A ranging debate on the american criminal justice system.
(1:43:04 AM) *****: Question. I know neither of us are lawyers. However: man is wrongly convicted of killing someone. Gets out. Finds the person he "killed" faked his death and pinned it on him. Kills him. If the cops find out, can he be prosecuted again?
(1:44:58 AM) StruckingFuggle: Yes.
(1:45:04 AM) StruckingFuggle: I've actually had a class over this.
(1:45:26 AM) StruckingFuggle: Double Jeopardy, the movie, was written by someone who has no understanding of the law and seriously DidNotDoTheResearch.
(1:45:33 AM) StruckingFuggle: Or, since it's a movie, JustDidn'tCare.
(1:46:07 AM) *****: But hasn't he already been convicted and punished for the crime? Or is it that the crime was never committed in the first place?
(1:47:35 AM) *****: By "gets out" I mean "serves sentence and is paroled and gets off probation".
(1:47:47 AM) StruckingFuggle: No, it's because it's two different crimes.
(1:47:59 AM) *****: No it's not.
(1:48:38 AM) StruckingFuggle: ... yes, it is. The crime, legally, isn't just the homicide, it's the time, the place, the manner. It's two seperate, actual acts.
(1:48:46 AM) *****: I mean, I understand that.
(1:48:57 AM) StruckingFuggle: That's also the standpoint of the law.
(1:49:40 AM) *****: I still don't get that. You can't murder a person more than once. Now, stealing from the same place twice and being tried twice, that's obviously not double jeopardy. If you were convicted for killing someone who isn't dead, and kill them when you get out, you're just satisfying the law in a retroactive way. :-P
(1:50:04 AM) *****: "There! Now I'm not wrongly convicted and the last twenty-five years of my life weren't wasted--they were inverse punishment."
(1:50:09 AM) *****: I know the law doesn't work that way.
(1:50:35 AM) *****: The main thing to me is that there wasn't a first crime at all.
(1:50:46 AM) *****: The crime was only committed once.
(1:51:31 AM) *****: Hence, if you're convicted even though you didn't do it and it never happened, and are released after serving your sentence, and kill the person you were convicted of killing for framing you, that's only one crime you've committed and you've already served time.
(1:51:50 AM) *****: Hence, trying you should therefore be double jeopardy.
(1:51:59 AM) *****: I know it's not.
(1:52:10 AM) *****: And I know there's a damn good reason it's not.
(1:52:17 AM) *****: But logically...
(1:52:28 AM) StruckingFuggle: I dunno. I don't see the logic of it. :/
(1:52:45 AM) *****: I don't see the morality of it.
(1:52:50 AM) *****: Or te ethics of it.
(1:52:53 AM) *****: But I see logic in it.
(1:53:13 AM) *****: The purpose of double jeopardy is thus: you cannot be tried twice for the same crime.
(1:53:20 AM) *****: In this case, only one crime was actually committed.
(1:53:33 AM) *****: Now I know, law is not a zero-sum game.
(1:54:20 AM) StruckingFuggle: Only one crime was actually commited, but you would tried for two different crimes, one you would be wrongfully convicted of because you did not do, the other which you did do.
(1:55:12 AM) *****: Yet the fact that you were tried and convicted of a crime which you not only did not commit but didn't happen is not considered, shall we say, mitigating circumstances?
(1:55:49 AM) *****: In the end, you would have murdered one person, and been convicted for it twice. Hence, double jeopardy.
(1:56:18 AM) *****: And I know the law has been constructed to avoid this.
(1:56:28 AM) *****: It probably should be.
(1:56:42 AM) *****: And a smart person would go, "Here, look, the dude I killed is still alive. Settlement plz."
(1:56:54 AM) *****: Rather than get vengeful jollies.
(1:57:11 AM) StruckingFuggle: For murder, no. And yes, it's certainly grounds for having your conviction overturned and for a lawsuit that should end in a settlement.
(1:57:23 AM) *****: But you can't get the time back.
(1:57:35 AM) *****: You've already paid for a crime in time. So...
(1:57:45 AM) *****: ...in this case, cut a deal with the prosecution.
(1:59:31 AM) *****: (I'm going beyond "double jeopardy" now, and into "angry man becomes a criminal only after being convicted of being one and gets the state to acknowledge its guilt in doing so".)
(2:01:01 AM) *****: Say, "I will not sue the precinct of the arresting into the motherfucking ground, demolish the building, salt the earth, and pave it over; and I will even attempt to live with the prior conviction on my record; if you drop all charges." Now that wouldn't work, but that should.
(2:01:11 AM) StruckingFuggle: Unless the government framed him ... the state isn't really guilty of anything.
(2:01:17 AM) *****: Yes they are.
(2:01:28 AM) *****: The justice system cannot say "We are just doing are job."
(2:01:35 AM) *****: Their purpose is justice, not conviction rates.
(2:01:58 AM) *****: They fucked up, and they fucked up hard.
(2:02:15 AM) *****: In short, they owe a person who has been falsely convicted.
(2:02:43 AM) *****: And if that person has already served for a long time, there is nothing they can do to adequately pay that person back.
(2:02:44 AM) StruckingFuggle: Their purpose is to pursue justice within the framework of the law to the best of their ability; if all the evidence they have supports a conviction, and the trial supported conviction, and he appears innocent, they didn't fuck it. They reached an unfortunate consequence, yes, but through no fault of their own, unless they're magic.
(2:02:58 AM) *****: "Unfortunate consquence."
(2:03:00 AM) StruckingFuggle: I agree they owe people who're falsely convicted, but not through guilt.
(2:03:48 AM) *****: The problem is, I don't see false convictions coming except through actual incompetence or corruption on the part of the prosecution.
(2:03:59 AM) *****: Anyway.
(2:05:16 AM) StruckingFuggle: You're leaving out the jury, too, I notice.
(2:05:31 AM) *****: The jury knows nothing they are not told.
(2:05:32 AM) StruckingFuggle: And incompetence on the part of the defense.
(2:06:02 AM) *****: (At least, theoretically.)
(2:06:18 AM) StruckingFuggle: So the jury (those responsible for the actual conviction) gets forgiven for making decisions on incomplete data, but the district attorney does not?
(2:06:18 AM) *****: (I admit, juries can exceed the mandate of evidence presented in court.)
(2:06:34 AM) *****: I'm saying the district attorney does not have incomplete data unless he wants to.
(2:07:03 AM) *****: I can see--and we're getting off topic here--I can see the plaintiff in a civil suit describing a man being falsely convicted of murder, sent to prison for twenty-five years, and not being proven innocent and having the conviction overturned until after his release, as an "unfortunate incident" to a jury (some civil trials use juries, IIRC), with a sneering smirk and an arched eyebrow.
(2:07:40 AM) StruckingFuggle: The "mandate of evidence" can be incorrect even at a prosecutorial level.
(2:08:13 AM) *****: The majority of damage is wrongful convictions is done by corrupt or lazy prosecutors.
(2:08:23 AM) *****: in wrongful*
(2:09:54 AM) StruckingFuggle: (Source?)
(2:10:13 AM) *****: You ask me to source every wrongful conviction I've ever heard of?
(2:10:27 AM) StruckingFuggle: Nah, I'm just not exactly inclined to believe that complain.
(2:10:49 AM) StruckingFuggle: It's far too kind and forgiving to other vital parts of a system in which corruption, laziness, negligence, and gross incompetence abound.
(2:10:52 AM) *****: I have never seen a conviction that has been overturned where at any point until after it was, and sometimes not even then, the prosecutor showed absolutely no uncertainty that he had convicted the right person. Never.
(2:11:24 AM) *****: Even in cases of DNA evidence, or where the death penalty was unjustly sought for and added to sentencing.
(2:13:58 AM) *****: Public defenders have a hand in it, I'd say, because "real" defense attorneys are simply too expensive for the majority of people. Public defenders are thusly overworked and underpaid. They get sloppy and lazy and encourage their clients to take plea bargains--as they should, but only if they believe the case against their client is airtight, which it too often is not. I think prosecutors know this and use it to their advantage.
(2:15:28 AM) StruckingFuggle: Even "real" defense attorneys for criminal cases tend to be the middle of the legal crop.
(2:15:49 AM) StruckingFuggle: Very, very few good, let alone great, law students go into criminal law on either side.
(2:15:55 AM) *****: This is true.
(2:15:59 AM) *****: The good money's in civil suits.
(2:17:27 AM) *****: Juries are not without their flaws, of course, but from what I'm given to understand, in trials that actually make it to the point where the jury makes the decision, the onus is much more on the prosecution than the defense--as it should be. For one thing, crime shows have begun focusing on forensic evidence more and more, and if the prosecution doesn't supply ample forensic evidence (even if getting such would be impossible because real forensics can't yet fingerprint air)...
(2:18:47 AM) *****: I suppose when you get down to it, I feel that justice should be balance. Not necessarily crime and punishment, exactly, but if punishment has been enacted without a crime, and then the crime is later committed, well, that's just evening the scales.
(2:19:14 AM) *****: Of course, the concept of incarceration is itself broken.
(2:21:06 AM) *****: Punishment is important, but I don't really agree with incarceration for most crimes. Restitution should be the point whenever possible, and then rehabilitation on top of that. The only time incarceration should come into play is when the crime affected something irreplaceable--murder, for example. You kill someone, well, we can't bring them back. No money is going to change that. But guess what? You lose the second most precious commodity in the universe.
(2:22:30 AM) StruckingFuggle: I don't see that as balance, because I don't particularly see punishment as purchasing crime... I dunno, I find the concept ... awful. It's not like like having been punished wrongly for a crime makes doing said crime alright.
(2:22:58 AM) *****: I see it as punishment for the fucker who stole x years of a person's life.
(2:23:05 AM) *****: :-P
(2:23:33 AM) *****: Incidentally, do yo know enough about law to know what the legal punishment for that would be? Please say equivalent sentence.
(2:24:06 AM) *****: (Framing someone for something they didn't do, that is, and never coming clean about it.)
(2:26:11 AM) StruckingFuggle: Hm, actually, I don't.
(2:26:16 AM) *****: Ah.
(2:26:31 AM) *****: Well, I know there has to be some kind of criminal law governing that.
(2:26:51 AM) *****: It shouldn't be just "suck the fucker's money out through his navel".
After that point it kinda trailed off a bit into other, completely unrelated topics.
(1:44:58 AM) StruckingFuggle: Yes.
(1:45:04 AM) StruckingFuggle: I've actually had a class over this.
(1:45:26 AM) StruckingFuggle: Double Jeopardy, the movie, was written by someone who has no understanding of the law and seriously DidNotDoTheResearch.
(1:45:33 AM) StruckingFuggle: Or, since it's a movie, JustDidn'tCare.
(1:46:07 AM) *****: But hasn't he already been convicted and punished for the crime? Or is it that the crime was never committed in the first place?
(1:47:35 AM) *****: By "gets out" I mean "serves sentence and is paroled and gets off probation".
(1:47:47 AM) StruckingFuggle: No, it's because it's two different crimes.
(1:47:59 AM) *****: No it's not.
(1:48:38 AM) StruckingFuggle: ... yes, it is. The crime, legally, isn't just the homicide, it's the time, the place, the manner. It's two seperate, actual acts.
(1:48:46 AM) *****: I mean, I understand that.
(1:48:57 AM) StruckingFuggle: That's also the standpoint of the law.
(1:49:40 AM) *****: I still don't get that. You can't murder a person more than once. Now, stealing from the same place twice and being tried twice, that's obviously not double jeopardy. If you were convicted for killing someone who isn't dead, and kill them when you get out, you're just satisfying the law in a retroactive way. :-P
(1:50:04 AM) *****: "There! Now I'm not wrongly convicted and the last twenty-five years of my life weren't wasted--they were inverse punishment."
(1:50:09 AM) *****: I know the law doesn't work that way.
(1:50:35 AM) *****: The main thing to me is that there wasn't a first crime at all.
(1:50:46 AM) *****: The crime was only committed once.
(1:51:31 AM) *****: Hence, if you're convicted even though you didn't do it and it never happened, and are released after serving your sentence, and kill the person you were convicted of killing for framing you, that's only one crime you've committed and you've already served time.
(1:51:50 AM) *****: Hence, trying you should therefore be double jeopardy.
(1:51:59 AM) *****: I know it's not.
(1:52:10 AM) *****: And I know there's a damn good reason it's not.
(1:52:17 AM) *****: But logically...
(1:52:28 AM) StruckingFuggle: I dunno. I don't see the logic of it. :/
(1:52:45 AM) *****: I don't see the morality of it.
(1:52:50 AM) *****: Or te ethics of it.
(1:52:53 AM) *****: But I see logic in it.
(1:53:13 AM) *****: The purpose of double jeopardy is thus: you cannot be tried twice for the same crime.
(1:53:20 AM) *****: In this case, only one crime was actually committed.
(1:53:33 AM) *****: Now I know, law is not a zero-sum game.
(1:54:20 AM) StruckingFuggle: Only one crime was actually commited, but you would tried for two different crimes, one you would be wrongfully convicted of because you did not do, the other which you did do.
(1:55:12 AM) *****: Yet the fact that you were tried and convicted of a crime which you not only did not commit but didn't happen is not considered, shall we say, mitigating circumstances?
(1:55:49 AM) *****: In the end, you would have murdered one person, and been convicted for it twice. Hence, double jeopardy.
(1:56:18 AM) *****: And I know the law has been constructed to avoid this.
(1:56:28 AM) *****: It probably should be.
(1:56:42 AM) *****: And a smart person would go, "Here, look, the dude I killed is still alive. Settlement plz."
(1:56:54 AM) *****: Rather than get vengeful jollies.
(1:57:11 AM) StruckingFuggle: For murder, no. And yes, it's certainly grounds for having your conviction overturned and for a lawsuit that should end in a settlement.
(1:57:23 AM) *****: But you can't get the time back.
(1:57:35 AM) *****: You've already paid for a crime in time. So...
(1:57:45 AM) *****: ...in this case, cut a deal with the prosecution.
(1:59:31 AM) *****: (I'm going beyond "double jeopardy" now, and into "angry man becomes a criminal only after being convicted of being one and gets the state to acknowledge its guilt in doing so".)
(2:01:01 AM) *****: Say, "I will not sue the precinct of the arresting into the motherfucking ground, demolish the building, salt the earth, and pave it over; and I will even attempt to live with the prior conviction on my record; if you drop all charges." Now that wouldn't work, but that should.
(2:01:11 AM) StruckingFuggle: Unless the government framed him ... the state isn't really guilty of anything.
(2:01:17 AM) *****: Yes they are.
(2:01:28 AM) *****: The justice system cannot say "We are just doing are job."
(2:01:35 AM) *****: Their purpose is justice, not conviction rates.
(2:01:58 AM) *****: They fucked up, and they fucked up hard.
(2:02:15 AM) *****: In short, they owe a person who has been falsely convicted.
(2:02:43 AM) *****: And if that person has already served for a long time, there is nothing they can do to adequately pay that person back.
(2:02:44 AM) StruckingFuggle: Their purpose is to pursue justice within the framework of the law to the best of their ability; if all the evidence they have supports a conviction, and the trial supported conviction, and he appears innocent, they didn't fuck it. They reached an unfortunate consequence, yes, but through no fault of their own, unless they're magic.
(2:02:58 AM) *****: "Unfortunate consquence."
(2:03:00 AM) StruckingFuggle: I agree they owe people who're falsely convicted, but not through guilt.
(2:03:48 AM) *****: The problem is, I don't see false convictions coming except through actual incompetence or corruption on the part of the prosecution.
(2:03:59 AM) *****: Anyway.
(2:05:16 AM) StruckingFuggle: You're leaving out the jury, too, I notice.
(2:05:31 AM) *****: The jury knows nothing they are not told.
(2:05:32 AM) StruckingFuggle: And incompetence on the part of the defense.
(2:06:02 AM) *****: (At least, theoretically.)
(2:06:18 AM) StruckingFuggle: So the jury (those responsible for the actual conviction) gets forgiven for making decisions on incomplete data, but the district attorney does not?
(2:06:18 AM) *****: (I admit, juries can exceed the mandate of evidence presented in court.)
(2:06:34 AM) *****: I'm saying the district attorney does not have incomplete data unless he wants to.
(2:07:03 AM) *****: I can see--and we're getting off topic here--I can see the plaintiff in a civil suit describing a man being falsely convicted of murder, sent to prison for twenty-five years, and not being proven innocent and having the conviction overturned until after his release, as an "unfortunate incident" to a jury (some civil trials use juries, IIRC), with a sneering smirk and an arched eyebrow.
(2:07:40 AM) StruckingFuggle: The "mandate of evidence" can be incorrect even at a prosecutorial level.
(2:08:13 AM) *****: The majority of damage is wrongful convictions is done by corrupt or lazy prosecutors.
(2:08:23 AM) *****: in wrongful*
(2:09:54 AM) StruckingFuggle: (Source?)
(2:10:13 AM) *****: You ask me to source every wrongful conviction I've ever heard of?
(2:10:27 AM) StruckingFuggle: Nah, I'm just not exactly inclined to believe that complain.
(2:10:49 AM) StruckingFuggle: It's far too kind and forgiving to other vital parts of a system in which corruption, laziness, negligence, and gross incompetence abound.
(2:10:52 AM) *****: I have never seen a conviction that has been overturned where at any point until after it was, and sometimes not even then, the prosecutor showed absolutely no uncertainty that he had convicted the right person. Never.
(2:11:24 AM) *****: Even in cases of DNA evidence, or where the death penalty was unjustly sought for and added to sentencing.
(2:13:58 AM) *****: Public defenders have a hand in it, I'd say, because "real" defense attorneys are simply too expensive for the majority of people. Public defenders are thusly overworked and underpaid. They get sloppy and lazy and encourage their clients to take plea bargains--as they should, but only if they believe the case against their client is airtight, which it too often is not. I think prosecutors know this and use it to their advantage.
(2:15:28 AM) StruckingFuggle: Even "real" defense attorneys for criminal cases tend to be the middle of the legal crop.
(2:15:49 AM) StruckingFuggle: Very, very few good, let alone great, law students go into criminal law on either side.
(2:15:55 AM) *****: This is true.
(2:15:59 AM) *****: The good money's in civil suits.
(2:17:27 AM) *****: Juries are not without their flaws, of course, but from what I'm given to understand, in trials that actually make it to the point where the jury makes the decision, the onus is much more on the prosecution than the defense--as it should be. For one thing, crime shows have begun focusing on forensic evidence more and more, and if the prosecution doesn't supply ample forensic evidence (even if getting such would be impossible because real forensics can't yet fingerprint air)...
(2:18:47 AM) *****: I suppose when you get down to it, I feel that justice should be balance. Not necessarily crime and punishment, exactly, but if punishment has been enacted without a crime, and then the crime is later committed, well, that's just evening the scales.
(2:19:14 AM) *****: Of course, the concept of incarceration is itself broken.
(2:21:06 AM) *****: Punishment is important, but I don't really agree with incarceration for most crimes. Restitution should be the point whenever possible, and then rehabilitation on top of that. The only time incarceration should come into play is when the crime affected something irreplaceable--murder, for example. You kill someone, well, we can't bring them back. No money is going to change that. But guess what? You lose the second most precious commodity in the universe.
(2:22:30 AM) StruckingFuggle: I don't see that as balance, because I don't particularly see punishment as purchasing crime... I dunno, I find the concept ... awful. It's not like like having been punished wrongly for a crime makes doing said crime alright.
(2:22:58 AM) *****: I see it as punishment for the fucker who stole x years of a person's life.
(2:23:05 AM) *****: :-P
(2:23:33 AM) *****: Incidentally, do yo know enough about law to know what the legal punishment for that would be? Please say equivalent sentence.
(2:24:06 AM) *****: (Framing someone for something they didn't do, that is, and never coming clean about it.)
(2:26:11 AM) StruckingFuggle: Hm, actually, I don't.
(2:26:16 AM) *****: Ah.
(2:26:31 AM) *****: Well, I know there has to be some kind of criminal law governing that.
(2:26:51 AM) *****: It shouldn't be just "suck the fucker's money out through his navel".
After that point it kinda trailed off a bit into other, completely unrelated topics.