Given the overwhelming evidence, I doubt seriously that a venue change would have made any difference and I think the judge knew that.
Will they bring it up at appeal? Probably. Will it really make any difference in the end? I don't know. I'm not sure what threshold there is for overturning a verdict based on the venue and to what extent they have to prove that he didn't get a fair trial. Do they consider the case as a whole when making that determination? If so, I wonder if the overwhelming evidence will make the venue irrelevant. I think the venue should be irrelevant because of the overwhelming evidence but I don't know how that works in the actual courts.
Yeah, there's no evidence of people with no option but the public defender getting railroaded and no one with money for an expensive legal team ever got away with murder...
The Madoff case is different. When rich people are the victims, they ensure (often times indirectly) that the person on trial is thrown in the slammer. In cases like that, it's money against money which tilts the scales.
And sure, poor people with a public defender sometimes get off. The rule isn't absolute. And the degree of the crime does play a factor. The more serious the charge, the less likely someone is to be an exception to the rule.
And, as my "good possibility of acquittal" implies, money doesn't always get you off but it makes it orders of magnitude more likely.
And, of course, all of this is independent of actual guilt or innocence. Many innocent people who don't get a quality defense will get convicted. Many guilty people who can afford a good lawyer will go free.
Every once in a while there is someone who is innocent. My elderly mother was driving the Prius through New Mexico and got a ticket for something like 93 in a 75. Turns out the cop tagged someone else with his radar and didn't feel like chasing them down so he gave the ticket to my mother. Fortunately, my father was able to get the GPS logs from the nav system showing her driving 70 through that whole stretch of road and had the lawyer get the ticket tossed.
But cases like that are rare. For the most part you're right. Most people who get speeding tickets are, in fact, guilty of speeding and trying to work the court system.
My comment was about how little the defense team did to try and get him off. I made no presumption of his actual guilt or innocence in my opening statement. I made no implication of my assumption of his guilt or innocence. I made a comment about how little was presented in his defense, suggesting that if their intention was to get the jury to find him not guilty, they didn't do a very good job. I have no idea how you can read that and think I assume he's innocent.
Hell, I don't know why they even bothered going to trial given the overwhelming evidence of his guilt. They did a poor job of defending him because they simply didn't have anything to use for his defense. They may have been trying to set it up so that they could talk the jury into not giving him the death penalty. But I'm not sure why then they didn't just plead guilty in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table. Unless, of course, the prosecution wouldn't make that deal.
I question why she went to trial in the first place and why she didn't just have him plead guilty in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table.
I suppose she has to do what her client tells her to do though. I suspect that's why they went through the hassle of a trial they knew they couldn't win.
Most trials are biased against the defendant because most defendants that go to trial are, in fact, guilty. Most police and prosecutors do try to catch the actual perpetrators of crimes-- and don't typically proceed to trial unless the evidence supports at least a reasonable chance of getting a guilty verdict.
Tell that to the guy who just got released from death row 10 YEARS after the evidence came forth that he was innocent.
I'm not sure why he tried to put up a defense at all. The case against him was overwhelming. There's nothing the defense could do to keep him from getting convicted. He should have exchanged a guilty plea for taking the death penalty off the table and saved the expense of a trial.
There's process involved with each charge to ensure the jury is doing more than rubber stamping things. It's probably overkill in this particular case but it's important for the judicial system to have the processes in place.
Per comments above, the more I read and think about it, I think that the more plausible explanation is they were laying the ground work for "please don't give him the death penalty" than "don't convict him".
My point was that people win or lose their case based on the quality of defense that's presented, not whether they're actually guilty or not. People who can afford to throw legions of lawyers at their defense can get away with murder, literally. This guy had a piss poor defense so it's no surprise he was convicted, regardless of whether he was a brainwashed pawn of his brother or a willing and eager participant. I believe firmly that it was the latter rather than the former. But a very well paid defense team would have been able to manufacture enough testimony and evidence to question his responsibility. At least throw enough BS at the jury to make them have some doubt. But that's how our "justice" system works in this country. Cheap defense = conviction. Expensive defense = good possibility of acquittal.
It's not really strange at all. The jury had 30 counts to slog through. That's a fair amount of paperwork and procedure what with discussion and voting and so forth. And it seems like they were contentious about making sure they understood the law before passing judgment given the questions they asked the judge. Lord knows these verdicts will be scrutinized and appealed. You want to get it right so he doesn't get off on a technicality.
Given his poor defense, I'm really not all that surprised. Though I wonder how it will flesh out in appeals if he gets the death penalty. One might argue the poor quality defense would force a retrial if they can convince an appeals court of incompetence or something like that.
I can guarantee you that they can get around rental and fingerprint scans. It is this kind of miss-information, found in this article, that makes people and governments feel secure in their security measures... all while they are being taken advantage of and not knowing it until a decade later.
I didn't know Avis and Hertz were scanning anything...
I'm not sure the language it's written in makes any difference. But being standards based hasn't helped any other OSS project thus far. Why do you think this one will be any different? I know you want it to succeed. But why will it?
Open source gaining widespread adoption over commercial packages? You can hope in one hand and crap in the other. Guess which one will get filled up first.
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And you have reams of evidence to prove me wrong? I welcome you to present it.
Given the overwhelming evidence, I doubt seriously that a venue change would have made any difference and I think the judge knew that.
Will they bring it up at appeal? Probably. Will it really make any difference in the end? I don't know. I'm not sure what threshold there is for overturning a verdict based on the venue and to what extent they have to prove that he didn't get a fair trial. Do they consider the case as a whole when making that determination? If so, I wonder if the overwhelming evidence will make the venue irrelevant. I think the venue should be irrelevant because of the overwhelming evidence but I don't know how that works in the actual courts.
Makes sense.
Yeah, there's no evidence of people with no option but the public defender getting railroaded and no one with money for an expensive legal team ever got away with murder...
Give me a break.
I can't disagree with you there.
That's a fair point.
The Madoff case is different. When rich people are the victims, they ensure (often times indirectly) that the person on trial is thrown in the slammer. In cases like that, it's money against money which tilts the scales.
And sure, poor people with a public defender sometimes get off. The rule isn't absolute. And the degree of the crime does play a factor. The more serious the charge, the less likely someone is to be an exception to the rule.
And, as my "good possibility of acquittal" implies, money doesn't always get you off but it makes it orders of magnitude more likely.
And, of course, all of this is independent of actual guilt or innocence. Many innocent people who don't get a quality defense will get convicted. Many guilty people who can afford a good lawyer will go free.
Every once in a while there is someone who is innocent. My elderly mother was driving the Prius through New Mexico and got a ticket for something like 93 in a 75. Turns out the cop tagged someone else with his radar and didn't feel like chasing them down so he gave the ticket to my mother. Fortunately, my father was able to get the GPS logs from the nav system showing her driving 70 through that whole stretch of road and had the lawyer get the ticket tossed.
But cases like that are rare. For the most part you're right. Most people who get speeding tickets are, in fact, guilty of speeding and trying to work the court system.
That stretch makes absolutely no sense to me.
My comment was about how little the defense team did to try and get him off. I made no presumption of his actual guilt or innocence in my opening statement. I made no implication of my assumption of his guilt or innocence. I made a comment about how little was presented in his defense, suggesting that if their intention was to get the jury to find him not guilty, they didn't do a very good job. I have no idea how you can read that and think I assume he's innocent.
Hell, I don't know why they even bothered going to trial given the overwhelming evidence of his guilt. They did a poor job of defending him because they simply didn't have anything to use for his defense. They may have been trying to set it up so that they could talk the jury into not giving him the death penalty. But I'm not sure why then they didn't just plead guilty in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table. Unless, of course, the prosecution wouldn't make that deal.
And a defense attorney that doesn't hurt from getting national press at the same time.
I question why she went to trial in the first place and why she didn't just have him plead guilty in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table.
I suppose she has to do what her client tells her to do though. I suspect that's why they went through the hassle of a trial they knew they couldn't win.
Most trials are biased against the defendant because most defendants that go to trial are, in fact, guilty. Most police and prosecutors do try to catch the actual perpetrators of crimes-- and don't typically proceed to trial unless the evidence supports at least a reasonable chance of getting a guilty verdict.
Tell that to the guy who just got released from death row 10 YEARS after the evidence came forth that he was innocent.
Would it not make more sense to just exchange a guilty plea for taking the death penalty off the table?
I'm not sure why he tried to put up a defense at all. The case against him was overwhelming. There's nothing the defense could do to keep him from getting convicted. He should have exchanged a guilty plea for taking the death penalty off the table and saved the expense of a trial.
There's process involved with each charge to ensure the jury is doing more than rubber stamping things. It's probably overkill in this particular case but it's important for the judicial system to have the processes in place.
Where did I ever say he wasn't?
Per comments above, the more I read and think about it, I think that the more plausible explanation is they were laying the ground work for "please don't give him the death penalty" than "don't convict him".
The more I read and think about it, this sounds more plausible than trying to tie up the courts with a defense incompetence appeals.
My point was that people win or lose their case based on the quality of defense that's presented, not whether they're actually guilty or not. People who can afford to throw legions of lawyers at their defense can get away with murder, literally. This guy had a piss poor defense so it's no surprise he was convicted, regardless of whether he was a brainwashed pawn of his brother or a willing and eager participant. I believe firmly that it was the latter rather than the former. But a very well paid defense team would have been able to manufacture enough testimony and evidence to question his responsibility. At least throw enough BS at the jury to make them have some doubt. But that's how our "justice" system works in this country. Cheap defense = conviction. Expensive defense = good possibility of acquittal.
It's not really strange at all. The jury had 30 counts to slog through. That's a fair amount of paperwork and procedure what with discussion and voting and so forth. And it seems like they were contentious about making sure they understood the law before passing judgment given the questions they asked the judge. Lord knows these verdicts will be scrutinized and appealed. You want to get it right so he doesn't get off on a technicality.
Given his poor defense, I'm really not all that surprised. Though I wonder how it will flesh out in appeals if he gets the death penalty. One might argue the poor quality defense would force a retrial if they can convince an appeals court of incompetence or something like that.
Can you imagine the reaction when a TSA agent talked about having a great day at work once that new policy was implemented?
I can guarantee you that they can get around rental and fingerprint scans.
It is this kind of miss-information, found in this article, that makes people and governments feel secure in their security measures... all while they are being taken advantage of and not knowing it until a decade later.
I didn't know Avis and Hertz were scanning anything...
I'm not sure the language it's written in makes any difference. But being standards based hasn't helped any other OSS project thus far. Why do you think this one will be any different? I know you want it to succeed. But why will it?
Open source gaining widespread adoption over commercial packages? You can hope in one hand and crap in the other. Guess which one will get filled up first.