Lemming posted:

A layperson did a google search and found something from a law school and they linked it. What else can you expect a layperson to do in a discussion like this?

quote:

Yeah hand wave away research by an individual whose focus in life is apparently ethics in the courtroom

ActusRhesus posted:

As for lemming, anyone can have an opinion on the justice system. But a no content post just citing someone else's article isn't much of a discussion, is it? And I'm not the only one who (correctly) pointed out the problems with treating law review articles like other scholarly works.

joeburz posted:

Laughing at the thought of two lawyers looking down on this guy that disagrees with them because he teaches at a sub-tier school, meanwhile they're shitposting on something awful dot com.

Dead Reckoning posted:

Jesus christ, no one cares about whatever gotcha you think you're going for here.

Dum Cumpster posted:

Are there any reasonable suggestions for how to keep police officers from wanting to help each other cover up mistakes so frequently? I know there's no real comparison, but when someone fucks up in the corporate world their coworkers aren't jumping at the chance to help them cover it up. I don't remember reading anything in these threads addressing it, but I could have just missed it.

FourLeaf posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-3hTWLHUOU



x

SedanChair posted:

The fact that you literally appear not to understand is troubling. This is the ethical blind spot of police, prosecutors and their admirers. Order is more important to you than suffering.

Shogeton posted:

Probably some good reasons why it wouldn't work, but I was thinking about stuff in this thread and it was my first knee-jerk idea.

Rhesus Pieces posted:

We're getting two or three of these videos leaked every week now. How many more are going to come out, dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?

Is there going to be a tipping point, or are we being desensitized? 23 years ago the Rodney King footage and acquittals caused the worst rioting in decades, but if it came out today it would be lost in the pile.

SedanChair posted:

Radish posted:

The idea that 3.2 deaths from government employees a day is just something we have to accept since any realistic alternative is impossible (or just too hard legally) to implement as soon as possible is maddening. If 3.2 white, suburban moms were being killed by police a day there would be a public outcry and heads would be rolling but because these people are different combinations of minorities, poor, and mentally instable it's just the price we have to pay as a society to keep things clean. 3.2 deaths a day from the police should be a news headline everyday until the situation is rectified but you only hear about it in the most blatant and egregious cases. That rate is obscene and a black mark on our justice system that we let it continue.

Dead Reckoning posted:

Their tally also includes people who drew a fake gun on two police officers in front of their station, shot at police pulling them over for having fake tags, or opened fire on deputies responding to a domestic violence call. You're only hearing about the most blatant and egregious cases because no one really gets upset when the police kill someone who started a running gun battle in afternoon traffic.

Radish posted:

The idea that 3.2 deaths from government employees a day is just something we have to accept since any realistic alternative is impossible (or just too hard legally) to implement as soon as possible is maddening. If 3.2 white, suburban moms were being killed by police a day there would be a public outcry and heads would be rolling but because these people are different combinations of minorities, poor, and mentally instable it's just the price we have to pay as a society to keep things clean. 3.2 deaths a day from the police should be a news headline everyday until the situation is rectified but you only hear about it in the most blatant and egregious cases. That rate is obscene and a black mark on our justice system that we let it continue.

Dead Reckoning posted:

Their tally also includes people who drew a fake gun on two police officers in front of their station, shot at police pulling them over for having fake tags, or opened fire on deputies responding to a domestic violence call. You're only hearing about the most blatant and egregious cases because no one really gets upset when the police kill someone who started a running gun battle in afternoon traffic.

chitoryu12 posted:

We're also the nation that in 2012 incarcerated 716 people out of every 100,000 and has a justice system predominately based around punishment rather than rehabilitation, using prisoners as cheap labor and using gradually increasing fines and fees as a way of gathering income. We also regularly deny rights to ex-cons and vilify them until they're ostracized from society and are thus very likely to return to a life of crime. We're generally kinda really lovely when it comes to criminal justice.

Rent-A-Cop posted:

I think they make it perfectly clear that they are recording all police killings and not simply suspicious or criminal ones. It's a useful measure even if it does include perfectly justified killings by police because it helps paint an accurate picture of police/citizen interaction in America.

Rent-A-Cop posted:

I think they make it perfectly clear that they are recording all police killings and not simply suspicious or criminal ones. It's a useful measure even if it does include perfectly justified killings by police because it helps paint an accurate picture of police/citizen interaction in America.

chitoryu12 posted:

When I get home I'm seriously going to go over every individual March 2015 incident and count how many involved a confirmed weapon usage or fake weapon brandishing (someone holding a cell phone or wallet doesn't count). But as has been said, there seems to be a disturbing trend where any situation that could potentially allow a justified killing results in immediate use of lethal force with little to no consideration of other options.

Dahn posted:

I find it a little strange that I can get statistics for the number of people who died from malignant neoplasm of the ovary, and no one tracks the number of people who are gently assisted into the earth by their local friendly law enforcement officer.

Dahn posted:

I find it a little strange that I can get statistics for the number of people who died from malignant neoplasm of the ovary, and no one tracks the number of people who are gently assisted into the earth by their local friendly law enforcement officer.

chitoryu12 posted:

Either the United States is a war zone, or there's something wrong with our cops.

twodot posted:

This is not an unreasonable action for a layperson, but the correct response to "Legal academics is dumb, I'm not going to engage with that" is either an argument that legal academics is not dumb (which I would be interested to see) or a request for why they think legal academics is dumb, and not:

Which is doubling down on an appeal to authority, and completely reasonably leaves you open to attacks on that person's credibility on related things.

Lucca Blight posted:

I didn't realize "lol pace" was an appropriate response in a discussion. I'll take note of that.

joeburz posted:

And then you have a prosecutor coming into the thread and literally mocking the notion of rehabilitation.

Dead Reckoning posted:

Jesus christ, no one cares about whatever gotcha you think you're going for here.

MaxxBot posted:

I do think SedanChair attacked AR for no real reason but the question "do you think this country's drug laws are ethical?" is really clear and if you answer it with something other than "of course not" then there is something seriously wrong with you, the drug laws are absolutely indefensible.

joeburz posted:

Laughing at the thought of two lawyers looking down on this guy that disagrees with them because he teaches at a sub-tier school, meanwhile they're shitposting on something awful dot com.

chitoryu12 posted:

The first problem is that you need to actually be willing to punish the officer who made the mistake. If the prosecution, judge, juries, and DA are all so pro-cop that they're throwing cases or inherently trusting a cop's word or being unwilling to throw the book at an officer simply because he's a cop, you're not going to do anything to stop cover-ups from happening. Technically officers already should be getting in trouble for contributing to cover-ups of police misconduct, but they have even less chance of getting in trouble for it than the officer who just shot an unarmed black guy in the back for not responding in less than half a second to a slurred scream of command after he committed no crime except panicking and running at the sight of a gun being drawn on him for no apparent reason.

twodot posted:

I'll go ahead and reveal the gotcha, because the follow up question is "Is enforcement of this country's drug laws ethical?" If you answer "No" to this, then you have to support people running unlicensed businesses because their product happens to be drugs, selling drugs to kids, et cetera, and if you answer "Yes" you're stuck explaining how laws can simultaneously be unethical to exist and ethical to enforce, which is a pretty nuanced position.

Dead Reckoning posted:

EDIT:
Oh, hey, here's a fun game: Decide which of the dead people in the following scenarios were killed by the police and need to be counted in our nation-wide survey.

Scenario 1: Drug Dealer Doug is driving his lifted truck at 140mph on the highway as he flees a cop car pursuing him code 3. Without any physical intervention by the police, Doug loses control, crosses the median, and strikes an oncoming car. Doug is ejected from the truck and dies at the scene. The driver of the other car isn't wearing a seat belt, and also dies.

Scenario 2: An off duty police officer kills a home invader with a privately owned handgun that department policy allows him to carry on duty as a backup weapon.

Scenario 3: A lone wolf jihadi takes several people hostage in a coffee shop. As the SWAT team surrounds the building, the jihadi executes his first hostage, prompting SWAT to rush their entry. After the team enters, the jihadi kills another hostage. One hostage is struck by a bullet from the entry team, damaging her spine. She will be confined to a wheel chair for the rest of her life. Another hostage is struck in the head by a less-lethal beanbag round and falls into a coma. A week later, his family pulls the plug on life support against the advice of their doctor, citing their religious beliefs. The jihadi is taken alive, but 48 hours later he escapes custody during a transfer. The manhunt is called off the same day, when it is discovered that he was struck and killed by a semi truck as he tried to cross a freeway shortly after escaping. Six months later, one of the surviving hostages commits suicide. In her note, she blames the constant night terrors caused by memories of the gunfight, and seeing her friend shot in the head with a beanbag in front of her.

Show your work.

hobbesmaster posted:

That redirects to a porn site at the moment so be careful clicking that link. Yay wordpress exploits!

twodot posted:

This is not an unreasonable action for a layperson, but the correct response to "Legal academics is dumb, I'm not going to engage with that" is either an argument that legal academics is not dumb (which I would be interested to see)

Xibanya posted:

I'm a little wary of shaken baby syndrome as a crime; I think prosecuting it requires a holistic approach. Apparently there have been a number of people who were found to have been sent to prison needlessly because instead of shaken baby syndrome their baby actually had a different variety of injury (one symptom of SBS is brain swelling and vomiting which can actually be caused by vitamin D deficiency. Some injuries like blood pooling in eyes apparently can be a delayed symptom of an injury sustained during birth.) but juries see red when child abuse is involved. Surprise surprise some of the people recently freed were poor and brown when convicted.

As a woman freaks me out because it's just one more way to criminalize being a poor woman. Poor and miscarry? Go to jail. Poor and baby manifests injuries from rough birth? Go to jail. Poor and leave your kid with a game boy in a ventilated car? Go to jail. Of course abuse actually happens but that's why these cases need extra care. Many people who went to jail on SBS were caring for kids who had no neck or spine damage. (And lest you think I hate kids, while I was working at an elementary school I filled out a few CPS reports. I loathe child abusers.)

It seems in a lot of these cases the physician has a lot of power. While I worked at a school, I was a mandatory reporter - in other words, if I saw a kid who I thought was being abused, I would be committing a crime by not reporting it. I'm assuming physicians have a similar obligation. My obligation never bothered me because I never saw a kid where I wasn't sure, but I imagine it's more difficult for a doctor or other medical professional because they are always seeing people in some state of unwellness. I wouldn't be surprised if in a hospital in a large city people of color would be reported by doctors to authorities on suspicion of abuse at a percentage higher than the percentage of patients they make up, probably not due to malice but due to doctors being unable to relate or empathize on an unconscious level (perhaps in a way similar to white LEOs who on some level find it harder to relate to black citizens.) is anyone more knowledgable about that? The intersection of medicine and law enforcement is pretty interesting.

quote:

The commissioner, Anthony W. Batts, said during a news conference that officers should have called for an ambulance when Mr. Gray, 25, was first arrested, not about 50 minutes later when he was at the police station.

...

Mr. Batts also acknowledged that the officers had violated department procedure by not putting a seatbelt on Mr. Gray while he was being transported.

...

Gaps remain in the timeline involving three stops made by the van, Mr. Davis said, in particular the last stop, when Mr. Gray had to be picked up off the floor of the van and put in a seat.

At the first two stops, Mr. Gray appeared to be able to move and talk, Mr. Batts said, but at the third, he could do neither.

twodot posted:

Making the opposite point sarcastically is dumb as hell. If you have a specific reason why comments like "lol pace" are bad, make your case. I've already made my case why doubling down on an authority is bad.

quote:

Video Contradicts Police Claims About Black Man Who Died in Jail Cell After Arrest For Sagging Pants

...

McMullan claimed in an incident report that he helped other officers use “empty hand control techniques” to remove the restraints from Edwards’ ankles and hands before leaving the cell.

The incident report also claims a deputy checked on Edwards after he was left alone in the cell and found him breathing and moving his arms.

However, the video directly contradicts the officer’s claims.

...

The grainy video footage does not clearly show how many times Edwards was shocked, but it shows McMullan kept the stun gun pressed against the inmate’s buttocks in “stun drive” mode for more than a minute.

Edwards stopped moving a short time later and never budged afterward, and the video shows officers left him alone in the cell for about 10 minutes without examining him.

...

Law enforcement experts said Edwards – who was described in the autopsy report as morbidly obese – likely died as a result of “excited delirium,” ...

FRINGE posted:

Excited delirium is contagious. Its too bad cops dont wash their hands between civil rights abuses.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/video-contradicts-police-claims-about-black-man-who-died-jail-cell-after-arrest

AZ Central posted:

In a bombshell diversion from his contempt-of-court proceedings, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio testified under oath Thursday that his attorneys had hired a private agent to investigate the wife of the federal judge who ruled that the Sheriff's Office had engaged in racial profiling.

The revelation was the result of direct questioning by U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow himself, who issued a landmark ruling in 2013 that Arpaio's office had profiled Latinos while conducting illegal-immigration operations.

Thursday was Arpaio's second day on the stand for the civil-contempt proceedings, where he and top aides are facing three broad allegations of defying Snow's orders stemming from the discrimination suit. But the hearing took a dramatic turn after defense and plaintiffs' attorneys finished their examinations, and Snow announced he had some questions of his own.

After questioning Arpaio on the contempt and immigration matters, Snow shifted his focus to some of the sheriff's more-unorthodox operations, namely involving the sheriff's investigations into public officials. Snow based his questions on allegations cited in a June Phoenix New Times article, and provided a copy for Arpaio to read on the stand. Snow launched into his interrogation after noting concerns with Arpaio's decision to transfer a commander from a unit dedicated to clandestine operations into a unit that ensures deputies behave ethically.

The implications of Snow's questioning were not immediately clear, but testimony offered a murky glimpse into some of the Sheriff's Office's alleged secret pet projects, with Arpaio conceding that the agency employed unreliable informants, private investigators and an unknown amount of public funds to investigate Arpaio's political enemies.

Arpaio carefully skirted Snow's line of questioning at the beginning, and only under intense scrutiny provided details of the covert mission. Arpaio said he had come into the possession of an e-mail from a tipster who claimed to have met Snow's wife at a restaurant, and that Snow's wife said the judge "wanted to do everything to make sure I'm not elected."

Arpaio said his counsel then hired a private investigator to look into the matter. "Results confirmed that your wife was in that restaurant," Arpaio told Snow. "I guess (the investigator) talked to the witness, confirmed that that remark was made."

Snow additionally questioned Arpaio about a second investigation also related to Snow. Arpaio acknowledged that some time in 2013, county funds were used to conduct investigations into the Department of Justice, which is leading an ongoing racial-profiling lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office. Arpaio said an informant had indicated that the DOJ had been penetrating Arpaio's e-mails as well as those of local attorneys and judges. Arpaio indicated that Snow was one of the judges but said he later conceded that his informant was unreliable.

Mel McDonald, a former U.S. attorney who will represent Arpaio should the current civil-contempt case be referred for criminal proceedings, said the full story has not yet been told. "There's been no evidence that the sheriff ordered the judge's wife to be investigated," he told reporters after Thursday's hearing. McDonald told reporters to show up today to hear testimony from Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan.
...

On Thursday, Arpaio did not explicitly name the "counsel" who he said hired the private investigator but indicated it may have been his former defense attorney on the racial-profiling case, Tim Casey.

When asked about the implication, Casey's attorney Karen Clark said that Casey has ongoing ethical obligations to his former clients in the Sheriff's Office that limit his ability to respond. However, she said, "He is confident that when the evidence the (court ordered) monitor is gathering is reviewed, it will reveal that he was never involved in an investigation of Judge Snow or his family."

When asked whether the Maricopa County Attorney's Office had knowledge of investigations Arpaio mentioned Thursday, county attorney spokesman Jerry Cobb issued the following response: "We do not comment on whether there is an investigation, particularly where nothing has been presented to our office to take any action."
...

Legal experts agree that it's not immediately clear what the day's revelations mean for the contempt proceedings, the racial-profiling case as a whole or Snow's status as the presiding judge.

"It is contemptuous behavior on its face," said Paul Charlton, former U.S. Attorney now in private practice. "And it is information deserving of further investigation to determine if other criminal misconduct occurred here." Charlton said Arpaio's investigation could prompt the DOJ to reopen the earlier criminal abuse-of-power probe.

tentative8e8op posted:

Our sheriff said under oath that he orders investigations into his political enemies, and admitted to a judge that an investigator was sent to scrutinize the judge's wife for anything incriminating.

PostNouveau posted:

Hasn't he been behaving like that for a decade? Isn't there some mechanism for removing unhinged people like him from office?

PostNouveau posted:

Isn't there some mechanism for removing unhinged people like him from office?

PostNouveau posted:

Hasn't he been behaving like that for a decade? Isn't there some mechanism for removing unhinged people like him from office?