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OwlFancier posted:What do you think the people pointing to supposed existing legal rights are doing if not complaining about real measures to improve people's conditions. What do you think I'm arguing? What do you mean by "going beyond the bounds of legalism" ? I don't think we're speaking the same language here.
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Jun 13, 2019 02:10
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I am saying that pointing to some abstract legal principle is an extremely weak form of advocacy. You don't live in a society where people just don't know that technically everyone has a legal right to a defence, you live in a society where that's writ down and nobody gives a poo poo. Particularly nobody with the power to do anything about it because that group of people are insulated from the consequences by their money and private legal practice. This is working as designed. You live in a world where the law exists as a platitude to pretend that you live in an equal society, while the practice of it exists to ensure that you do not. If you want to advocate for change you have to do so from a moral standpoint that does not have a basis in any legal bullshit. You must state that people have a moral right to things and that it is not being met. And sure, you can and should use the law where possible to achieve that end, but not out of some "respect" for the drat thing. The law is not for you, without drastic change it will never be for you. The law is for the powerful and it's a good idea to remember that. The occasional instance when it can be applied to the benefit of others is a chance opportunity born of advocacy that has its roots in moral beliefs, not legal ones. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 02:15
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OwlFancier posted:Literally the quote about sleeping under bridges is basically 90% of how I view the law. I don't think you understand what that statement actually means. But first: have you ever set foot in a law office, courtroom, or jail cell? Do you know anything - anything at all - about how the criminal justice system actually works, beyond what you read on a two by two placard? Your argument - which, as far as I understand it, is that we should ban lawyers so the rich will have no choice but to reform the criminal justice system, is just so moronic on so many levels. First, you don't seem to understand - not really - how the wealthy actually "buy justice". Some of this is from being able to afford good lawyers (and expert witnesses, etc.) - but just as much of it is from being obviously wealthy, being more credible as a witness to a jury, etc. Of course, your analysis is totally devoid of any consideration for race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. That's because you aren't coming to this from an egalitarian perspective but because you've bought into reactionary, Dirty Harry type propaganda about defendants "being let off on technicalities" and are reaching for post hoc social justice justification. Of course, in reality, despite gross disparities in resources, indigent defendants often actually have access to some of the best legal representation available - just not enough of it. Even then, it's often enough to make real differences in the lives and cases of defendants (it's seriously professionally insulting to say that most people in the US have lovely appointed lawyers, because in places where the appointment systems break down it gets so much worse). That gets into the second, worse of your mistakes: the belief that, if (somehow) rich people didn't have access to one of those tools - effective and zealous legal representation (which you, incidentally, seem to agree in principle should belong to everyone), it would somehow discipline the ruling class into relaxing the criminal justice system. The quote about sleeping under bridges should immediately clue you into why that's a dumb idea - most of the poo poo rich people do isn't illegal, or they aren't arrested or investigated for it in the first place (so it stays out of court). Or if they are investigated, arrested, and end up in court, it's often in wealthy communities that can afford humane programs. Your argument, that you've advanced in this thread, seems to be that somehow if none of that existed - if we lived under the Turkish or Russian or Thai legal system, for instance, where if you piss off the prosecutor they have many more ways to gently caress over your life no matter how wealthy you are - you seem to think that would lead to criminal justice reform. Judging from the actual history of those places I think that's a crackpot idea. In reality it just means you bribe the cops or prosecutor to not bring charges in the first place. The final and absolute worst of your mistakes is that political power comes from the top down, when in reality it comes from the bottom up. We don't need to threaten rich people into reforming mass incarceration by trying to threaten them with it themselves. At that point, we can just abolish it for everyone. OwlFancier posted:What do you think the people pointing to supposed existing legal rights are doing if not complaining about real measures to improve people's conditions. People have a right to effective and zealous representation. You argued that because there's disparities in the help from white shoe firms and court appointed lawyers (and I graciously haven't really pressed you on this) that the private defense bar should be banned, or lawyers who aren't court appointed should be shunned, or that they're uniquely amoral vultures (as opposed to any other taxpaying, law-abiding stiff). You're literally bitching about real people who keep other, equally real people out of the hands of the carceral state - with no support and nothing to back you up but your own sense of moral superiority. tl;dr: you're just like the morons saying we shouldn't give Trump's kids a free ride to college. there's a reason just about every socialist and social justice organization in the united states is in favor of the abolition of the prison system and the police state - instead its expansion DOCTOR ZIMBARDO fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 02:15
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:The final and absolute worst of your mistakes is that political power comes from the top down, when in reality it comes from the bottom up. We don't need to threaten rich people into reforming mass incarceration by trying to threaten them with it themselves. At that point, we can just abolish it for everyone.
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Jun 13, 2019 02:30
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twodot posted:Even if this is true, aren't you just arguing that if judging lawyers for their clients did anything we'd be able to do the revolution, and since we aren't judging lawyers for their clients doesn't actually do anything, in which case why spending any time caring about the fact that I'm saying "Weinstein's lawyers are dirtbags"? Describe to us the actual practical impact of saying "Weinstein's lawyers are dirtbags" and then why we should care about it. even the best prosecutor is more of a scumbag than the worst defense attorney, because their client is the united states, which is much worse than nasty harvey
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Jun 13, 2019 02:33
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Who is even hiring criminal defense lawyers from huge law firms? I know and have worked with a ton of young big law associates. Many are good friends. But with maybe one exception none of them would know the inside of a courtroom from their rear end in a top hat. And that one only works on patent trials.
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Jun 13, 2019 02:33
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:First, you don't seem to understand - not really - how the wealthy actually "buy justice". Some of this is from being able to afford good lawyers (and expert witnesses, etc.) I'm just going to stop you right there because the notion of a fair and just and equitable legal system is fundamentally incompatible with the ability of a defendant to put in more money to get better results. You can't have both, either the system is just, or more money buys you better results. E: No one has argued that this is the only problem nor that solving this would solve all problems. Also no one is making the "universal healthcare is bad because Bill Gates will get free stuff argument", I am arguing the opposite, that the government should pay for whatever level of defense counsel and expert witnesses is necessary to make defendants spending more money redundant. The only people who have made the Bill Gates argument are people arguing against me who told me free lawyers for all would be bad because the rich would get free lawyers too. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 02:38
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:even the best prosecutor is more of a scumbag than the worst defense attorney, because their client is the united states, which is much worse than nasty harvey twodot posted:Even if this is true, aren't you just arguing that if judging lawyers for their clients did anything we'd be able to do the revolution, and since we aren't judging lawyers for their clients doesn't actually do anything, in which case why spending any time caring about the fact that I'm saying "Weinstein's lawyers are dirtbags"? Describe to us the actual practical impact of saying "Weinstein's lawyers are dirtbags" and then why we should care about it.
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Jun 13, 2019 02:38
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Literally no one is arguing that rich people getting public defenders is bad why are you fuckwits demolishing that poor man of straw DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:indigent defendants often actually have access to some of the best legal representation available - just not enough of it. So close! He's so close!
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Jun 13, 2019 02:44
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twodot posted:Even if this is true, aren't you just arguing that if judging lawyers for their clients did anything we'd be able to do the revolution, and since we aren't judging lawyers for their clients doesn't actually do anything, in which case why spending any time caring about the fact that I'm saying "Weinstein's lawyers are dirtbags"? Describe to us the actual practical impact of saying "Weinstein's lawyers are dirtbags" and then why we should care about it. i think anyone who helps to keep people out of the unjust system of mass incarceration is doing the world a favor, because i believe in the abolition of prisons and the racist system of mass incarceration. arguing that criminal defense attorneys are scumbags for representing criminals directly contributes to the reactionary dirty harry law and order ideology. now i think maybe you could argue specific criminal defense attorneys are scumbags if they do unethical things like lie or steal or betray their clients. but just for representing bad people, nah no way fam. even representing accused war criminals is a chance to point at the hypocrisy of imperialists, or the winning side (who no doubt have their own share of nonprosecuted war criminals). VitalSigns posted:Also no one is making the "universal healthcare is bad because Bill Gates will get free stuff argument", I am arguing the opposite, that the government should pay for whatever level of defense counsel and expert witnesses is necessary to make defendants spending more money redundant. The only people who have made the Bill Gates argument are people arguing against me who told me free lawyers for all would be bad because the rich would get free lawyers too. VitalSigns posted:well no, because a system of justice-for-sale to the rich and powerful is a massive benefit to them and therefore they have an interest in entrenching it
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Jun 13, 2019 02:47
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:arguing that criminal defense attorneys are scumbags for representing criminals No one has done this at any time in this thread. It's like you can't be bothered to read it.
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Jun 13, 2019 02:50
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:arguing that criminal defense attorneys are scumbags for representing criminals directly contributes to the reactionary dirty harry law and order ideology.
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Jun 13, 2019 02:51
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:when in reality the court appointed lawyers are the same lawyers as the privately hired ones. they're the same people! either at different stages of career lol
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Jun 13, 2019 02:59
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Nah, this bit is right. It's some just world bullshit to think that higher payed lawyers are inherently the best lawyers. The difference is a private attorney can focus on one case and spend more time preparing. A large law firm also has far more resources than any single lawyer. DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:People have a right to effective and zealous representation. You argued that because there's disparities in the help from white shoe firms and court appointed lawyers (and I graciously haven't really pressed you on this) that the private defense bar should be banned, or lawyers who aren't court appointed should be shunned, or that they're uniquely amoral vultures (as opposed to any other taxpaying, law-abiding stiff). You're literally bitching about real people who keep other, equally real people out of the hands of the carceral state - with no support and nothing to back you up but your own sense of moral superiority. Multimillionaire white men are the loving state. When we talk about people who can afford these massive legal teams, we're talking about the people who use the state for their personal gain at the expense of the poor. Weinstein isn't the victim of an oppressive state- he's a guy who's siphoned millions in profits off indie film makers. He's a guy who held power over thousands of people and used that power to violate women's autonomy. The consequences he's facing is the justice of his workforce standing up for themselves in SPITE of the state. Sullivan isn't a hero defending the oppressed- he's getting a big paycheck to help the powerful guy keep his power. Weinstein is entitled to the same justice everyone else is entitled to. The lawyers he's got are not even remotely the same justice everyone else gets. These legal teams are a tool exclusive to the powerful designed to circumvent justice and resemble the legal counsel that we have a right to in name only.
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Jun 13, 2019 10:11
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One way to reframe this debate, perhaps more productively: If everyone charged with any crime was required to use a public defender, the public defender system would be a lot better funded. Individual public defenders are generally great people and great attorneys but they're overworked and underfunded and can't give each case the attention it deserves (they're also a VERY different demographic from the highpower corporate attorneys -- much more idealistic generally). Overall the PD program suffers from the "programs for the poor are poor programs" issue. If everyone had to rely on the system it would be more reliable.
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Jun 13, 2019 12:53
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MixMastaTJ posted:Nah, this bit is right. It's some just world bullshit to think that higher payed lawyers are inherently the best lawyers. The difference is a private attorney can focus on one case and spend more time preparing. A large law firm also has far more resources than any single lawyer. Yes I know, thus my reaction to the argument "the rich aren't buying justice see see see sometimes the same lawyers do PD work" was 
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Jun 13, 2019 13:01
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Just to make the "more resources" angle clear -- imagine a case with a hundred thousand or so pages of medical records. Not uncommon. A solo practice lawyer would have to read all that himself. A biglaw firm would first throw an AI at it then have a bunch of junior attys do doc review on the AI output. All of which could be done in a fraction of the calendar time it would take that solo practice or PD.
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Jun 13, 2019 13:11
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Just to make the "more resources" angle clear -- imagine a case with a hundred thousand or so pages of medical records. Not uncommon. Ok but.... whether everyone is required to use a PD or not, what stops someone with the resources from hiring the biglaw firm to do the doc review and evaluation and present the results of that work to the PD? Do you bar public defenders from accepting evidence or materials presented by their clients (seems problematic but idk maybe not?)?
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Jun 13, 2019 14:19
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wateroverfire posted:Ok but.... whether everyone is required to use a PD or not, what stops someone with the resources from hiring the biglaw firm to do the doc review and evaluation and present the results of that work to the PD? Do you bar public defenders from accepting evidence or materials presented by their clients (seems problematic but idk maybe not?)? That's the issue! Well, more broadly, the issue is that people have the right to choose their own representative counsel, and rich people have more choices and can provide more resources. Ultimately I don't think this is a solvable problem from this angle. We could throw essentially infinite money at the criminal law system (note I don't call it a "justice" system) and it wouldn't be enough because there are too many systemic inequalities and too many inherent biases. What we could do is manage the scale of the problem. If we put an appropriate amount of money into public social services, public mental health care especially, had a guaranteed jobs program, adequately controlled environmental poisons like lead, etc., on the one hand, and generally reformed our incarceration system with a greater focus on rehabilitation a la the scandinavian model, we could reduce the overall need for public defender services, and with smaller caseloads the existing defenders could do a better job.
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Jun 13, 2019 14:31
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You...you..have the PD's office be able to do it. Like, is it really that hard for you guys to imagine a fully funded and capable public defender that you have to believe in a private law firm backing them up
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Jun 13, 2019 14:35
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wateroverfire posted:Ok but.... whether everyone is required to use a PD or not, what stops someone with the resources from hiring the biglaw firm to do the doc review and evaluation and present the results of that work to the PD? Do you bar public defenders from accepting evidence or materials presented by their clients (seems problematic but idk maybe not?)? If those materials are pertinent to the case, the government should pay for all defendants to have them, so there's no need to spend private money. A just and fair legal system is incompatible with the ability of a defendant to put in more money to get better results.
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Jun 13, 2019 14:37
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Unoriginal Name posted:You...you..have the PD's office be able to do it. Yes, basically. Our society doesn't do good things that cost less money, when the bad thing that costs more money punishes poor/minority people. And when we do decide to half-rear end a solution, we do it in a way that's a giveaway to private companies.
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Jun 13, 2019 14:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:What we could do is manage the scale of the problem. If we put an appropriate amount of money into public social services, public mental health care especially, had a guaranteed jobs program, adequately controlled environmental poisons like lead, etc., on the one hand, and generally reformed our incarceration system with a greater focus on rehabilitation a la the scandinavian model, we could reduce the overall need for public defender services, and with smaller caseloads the existing defenders could do a better job. No disagreement from me on any of that, for sure. VitalSigns posted:If those materials are pertinent to the case, the government should pay for all defendants to have them, so there's no need to spend private money. You guys are breaking my brain a little. As long as money is a thing, whoever has enough money will be able to spend some money on top of whatever the government is spending to get more lawyers and investigators and etc to do things they think will help their case. Whether those things will actually help the case or not is of course not guaranteed which might be the reason the government wouldn't be paying for them. But regardless, people with money are going to use it in that way sometimes. As HA said above, if the problem is framed as "rich people can spend extra resources on..." that is not a solvable problem. But the system can definitely be made better for all defendants.
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Jun 13, 2019 14:42
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Unoriginal Name posted:You...you..have the PD's office be able to do it. Given the scale of the incarceral state that's not really a political or realistic possibility until we tackle overincarceration systemically first. My local PD's office is currently hiring. A friend of mine applied, was offered a job. They actually just got a new budget that pays the PD's on par with the prosecutors, so the salary would have been a a DRAMATIC improvement over her current. She still didn't take the job. Why? Because the initial starting caseload was 220 clients and that was expected to increase as she got more experience. For one public defender, at one time. If each of those got an OJ style defense team . . . . OJ reputedly spent between three and six million dollars on his legal defense. Let's cut that down and say each defendant gets a one million dollar defense. You're quickly talking billions of dollars just for the public legal defense budget of one county in one state. It's not possible. We can't solve this problem by just throwing money at it. There are too many people getting charged with too many crimes. Gotta solve that issue first.
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Jun 13, 2019 14:43
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Just to make the "more resources" angle clear -- imagine a case with a hundred thousand or so pages of medical records. Not uncommon. Is anyone anywhere in this thread arguing against more resources for public defenders? No one is arguing that public defenders shouldn't exist, just that they aren't the end all be all perfect solution to every single situation and won't ever be.
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Jun 13, 2019 14:43
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Is anyone anywhere in this thread arguing against more resources for public defenders? My argument is that "more resources for public defenders" is a wholly inadequate response. I'm not sure people who aren't' familiar with the legal system can even grasp how inadequate, so I'm trying to help the non-legal understand the scale of the issue.
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Jun 13, 2019 14:51
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wateroverfire posted:
Well what I said was a just legal system is incompatible with the ability of a defendant to spend more money to get better outcomes. If a defendant spends more money and it makes no difference to the outcome then the system is working fine, so I don't see the problem. Well ok I see a problem I guess, if the result of a fully funded PD system is private lawyers taking rich people's money and coming up with nothing useful the PD didn't already have, then what you have is rich people being defrauded. But that possibility exists now, and that's part of why we have the bar right, to deal with professional misconduct.
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Jun 13, 2019 15:32
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VitalSigns posted:Well what I said was a just legal system is incompatible with the ability of a defendant to spend more money to get better outcomes. If a defendant spends more money and it makes no difference to the outcome then the system is working fine, so I don't see the problem. Sometimes it will make a difference. There is no way to know beforehand - if there was, investigation wouldn't be necessary.
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Jun 13, 2019 15:44
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If each of those got an OJ style defense team . . . . OJ reputedly spent between three and six million dollars on his legal defense. Let's cut that down and say each defendant gets a one million dollar defense. You're quickly talking billions of dollars just for the public legal defense budget of one county in one state. It's not possible. Sure it is, the US prison population is 2 million and our conviction rate is 85%. The cost of a million dollar defense for everyone alive who is either in prison or was charged with a crime that carries prison time is $2.3 trillion. The US has that much money, we just gave the ultrarich that much money in a huge tax cut. We could spend $2 million on everyone's defense and still come in comfortably under the cost of the Iraq War. We could spend OJ Simpson amounts of $3 million and it would still be a better use of money than the Iraq War plus the Wall Street bailouts. So the issue is not lack of resources (obviously, we manage to pay all the prosecution costs, right?), it's priorities. Our rulers are more interested in murdering Arabs and throwing money at bankers than they are in justice for anyone without a seven figure net worth. Hieronymous Alloy posted:We can't solve this problem by just throwing money at it. There are too many people getting charged with too many crimes. Gotta solve that issue first. Well I'd argue these things go together. The reason it's easy (and even profitable) to lock up 2 million people in the first place is that we do it on the cheap and we don't really care if someone who isn't a Harvey Weinstein gets railroaded for a crime they didn't commit. I say part of changing our mass incarceration culture is convincing people that the rich and poor have equal dignity and an equal right to just and fair treatment by the courts. The argument against mass incarceration and the argument that the quality of your criminal defense shouldn't depend on your net worth both follow from the same premises.
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Jun 13, 2019 15:44
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wateroverfire posted:Sometimes it will make a difference. There is no way to know beforehand - if there was, investigation wouldn't be necessary. Well to some degree, there is. I am sure Bill Gates would spend his entire net worth if it were the only way to avoid a 20 year prison sentence for a crime he didn't commit. But that doesn't mean a law firm gets to just think up ways to bill him for a gajillion dollars because "well you never know what we might have found", that's the kind of misconduct that the bar exists to deal with because lawyers are experts and clients are not and that creates opportunities for fraud. In a sane society, if we're committed to the proper functioning of the PD system, if PD's are saying "hey there's all these investigations we need to do but we don't have the money" that would be an indicator we need to increase funding. If rich people are constantly embarrassing the PD office by hiring private firms who show up their work then that too would be an indicator we need to increase funding. So this is obviously not an intractable problem, it's the same problem any public system has to deal with from roads to schools to the UK's NHS.
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Jun 13, 2019 15:51
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VitalSigns posted:Sure it is, the US prison population is 2 million and our conviction rate is 85%. The cost of a million dollar defense for everyone alive who is either in prison or was charged with a crime that carries prison time is $2.3 trillion. The US has that much money, we just gave the ultrarich that much money in a huge tax cut. We could spend $2 million on everyone's defense and still come in comfortably under the cost of the Iraq War. We could spend OJ Simpson amounts of $3 million and it would still be a better use of money than the Iraq War plus the Wall Street bailouts. Generally speaking I don't disagree but even as someone who might be able to personally profit from dumping that kind of cash into the public defense bar, there are a host of other higher better potential uses of that money, starting with Medicare for all and ending somewhere around rural broadband. Ultimately the legal system is like the military: a necessary evil that inherently wastes money. If lawyers are involved there have already been a whole chain of prior failures to properly intervene.
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Jun 13, 2019 15:57
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Generally speaking I don't disagree but even as someone who might be able to personally profit from dumping that kind of cash into the public defense bar, there are a host of other higher better potential uses of that money, starting with Medicare for all and ending somewhere around rural broadband. Ultimately the legal system is like the military: a necessary evil that inherently wastes money. If lawyers are involved there have already been a whole chain of prior failures to properly intervene. This argument doesn't make sense to me. The legal system exists already, millions of people are in prison right now. The consequence of not funding PDs or not calling Weinstein's lawyer a scumbag isn't "the legal system stops imprisoning people"
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Jun 13, 2019 15:59
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Resolving disputes without violence: a necessary evil that wastes money.
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Jun 13, 2019 16:03
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Ogmius815 posted:Resolving disputes without violence: a necessary evil that wastes money. Something we probably want to do in the most efficient possible way, at least. Which we don't necessarily do now. For example, I'm pretty sure (though I don't have a study at hand to corroberate) that the cost of putting mental health coaches in schools to work with at-risk kids and kids with special needs on coping strategies trades favorably against the gains from keeping some of those kids out of jail.
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Jun 13, 2019 16:14
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the cost on giving people homes vs. the cost of jailing them for crimes associated with homelessness is similarly a source of grim chuckles. but hey, The System says we gotta keep these people homeless, and judging the System's outcomes as wrong runs the risk of someone calling one of Weinstein's lawyers a scumbag.
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Jun 13, 2019 16:21
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:the cost on giving people homes vs. the cost of jailing them for crimes associated with homelessness is similarly a source of grim chuckles. wateroverfire posted:Something we probably want to do in the most efficient possible way, at least. Which we don't necessarily do now. Right those are the sorts of things I'm talking about. Look, this is a truism that any trial attorney will understand and agree with: any time two attorneys step into a courtroom, at least one of them is making a horrible mistake. Specifically, as relates to this conversation, one of the two is wasting a shitload of money. Dispute resolution is always a deprecated process; the preferred process is always to resolve or avoid the dispute at an earlier stage before costly resolution becomes necessary (hence the specificity of the analogy with military spending; military spending is the same thing, but even worse and even more wasteful). To break this down in simple math, even assuming a world where all public defenders are funded adequately and with perfect prosecution funding parity, for every two dollars spent on criminal justice legal costs, one of those dollars -- the dollar spent by the losing side -- would have been better spent on prior-intervention social services.
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Jun 13, 2019 16:45
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What if you learned that hiring a private attorney versus using a public defender didn't materially change the outcome for a defendant? And also, what if you learned that people who had enough money to hire a private criminal defense attorney were not eligible for the public defender, thus forced to spend their own money? Would that change your opinion of the legal system?
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Jun 13, 2019 17:07
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:To break this down in simple math, even assuming a world where all public defenders are funded adequately and with perfect prosecution funding parity, for every two dollars spent on criminal justice legal costs, one of those dollars -- the dollar spent by the losing side -- would have been better spent on prior-intervention social services. Okay? I can have more than one belief, I can believe that if a case gets to trial the defense counsel should have all the funding necessary to ensure a fair trial, and I can also believe that more money should be spent on interventions to prevent those cases from happening in the first place. Despite your dismissal of arguments for funding PDs because allegedly "the people supporting that don't understand mass incarceration is its own problem", you can click the '?' below my avatar to see that I brought up ending mass incarceration well before you jumped into the conversation as a pre-rebuttal of the argument that I knew would be coming "it costs too much we can't afford it because we spent all the money on wars and corporate bailouts"
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Jun 13, 2019 17:12
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blarzgh posted:What if you learned that hiring a private attorney versus using a public defender didn't materially change the outcome for a defendant? If a public defender spending 80 minutes with a client is just as good as a law firm spending $6 million of billing hours on investigation and preparation, then the entire legal industry is a fraud and should be abolished to protect the public from robbery. blarzgh posted:And also, what if you learned that people who had enough money to hire a private criminal defense attorney were not eligible for the public defender, thus forced to spend their own money? This seems unconstitutional. If every lawyer I tried to hire refused to represent me, and the state refused to appoint counsel because theoretically I have the money to afford my own, seems like I have a solid claim under Gideon etc.
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Jun 13, 2019 17:15
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In most jurisdictions, getting a PD requires filing a financial affidavit in order to prove indigence and qualify for the service. Recently, the federal PD office wanted to represent Michael Avenatti without him having file one, because he would either almost certainly lie, or reveal information devastating to his defense. Rich people don't get PDs for the same reason they don't qualify for WIC. Have you really been ranting about reforming the defense bar while being unaware of this? Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 17:22
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