Why not? Some of the time they are going to save time by not prosecuting cases they had little chance of winning. And the work he does in this phase is actually valuable if the case does go to court, so it's never really a complete waste of time.
There are two fairly common outcomes to being charged with a crime; a plea bargain, and a trial. Dropping the charges is relatively rare, because the prosecutor is not likely to charge you in the first place if the evidence brought to him by the police is not, prima facie, going to lead to a conviction. But I think it is the fact that, prima facie the evidence brought to the prosecutor will lead to a conviction is what causes them to assume guilt anyway.
Plus you can't really say that the responsibility of getting it right rests entirely with the courts. Even if the courts did get it right 100% of the time there would be substantial costs for society and the defendant in particular. Now, some of this is simply unavoidable but in this case if the prosecutor took maybe an hour to review the case objectively he would could have reached the correct conclusion.
There are few other professions where you can get away with causing this much damage through negligence, laziness or even time pressure and hope to get away with it. Finally if you do mess up you don't get to blackmail the other guy into not suing you, which the prosecutor in this case pretty much did.
I think the fact is that there are so few cases where a situation like this occurs that it is stupid to change the rules is what I'm really getting at here. 90% of cases are plea-bargained out of the system without ever seeing trial; a prosecutor has immense discretionary power in the criminal justice system. But because of the way that system works, it almost inevitably defaults to a presumption of guilt by the prosecution.
Why? Because if that didn't happen, justice would not be satisfied. A trial is due process and can determine guilt and innocence. A suspect can plead guilty and accept punishment without need for a trial. What you are suggesting, however, is that the prosecutor circumvent the due process due to the other party in a criminal trial- the State, and use that office's discretionary powers to discriminate against the State's interest.
I don't think that's going to happen, and, to be honest, I don't think it's fair.
Oh? Do you disagree that democracy is a race to the bottom, or do you disagree that a democratic method of creating software will also be a race to the bottom?
In many cases, mediocre and free/cheap is better (and the designed by morons generally is notwithstanding) than expensive and good, at least in the public opinion, which is why so many people eat at McDonalds.
You don't see why a prosecutor should be required to tell the whole truth? Please present your case for allowing prosecutors to lie by omission. Why should a prosecutor not be held to the same standard as anyone in the witness stand?
The obvious answer is that prosecutors are not in the witness stand.
However, you're blowing smoke if you believe that witnesses never lie by omission. It's almost guaranteed. I've never seen someone punished for it and I don't think anyone ever would be. Defense attorneys do it. Prosecutors do it. They present the evidence they want the Court to see and don't talk about the other evidence.
Trial by jury. You present the evidence and if 12 people find it to be established beyond reasonable doubt, then you can sentence them. You might have heard of the concept before. Perhaps it slipped your mind.
No, I was just hoping you weren't referring to something so stupid. A trial by jury? One of the most dangerous and stupid features of our judicial system? Attempting to judge a highly complicated legal issue for which they have no experience?
There's a reason we have appeal courts, and it's basically to deal with exactly this issue.
No, it is appropriate to do to them equivalent to what they where doing to someone else. Fraudulently attempt to have someone fined? Pay the fine. Fraudulently attempt to get someone jailed? Do the time. That's called justice.
It's simply inappropriate. You are punishing people from doing their jobs in a way you don't like. The worst punishment you should be able to inflict upon them is to remove them from that job. Anything else is oppressive.
They simply don't have the time to complete a detailed investigation of whether or not you're actually guilty. That's what discovery is for, producing evidence- but discovery is a trial phase.
More importantly, however, prosecutors are, I think, necessarily too jaded. They have to deal with a huge volume of cases, and in the vast majority of those cases, the offenders will plead out. The prosecutors will assume the police threw a case to them for good reason, and the result is that the prosecutor's office is going to presume that you've done something wrong unless you can prove otherwise- after all, the past thousand people before you did something wrong and most of them claimed otherwise, too.
I think you read exactly the opposite of what I was suggesting into my statement.
A court needs to reach uninfluenced judgments, I agree. The way we ensure that is by not punishing the judges for the outcome of its judgments, even if we dislike them.
By creating repercussions for reaching specific judgments, you remove any sense of impartiality or independence from the judiciary. You might as well just give the power to try cases to the people who are punishing the courts for coming to decisions that they don't like.
Look, it's very, very rare that people get slapped with a law out of nowhere. The vast majority of laws simply aren't relevant to what normal people do most of the time, so they don't have to worry about them.
When people do get involved in something they suspect to be legally suspect, or where they don't know the law, they have a responsibility to do their due diligence.
Also, 'knowing' the law as a judge and 'knowing' the law as a citizen are two very different things.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions but the law of the land is that everyone IS innocent until proven guilty, no matter those individuals' opinions and as such, they need to keep those opinions to themselves and do their jobs. If they're biased and can't do so, they need to recluse themselves from the case and let justice be done by someone with a clear mind.
Can you provide evidence that all aspects of the justice system must presume the suspect is innocent?
I didn't think so. For one thing, it would decimate the prosecutorial system, which in fact, tends to operate on the opposite grounds (by necessity)- in that it only drops cases on a regular basis where it does not see sufficient grounds to bring the matter to trial. Often, if the issue is debatable one way or the other, prosecutors will favor prosecuting; the result is that the issue is taken before a neutral arbitrator which can then examine the issues.
Moreover, you assume there exist judicial actors with clear minds, which simply isn't true. The most important part of bias is simply being able to identify that you have it and where it exists.
All that said, the presumption of evidence is at best a technical presumption and at worst non-existent. The public in general does not presume the suspect innocent, the prosecutors do not, the police do not, and Courts only tend to in rendering their judgments, in my opinion.
If the prosecutor suppressed state forensic reports because they were favorable to the accused they are perverting the course of justice, IMO. I think the requirement of "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" would be reasonably applied to anything the prosecutor does and says in court.
Did the police lie in court also? I don't think it would even take a new law, perjury, perverting the course of justice, contempt of court, there would have to be something on the books already.
I don't see why the prosecutor would be required to tell the whole truth... but suppressing evidence is at the very least worthy of a new trial and quite possibly contempt of court and obstruction of justice.
There is a substantial difference between making an error in judgment or testimony and deliberately lying. If a judge makes a poor judgment out of lack of understanding, I'd agree with your stance, but if a judge makes a poor judgment as a result of taking a bribe? Certainly applying (at least) the penalty to them that they applied to the accused is justified.
How do you tell? really? How do you tell when someone is merely misguided or when someone is actually being criminally complicit?
Even so, the only reasonable penalty would be throwing them off the bench. Again, a criminally complicit judge is sufficient grounds for appeal, providing you can prove it, which goes back to the original issue again.
The reason is because it doesn't matter; the Court doesn't need to have perfect knowledge over all the subjects over which it governs.
The only case in which it is generally useful to set up special courts is where the law is very complicated or unusual- UCMJ appeals courts, tax courts, that sort of thing, because the law itself would not be something your average judge would know about in detail.
However, in the case of a simple trial like this, it is not the responsibility of the judge to be informed. It is the responsibility of the lawyers to inform the Court. A Court should not be making decisions on the basis of its own investigations, after all, at least not in an adversarial situation.
That is one of the more moronic things I've heard in a while, and every so often, it keeps coming up again.
Firstly, cops and lawyers are not supposed to presume innocence. The justice system is, and the Court as an entity is supposed to presume it at a trial, but the prosecutors have no such limitation. Cops, of course, have nothing to do with guilt or innocence at all, really. The presumption of innocence is a legal theory for how defendants are supposed to be treated... but the whole point of the court system is that you throw evidence before a Court and see what sticks. That's what it's doing.
Secondly, your idea, like many others that have come before it, would cripple the justice system to no appreciable gain. The Court as an entity is designed to be independent so that there are limited or no repercussions of arriving at a specific judgment- specifically so that it will not be constrained as you are suggesting.
We imbue actors of the State with far greater authority and powers than the average citizen, and as a consequence, they are held to a higher standard of responsibility when using those powers.
You are suggesting that it is morally correct to grant the average citizen the authority to take life, but that they are not to be held to the standard of responsibility.
Such a view seems at worst moronic and anarchistic and at best contradictory.
You have no inherent right to take life. Nobody does. Your suggestion that the victim of your aggression is somehow responsible because he made a choice which places him in the path of that aggression is the same kind of logic that suggests women are asking to be raped and we can hold rapists blameless.
My point was simply that neither attack was crippling nor devastating to the United States. In any reasonable sense, neither attack was 'massive'. In both cases, the losses of lives and economic damage done were fairly minor.
Again in both cases, the true losses of lives, materiel, and money came after the attack in the returning barrage, so to speak.
I specifically stated under what conditions Tennessee v. Garner allowed servants of the state to seize life under.
Quoting myself:
"(see Tennessee v. Garner for exceptional circumstances, being probable cause of significant threat of death or serious physical injury)"
Extending those grounds to a citizen seems the most logical, then, you would agree?
It seems reasonable. If we hold State actors, imbued with greater powers than the average citizen, to a stringent standard, it seems reasonable we would not empower individual citizens to any greater standard. And yet, it is very rare for citizens to be held to such standards. See, for example, Texas.
US Casualties at Pearl Harbour were ~2,400 killed, 188 aircraft destroyed, five battleships sunk, and two destroyers sunk.
Various ships were raised after their destruction, but ignoring those, the Pacific Fleet's composition at the time was approximately nine battleships, three aircraft carriers, 12 heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers, 50 destroyers, 33 submarines, and 100 patrol bombers.
I don't have a cite for you, but I've read it estimated that the loss at Pearl Harbour was vaguely equivalent in economic terms to the damage done during 9/11.
All that said, however, it didn't matter. The attack was essentially a strategic failure, and did very limited damage to the United States in general- damage which easily could, and was, made up.
Basically, the Japanese did fuck all in their attack. The battleship losses were the worst but they were hardly crippling.
Neither the attack nor the losses was 'massive'. In fact, it was downright puny. Thirteen guys from Bumfuckistan were capable of causing just as much damage with hugely less in the way of resources or equipment or support, sixty years later.
And Tennessee v. Garner does not refer to the term execution either. It simply refers to a 'seizure' by the State.
So I rephrase my question. If the law does not permit the State to take life for theft or robbery, and it does not, then why should it allow citizens, who are not held to due process and common law requirements, to do so?
It matters because society has created consequences for actions. Society has put a price on taking a candybar from a convenience store. Society has put a price on mugging- all of these prices are codified in the law, and to a greater or lesser extent are defined in the extended system of plea-bargaining established to avoid the necessity of trial with regard to specific cases.
If the law does not permit the State to execute you for theft or robbery, and it doesn't (see Tennessee v. Garner for exceptional circumstances, being probable cause of significant threat of death or serious physical injury), then why should it allow citizens, who are not held to due process and common law requirements, to do so?
Most people don't understand security, period. The variants of Windows that most people use these days (XP and Vista) are just as secure as NT or 2000 was at the time... but running a securely locked down operating system requires a knowledgeable and motivated administrator.
There is nothing that is inherently insecure about Windows. UAC, for all that people criticize it, is a genuine security advantage... if you bother to use it, which few people do.
People don't wonder why their car stops working if they continuously drive it into walls- the answer is obvious. Stop driving your car into walls, numbnuts.
Just because the internals of a computer are more obscure does not excuse the user's stupidity, which is the primary cause of usability slowdowns and security exploits.
Slashdot Mirror
There are two fairly common outcomes to being charged with a crime; a plea bargain, and a trial. Dropping the charges is relatively rare, because the prosecutor is not likely to charge you in the first place if the evidence brought to him by the police is not, prima facie, going to lead to a conviction. But I think it is the fact that, prima facie the evidence brought to the prosecutor will lead to a conviction is what causes them to assume guilt anyway.
I think the fact is that there are so few cases where a situation like this occurs that it is stupid to change the rules is what I'm really getting at here. 90% of cases are plea-bargained out of the system without ever seeing trial; a prosecutor has immense discretionary power in the criminal justice system. But because of the way that system works, it almost inevitably defaults to a presumption of guilt by the prosecution.
Why? Because if that didn't happen, justice would not be satisfied. A trial is due process and can determine guilt and innocence. A suspect can plead guilty and accept punishment without need for a trial. What you are suggesting, however, is that the prosecutor circumvent the due process due to the other party in a criminal trial- the State, and use that office's discretionary powers to discriminate against the State's interest.
I don't think that's going to happen, and, to be honest, I don't think it's fair.
As I said in a sibling comment, I was specifically referring to the GGP's statement that
"Open source is like a democracy by the people, for the people..."
I was merely referring to the GGP's comment that
"Open source is like a democracy by the people, for the people..."
That's not a good thing, necessarily.
Oh? Do you disagree that democracy is a race to the bottom, or do you disagree that a democratic method of creating software will also be a race to the bottom?
In many cases, mediocre and free/cheap is better (and the designed by morons generally is notwithstanding) than expensive and good, at least in the public opinion, which is why so many people eat at McDonalds.
The problem is, democracy is a race to the bottom, where stupidity and the mediocre will consistently prevail.
I'm glad you like your software designed by morons and mediocre (but Free!) but I don't think that's necessarily the best way to go about it.
The obvious answer is that prosecutors are not in the witness stand.
However, you're blowing smoke if you believe that witnesses never lie by omission. It's almost guaranteed. I've never seen someone punished for it and I don't think anyone ever would be. Defense attorneys do it. Prosecutors do it. They present the evidence they want the Court to see and don't talk about the other evidence.
No, I was just hoping you weren't referring to something so stupid. A trial by jury? One of the most dangerous and stupid features of our judicial system? Attempting to judge a highly complicated legal issue for which they have no experience?
There's a reason we have appeal courts, and it's basically to deal with exactly this issue.
It's simply inappropriate. You are punishing people from doing their jobs in a way you don't like. The worst punishment you should be able to inflict upon them is to remove them from that job. Anything else is oppressive.
They simply don't have the time to complete a detailed investigation of whether or not you're actually guilty. That's what discovery is for, producing evidence- but discovery is a trial phase.
More importantly, however, prosecutors are, I think, necessarily too jaded. They have to deal with a huge volume of cases, and in the vast majority of those cases, the offenders will plead out. The prosecutors will assume the police threw a case to them for good reason, and the result is that the prosecutor's office is going to presume that you've done something wrong unless you can prove otherwise- after all, the past thousand people before you did something wrong and most of them claimed otherwise, too.
I think you read exactly the opposite of what I was suggesting into my statement.
A court needs to reach uninfluenced judgments, I agree. The way we ensure that is by not punishing the judges for the outcome of its judgments, even if we dislike them.
By creating repercussions for reaching specific judgments, you remove any sense of impartiality or independence from the judiciary. You might as well just give the power to try cases to the people who are punishing the courts for coming to decisions that they don't like.
Not really.
Look, it's very, very rare that people get slapped with a law out of nowhere. The vast majority of laws simply aren't relevant to what normal people do most of the time, so they don't have to worry about them.
When people do get involved in something they suspect to be legally suspect, or where they don't know the law, they have a responsibility to do their due diligence.
Also, 'knowing' the law as a judge and 'knowing' the law as a citizen are two very different things.
Can you provide evidence that all aspects of the justice system must presume the suspect is innocent?
I didn't think so. For one thing, it would decimate the prosecutorial system, which in fact, tends to operate on the opposite grounds (by necessity)- in that it only drops cases on a regular basis where it does not see sufficient grounds to bring the matter to trial. Often, if the issue is debatable one way or the other, prosecutors will favor prosecuting; the result is that the issue is taken before a neutral arbitrator which can then examine the issues.
Moreover, you assume there exist judicial actors with clear minds, which simply isn't true. The most important part of bias is simply being able to identify that you have it and where it exists.
All that said, the presumption of evidence is at best a technical presumption and at worst non-existent. The public in general does not presume the suspect innocent, the prosecutors do not, the police do not, and Courts only tend to in rendering their judgments, in my opinion.
I don't see why the prosecutor would be required to tell the whole truth... but suppressing evidence is at the very least worthy of a new trial and quite possibly contempt of court and obstruction of justice.
How do you tell? really? How do you tell when someone is merely misguided or when someone is actually being criminally complicit?
Even so, the only reasonable penalty would be throwing them off the bench. Again, a criminally complicit judge is sufficient grounds for appeal, providing you can prove it, which goes back to the original issue again.
The reason is because it doesn't matter; the Court doesn't need to have perfect knowledge over all the subjects over which it governs.
The only case in which it is generally useful to set up special courts is where the law is very complicated or unusual- UCMJ appeals courts, tax courts, that sort of thing, because the law itself would not be something your average judge would know about in detail.
However, in the case of a simple trial like this, it is not the responsibility of the judge to be informed. It is the responsibility of the lawyers to inform the Court. A Court should not be making decisions on the basis of its own investigations, after all, at least not in an adversarial situation.
Hence why elections are bad, 'mmmkay?
That is one of the more moronic things I've heard in a while, and every so often, it keeps coming up again.
Firstly, cops and lawyers are not supposed to presume innocence. The justice system is, and the Court as an entity is supposed to presume it at a trial, but the prosecutors have no such limitation. Cops, of course, have nothing to do with guilt or innocence at all, really. The presumption of innocence is a legal theory for how defendants are supposed to be treated... but the whole point of the court system is that you throw evidence before a Court and see what sticks. That's what it's doing.
Secondly, your idea, like many others that have come before it, would cripple the justice system to no appreciable gain. The Court as an entity is designed to be independent so that there are limited or no repercussions of arriving at a specific judgment- specifically so that it will not be constrained as you are suggesting.
You have not replied to my question.
We imbue actors of the State with far greater authority and powers than the average citizen, and as a consequence, they are held to a higher standard of responsibility when using those powers.
You are suggesting that it is morally correct to grant the average citizen the authority to take life, but that they are not to be held to the standard of responsibility.
Such a view seems at worst moronic and anarchistic and at best contradictory.
You have no inherent right to take life. Nobody does. Your suggestion that the victim of your aggression is somehow responsible because he made a choice which places him in the path of that aggression is the same kind of logic that suggests women are asking to be raped and we can hold rapists blameless.
My point was simply that neither attack was crippling nor devastating to the United States. In any reasonable sense, neither attack was 'massive'. In both cases, the losses of lives and economic damage done were fairly minor.
Again in both cases, the true losses of lives, materiel, and money came after the attack in the returning barrage, so to speak.
I specifically stated under what conditions Tennessee v. Garner allowed servants of the state to seize life under.
Quoting myself:
"(see Tennessee v. Garner for exceptional circumstances, being probable cause of significant threat of death or serious physical injury)"
Extending those grounds to a citizen seems the most logical, then, you would agree?
It seems reasonable. If we hold State actors, imbued with greater powers than the average citizen, to a stringent standard, it seems reasonable we would not empower individual citizens to any greater standard. And yet, it is very rare for citizens to be held to such standards. See, for example, Texas.
US Casualties at Pearl Harbour were ~2,400 killed, 188 aircraft destroyed, five battleships sunk, and two destroyers sunk.
Various ships were raised after their destruction, but ignoring those, the Pacific Fleet's composition at the time was approximately nine battleships, three aircraft carriers, 12 heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers, 50 destroyers, 33 submarines, and 100 patrol bombers.
I don't have a cite for you, but I've read it estimated that the loss at Pearl Harbour was vaguely equivalent in economic terms to the damage done during 9/11.
All that said, however, it didn't matter. The attack was essentially a strategic failure, and did very limited damage to the United States in general- damage which easily could, and was, made up.
Basically, the Japanese did fuck all in their attack. The battleship losses were the worst but they were hardly crippling.
'massive'? Pah.
Neither the attack nor the losses was 'massive'. In fact, it was downright puny. Thirteen guys from Bumfuckistan were capable of causing just as much damage with hugely less in the way of resources or equipment or support, sixty years later.
And Tennessee v. Garner does not refer to the term execution either. It simply refers to a 'seizure' by the State.
So I rephrase my question. If the law does not permit the State to take life for theft or robbery, and it does not, then why should it allow citizens, who are not held to due process and common law requirements, to do so?
It matters because society has created consequences for actions. Society has put a price on taking a candybar from a convenience store. Society has put a price on mugging- all of these prices are codified in the law, and to a greater or lesser extent are defined in the extended system of plea-bargaining established to avoid the necessity of trial with regard to specific cases.
If the law does not permit the State to execute you for theft or robbery, and it doesn't (see Tennessee v. Garner for exceptional circumstances, being probable cause of significant threat of death or serious physical injury), then why should it allow citizens, who are not held to due process and common law requirements, to do so?
...who says you have a creator-given right to life?
...silent approach and supersonic response speeds?
At the same time?
"This person is lucky."
Unless you're interviewing a zombie...
That's not the problem at all.
Most people don't understand security, period. The variants of Windows that most people use these days (XP and Vista) are just as secure as NT or 2000 was at the time... but running a securely locked down operating system requires a knowledgeable and motivated administrator.
There is nothing that is inherently insecure about Windows. UAC, for all that people criticize it, is a genuine security advantage... if you bother to use it, which few people do.
People don't wonder why their car stops working if they continuously drive it into walls- the answer is obvious. Stop driving your car into walls, numbnuts.
Just because the internals of a computer are more obscure does not excuse the user's stupidity, which is the primary cause of usability slowdowns and security exploits.