the defense must make the case complicated, because otherwise they lose. There is no dispute that Manning actually did most of the things she is accused of doing. I don't think she's contending that it was someone else who leaked those classified materials. The defense is in a position of arguing that, despite those things, for various reasons Manning should nonetheless be found not guilty, or at least her sentence should be reduced. They will try to make the case not about straightforward factual events, but about Manning's intentions and motivations, the nature of the information involved, the impact of the disclosures, the broader social and political implications of finding her guilty, etc. A straightforward legal procedure would certainly be cheaper. It'd also be one that would find Manning guilty without even considering the mitigating factors she's relying on for her defense.
  • SilasX 11y ago
    People are objecting to the costs that the defendant must bear, not the total cost.
  • flexie 11y ago
    She :-)
    • rayiner 11y ago
      Thank you.
    • wtbob 11y ago
      > She :-) Chelsea Manning is no more a woman than I am a cocker spaniel. He may believe, completely and truly, with ever last fibre of his being, that he's a woman—but that doesn't make it so. A woman is a homo sapiens sapiens possessing two X chromosomes, born with a uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes &c.; Manning doesn't fit that description any more than I fit the description 'a canis lupus familiaris specialised for hunting woodcock.' (I understand he legally changed his name from Bradley to Chelsea, which is why I use the latter; that actually is his name now)
  • 11y ago
• mondoshawan 11y ago
  Bear in mind that this is also a military court -- not a civilian one. The rules are entirely different there.
• column 11y ago
  "Selon que vous serez puissant ou misérable, Les jugements de cour vous rendront blanc ou noir." ("According to your mighty or miserable position, The judgment of court will render you white or black.") - Jean de la Fontaine, 1678
• tzm 11y ago
  Fairness is based upon the information presented before the courts. Unfortunately, information is expensive to produce and subjective in nature. The art of legal council emerges. I love the principle of complete fairness, but how is this technically possible? Moving to a purely fact-based society may come at the expense of liberty.
• bshanks 11y ago
  Here's a proposal: 1) At the beginning of the case, each party proposes how much money they would like to be spent on their side of the case. 2) The Spending Limit is set to the greater proposal. They then must pay the other party the difference between what they proposed and what the other party proposed (to be spent only on legal expenses for this case). 3) Both sides are prohibited sprom spending more than the Spending Limit on legal expenses for this case. For example, if A and B are going to court, A proposes a $10k Limit and B proposes a $100k Limit; B has the larger number, so the cap is set at $100k, and B must pay for up to $90k legal expenses for A. Clearly there are some details that must be worked out (eg what if someone wants to raise the limit halfway thru the case? What about money spent on preparation before going to court?) but i think this would be a good start. This proposal achieves substantive equality without sacrificing procedural equality and without preventing either party from spending as much as they want.
  • psykovsky 11y ago
    What would prevent them from spending and not reporting it?