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Dead Reckoning posted: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. I am aware of this, I didn't say that rich people can get PDs if they don't feel like spending money. I said that if a rich person were unable to hire a lawyer because no one would voluntarily represent them, and the state said "well you aren't poor so oh well" and forced them to defend themselves pro se, that it seems to me like they would have a sixth amendment case against the state. Do you disagree with me?
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Jun 13, 2019 17:27
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VitalSigns posted:Prove it. https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=772 https://imgur.com/nAbeYSL https://imgur.com/I0QvWaF (Can't get images to post?) In fact, PD's are slightly better at getting plea deals, slightly better at getting not-guiltys and significantly better at getting reduced sentences than private attorneys are. I think the general public only gets the snippet of the high-profile cases, and tends to feel like, "well, because I watched this rich guy get off on a technicality" then paying more money must mean getting a better result at trial, i.e. OJ. In reality, the thing people forget about a case like OJ's is that for every penny of work the high powered defense team spent on the case, the Prosecution had to put an equivalent resource into countering that work. Spending more money on your defense just makes the prosecution spend more time on your prosecution - the ratio trends 1 to 1. blarzgh fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 17:28
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VitalSigns posted:Okay? I didn't do that, I agree we need to fund PD's at parity with prosecutors and I've been saying so on this forum for years It's just a wholly inadequate response by itself given the scale and state of America's legal system It's palliative care not a cure. Sure good do it but if it's all you're doing you've given up hope for a cure. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 17:29
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VitalSigns posted:I am aware of this, I didn't say that rich people can get PDs if they don't feel like spending money. I said that if a rich person were unable to hire a lawyer because no one would voluntarily represent them, and the state said "well you aren't poor so oh well" and forced them to defend themselves pro se, that it seems to me like they would have a sixth amendment case against the state. Such scenarios don't occur. Rich people can always find attorneys. See: our President
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Jun 13, 2019 17:30
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VitalSigns posted:I am aware of this, I didn't say that rich people can get PDs if they don't feel like spending money. I said that if a rich person were unable to hire a lawyer because no one would voluntarily represent them, and the state said "well you aren't poor so oh well" and forced them to defend themselves pro se, that it seems to me like they would have a sixth amendment case against the state. Its a fun hypothetical, but a functional impossibility. There are tens of thousands of private criminal defense attorneys in every state, and so far society hasn't succeeded yet in shaming them all into refusing to represent people who are likely guilty.
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Jun 13, 2019 17:34
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blarzgh posted:Its a fun hypothetical, but a functional impossibility. There are tens of thousands of private criminal defense attorneys in every state, and so far society hasn't succeeded yet in shaming them all into refusing to represent people who are likely guilty. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Such scenarios don't occur. Rich people can always find attorneys. See: our President Right okay. So then there's no problem with me saying Sullivan sucks is there. The theoretical problem is if I do that then no one will represent him and it will be a travesty of justice, but if that's literally impossible then I guess there's no problem at all with my saying "Christ what an rear end in a top hat" blarzgh posted:I think the general public only gets the snippet of the high-profile cases, and tends to feel like, "well, because I watched this rich guy get off on a technicality" then paying more money must mean getting a better result at trial, i.e. OJ. In reality, the thing people forget about a case like OJ's is that for every penny of work the high powered defense team spent on the case, the Prosecution had to put an equivalent resource into countering that work. Spending more money on your defense just makes the prosecution spend more time on your prosecution - the ratio trends 1 to 1. Okay but that's a good thing right, the prosecution should put up a solid case if we're going to imprison someone based on it, we shouldn't be imprisoning people on half-assed evidence because that's obviously going to be more error-prone. There's only two possibilities here. Either just enough prosecutorial effort to balance an overworked PD is just as good at giving the jury enough information to distinguish the guilty from the not-guilty as an entire firm spending six million dollars on defense with prosecutorial effort to match, in which case banning private lawyers would be an unambiguous gain for society through efficiency savings if nothing else. Or it's not as good and we're choosing to imprison more innocent people because it's cheaper, and justice is a commodity for the rich to buy. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 17:44
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blarzgh posted:Its a pretty big misconception that PD's are worse for a defendant than private counsel; PD's are some of the best goddamn attorneys on the planet and yes, they're overworked (like 99% of attorneys) but the byproduct of that deluge of cases and trial time is that they're very very good at what they do. For further example, see the Bob Kraft rub and tug case. He hired some biglaw attorneys to represent, and the state is battling back with all of their resources.
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Jun 13, 2019 17:53
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I don't think those tables alone prove that the rich are wasting money on criminal defense lawyers, and that it would be just as good to, say, find someone who does PD work and buy 80 minutes of their time or whatever PDs spend with their clients on average. For one thing, it lumps all private lawyers together, so it doesn't disprove that say 1% of private lawyers (those hired by the rich) do much better than the average private lawyer the other 99% of people have access to. The rich obviously feel like they're getting something when they spend $6 million on a legal team and a lawyer who belongs to the judge's country club and plays golf with him every Saturday, and that something they think they are getting is clearly something other than "forcing the prosecution to spend more money to get the same outcome they would have got anyway". If that's really the case, that is makes no difference whatsoever then banning private defense counsel altogether would be an unambiguous public good because everyone would save lots of money.
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Jun 13, 2019 17:59
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https://www.jstor.org/stable/3053204?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contentsquote:The experiences of 798 burglary and larceny defendants in the criminal courts of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in 1971 were studied to identify the factors having the greatest influence on the defendant's likelihood of emerging from court with an active prison sentence. The following variables were found to have a significant effect, listed in order of importance: (1) severity of offense (defined in terms of value of property taken and degree of skill required)-positive effect; (2) defendant's income-negative effect; (3) prior arrest record-positive effect; (4) strength of case against defendant as determined by promptness of arrest-positive effect. Defendant's income is more important in determining whether they go to prison than their prior record and the strength of the case against them. Now we could say that maybe this is just evidence that the cops are biased against rich people and disproportionately arrest and charge them for crimes they didn't commit, and the trials are righting this wrong, but on the other hand lolno
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Jun 13, 2019 18:18
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VitalSigns posted:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3053204?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents I can not possibly imagine you would support a study that said race had no effect on trial outcome, (which is why you edited that line out) so I assume you are again just grabbing whatever random thing says what you want at any given moment inconsistent with anything else you said.
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Jun 13, 2019 18:36
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blarzgh posted:Its a fun hypothetical, but a functional impossibility. There are tens of thousands of private criminal defense attorneys in every state, and so far society hasn't succeeded yet in shaming them all into refusing to represent people who are likely guilty. edit: To be clear when I say Weinstein's lawyers are dirtbags, I am in no way demanding you agree with me, just that that is a thing I believe, and I'm going to continue to believe and say it, unless someone can actually connect that statement to some sort of harm I should care about. 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? 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? twodot fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 18:38
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I can not possibly imagine you would support a study that said race had no effect on trial outcome, (which is why you edited that line out) so I assume you are again just grabbing whatever random thing says what you want at any given moment inconsistent with anything else you said. Poverty is racialized in the US. If you want to criticize the study for not having enough statistical power to control for race and income simultaneously sure (the abstract said there weren't enough samples to draw conclusions about sex, and I can't read the body so I don't know how many high income black people were represented), be my guest. I agree. But is your thesis really that 100% of the inequity in our justice system is racism, and 0% is poverty? That's quite a strong claim.
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Jun 13, 2019 18:53
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This conversation is odd. Yesterday yall were arguing that if Weinstein lost his lawyer because Harvard students called him names, and then no other lawyer would touch him and Weinstein had to petition a PD to be appointed, that this trial defense would be so outrageously bad thanks to our inadequate public system that he may as well be convicted without trial. But now thanks to blarzgh coming in, yall have turned on a dime and are insisting PDs are better than the fanciest legal team money can buy (at least in terms of outcomes), that it's better to be too poor than too rich and so  shaming Weinstein out of private counsel would be good for him because he'd get a more effective PD.It's like yall realized finally that your first argument was inadvertently making the case for a well-funded public system to make PDs equal to private lawyers and give them to everyone, so now you're contradicting yourselves and making the opposite claim, not realizing that your new argument is also inadvertently making the case for a well-funded public system to give PDs to everyone. If Weinstein's private lawyer is actually inferior to a PD, and Weinstein will get an unjustly harsher sentence as a result of his wealth preventing him from getting a PD, then holy poo poo that's terrible and we should fund enough PDs to give him one too.
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Jun 13, 2019 19:02
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blarzgh posted:Its a pretty big misconception that PD's are worse for a defendant than private counsel; PD's are some of the best goddamn attorneys on the planet and yes, they're overworked (like 99% of attorneys) but the byproduct of that deluge of cases and trial time is that they're very very good at what they do. I'm senior counsel in a high-priced midlaw firm, I do highly paid criminal defense work and it's goddamn hilarious to me how PDs breeze into the same (and occassionally better) deals that I have to fight tooth and nail for just by virtue of experience and relationships. VitalSigns posted:the entire legal industry is a fraud and should be abolished
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Jun 13, 2019 19:28
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I didn't do that, I agree we need to fund PD's at parity with prosecutors and I've been saying so on this forum for years I agree with this, and I don't think anyone disagrees so I'm not sure who you're arguing with. Maybe you're not arguing with anyone and you're just restating it, in which case: yes you're 100% right
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Jun 13, 2019 19:31
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Here is the real truth: the justice system only benefits the rich and powerful. Source: I'm a lawyer for the poor, formerly, and for the rich and powerful, currently.
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Jun 13, 2019 19:38
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VitalSigns posted:This conversation is odd. I don't know man, I think you've lost the plot completely and aren't even making a point anymore in your last rambling ten posts. Good thing blarzgh set you straight. Hot Dog Day #91 posted:Here is the real truth: the justice system only benefits the rich and powerful. Source: I'm a lawyer for the poor, formerly, and for the rich and powerful, currently. Meanwhile I'm just sitting on the sidelines eating popcorn and lmao at this entire thread. To the OP's initial premise and question: No, based on the universal principle of non-identification, it is a fundamental tenet of a justice system that lawyers are not judged for their clients. They are not identified with them personally, professionally, monetarily or romantically and there's a million rules in place to prevent all that, because we want to preserve the absolute independence of counsel. If anyone has a problem with that, take it up with the last 1500 years of developing jurisprudence.
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Jun 13, 2019 20:36
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twodot posted:presumably people who think shaming the lawyers of rich horrible monsters is bad think it is bad for a reason and I'm not grasping it. Everyone deserves representation, and its immoral, short-sighted, and childish to chide or diminish the work that people do on behalf of anyone who's entitled to that representation. blarzgh posted:Broadly, you have to remember that the Lawyer's duty is not only to the client, to give them the best possible representation, but the lawyer's duty is also to the public at large, to make the State do its job before taking away the freedom of its citizens. Its not up to the lawyer (edit: and not the public at large, either) to decide "how much" representation people need - it is up to defense attorneys to keep the all-powerful government in check.
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Jun 13, 2019 20:40
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Nice piece of fish posted:To the OP's initial premise and question: No, based on the universal principle of non-identification, it is a fundamental tenet of a justice system that lawyers are not judged for their clients. edit: blarzgh posted:Everyone deserves representation, and its immoral, short-sighted, and childish to chide or diminish the work that people do on behalf of anyone who's entitled to that representation. twodot fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 20:41
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VitalSigns posted:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3053204?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents That's not actually what it says. It says that not being able to post a bond generally results in more time spent in prison later. Three big problems with this study: 1. Burglary/larceny cases only. Not alot of rich people stealing TVs for your sample. 2. Its from 1978 3. From the abstract:" Most of this effect could be explained by the low-income defendant's poorer opportunity for pretrial release." In other words, the additional time spent in prison post-conviction was likely the result of the inability of the prisoner to post bond before trial - their income levels did not affect conviction rates. I'd suggest reading the study further to determine if at least part the reason for post-conviction release (or lack thereof) was mostly explained by the defendant not being able to afford to pay the victim back for what was stolen, which is a typical condition of theft type cases, called "restitution" in my state.
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Jun 13, 2019 20:49
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twodot posted:Too bad? It's not any sort of argument to say "A long time ago someone said not to do that". I'm going to do it anyways, if you want to argue it's bad you need to point at some sort of harm I'm causing and not the fact that lawyers managed to form a guild that decided lawyers are immune from judgment. I don't need to do anything of the sort. I said it is a fundamental tenet of a justice system, and as such it is extremely easy to read up about. I don't think I'm obligated to even attempt to condense it all down to several pages of post on the off chance you'll actually accept anything I write in good faith (which you won't, because let's face it you're not gonna), when really the onus is on you to go out and pick up a book. The question the OP posed has an answer. twodot posted:No one is being denied representation, so I have no idea what people keep repeating "Everyone deserves representation", a fact that everyone agrees with. Why is it short sighted? What long term goal am I sacrificing? Why is it immoral, what harm am I personally causing? I don't really care to contest if it's childish. As far as I can gather the point of the lawyer shamers itt, that is exactly the consequence of your view that blarzgh is talking about. I don't think he needs to repeat himself any further, because he's absolutely correct.
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Jun 13, 2019 20:54
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Nice piece of fish posted:I don't need to do anything of the sort. I said it is a fundamental tenet of a justice system, and as such it is extremely easy to read up about. I don't think I'm obligated to even attempt to condense it all down to several pages of post on the off chance you'll actually accept anything I write in good faith (which you won't, because let's face it you're not gonna), when really the onus is on you to go out and pick up a book. The question the OP posed has an answer. quote:As far as I can gather the point of the lawyer shamers itt, that is exactly the consequence of your view that blarzgh is talking about. I don't think he needs to repeat himself any further, because he's absolutely correct.
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Jun 13, 2019 20:56
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twodot posted:Too bad? It's not any sort of argument to say "A long time ago someone said not to do that". I'm going to do it anyways, if you want to argue it's bad you need to point at some sort of harm I'm causing and not the fact that lawyers managed to form a guild that decided lawyers are immune from judgment. The harm: if society gets more and more comfortable with the idea of denying people we "don't like" with representation, eventually society will earn itself the power to deny representation for people we "don't like."
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Jun 13, 2019 20:59
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"eventually"
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Jun 13, 2019 21:00
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blarzgh posted:The harm: if society gets more and more comfortable with the idea of denying people we "don't like" with representation, eventually society will earn itself the power to deny representation for people we "don't like."
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Jun 13, 2019 21:01
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twodot posted:No one is being denied representation, so I have no idea why people keep repeating "Everyone deserves representation", a fact that everyone agrees with. I think it is correct that Harvey Weinstein has to pay for his legal defense, as a person of wealth, and that accepting payment for this legal defense should not be a matter of shame, because someone has to do it. This obviously doesn't render the lawyer in question immune from criticism, because it may well turn out that they are a lovely person, and them being a lovely person may well have something to do with the circumstances that led to them taking up this case. But the defense itself is not the problem.
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Jun 13, 2019 21:02
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twodot posted:I read a book and it turns out, you're wrong. Weinstein's lawyers are dirtbags. I mean, at this point all your saying is, "Today, I, and most of the people I interact, with think Rich People are bad, so I don't care about eroding legal and social protections for everyone so long as it hurts those god drat Rich People right now." You're also saying, "I can't intellectually conceive of the idea that even though knocking down a railing on a mountain pass will certainly kill that person (who I hate) leaning against it, it will then kill anyone else who stumbles there, regardless of whether I like them or not.
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Jun 13, 2019 21:04
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I mean it's rather more like saying that the railing currently only stops rich people falling off anyway and coincidentally those are the same people who obstruct any attempts to put a universal one up, so gently caress em, kill the filth.
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Jun 13, 2019 21:07
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Indeterminacy posted:The conversation has gotten a bit weird. So let's make a thesis statement: Weinstein's lawyers woke up one day and said "How should I spend my time? I know I will defend a wealthy and powerful horrible rapist because he can pay me loads of money" Public defenders woke up one day and said "How should I spend my time? I know I will defend any client that crosses my desk, wealthy or not, guilty or not, horrible monster or not, because I want to work to achieve the principle that everyone deserves representation" I do not need books to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys here. blarzgh posted:I mean, at this point all your saying is, "Today, I, and most of the people I interact, with think Rich People are bad, so I don't care about eroding legal and social protections for everyone so long as it hurts those god drat Rich People right now." twodot fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 21:08
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twodot posted:No one is being denied representation! At worst, we are denying private lawyers clients. your argument seems to be "*I* twodot can say this because I twodot am useless and not listened to by anyone so what I say is irrelevant" and that seems more like a personal problem than a point of any kind. Like I, OOCC could tell people the best treatment for a stroke is 74mg of emicizumab. And like, literally nothing would happen because the odds of anyone actually taking medical advice from me on a random drug is zero, so I could say it all day, I can tell you right now to take it, you definitely won't. but like, it's still a bad opinion that is factually wrong and would be fatal if someone listened. So I shouldn't say it.
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Jun 13, 2019 21:13
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twodot posted:No protections are being eroded because no one wants to deny anyone representation.
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Jun 13, 2019 21:14
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:your argument seems to be "*I* twodot can say this because I twodot am useless and not listened to by anyone so what I say is irrelevant" and that seems more like a personal problem than a point of any kind. edit: Dead Reckoning posted:So what exactly is the point of casting social opprobrium at Weinstein's lawyers if not to discourage anyone from representing him and thereby deny him counsel? twodot fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 21:14
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twodot posted:Because they are being bad, I hope they do less bad things in the future. Do I need a reason to want to say that bad people are bad?
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Jun 13, 2019 21:19
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Dead Reckoning posted:So by representing Weinstein they are being bad, and the bad thing you want them to do less of is "represent Weinstein against criminal allegations", so I'm not really clear what the distinction you're trying to draw here is.
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Jun 13, 2019 21:22
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twodot posted:Even if I were effective, public defenders still exist (and if I were effective public defenders would be much more supported), so in any case no one is being denied representation. Again, this seems to be you defending your right to have awful opinions based on you not being important enough for anything you think or do to matter. That is possibly true, but it's not how people normally discuss if things are good opinions. People are saying a world where lawyers were shamed/attacked/punished/whatever for defending people accused (not even convicted, just accused) of serious crimes would be extremely bad. No one really cares if you, specific nobody, shames anyone. As a random singular unimportant person literally no matter what opinion you have on anything it doesn't directly matter. If you say the melting point of zinc is 45 degrees then nothing bad happens, but your still wrong.
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Jun 13, 2019 21:26
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So if they would provide the same equally zealous defense whether they chose to represent Weinstein or were forced to, why does it make a difference?
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Jun 13, 2019 21:27
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Again, this seems to be you defending your right to have awful opinions based on you not being important enough for anything you think or do to matter. That is possibly true, but it's not how people normally discuss if things are good opinions. edit: Dead Reckoning posted:So if they would provide the same equally zealous defense whether they chose to represent Weinstein or were forced to, why does it make a difference?
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Jun 13, 2019 21:28
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twodot posted:No, let's say I'm super successful and literally no one in the world will take Weinstein's money for anything. Public defenders should still represent Weinstein. Then what happens? How is that a better world? Is it better for the victims, weinstein? the PD? the lawyers? what?
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Jun 13, 2019 21:30
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twodot posted:No, let's say I'm super successful and literally no one in the world will take Weinstein's money for anything. Public defenders should still represent Weinstein. The sixth amendment to the constitution guarantees the right to the counsel of your choice.
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Jun 13, 2019 21:30
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Then what happens? How is that a better world? Is it better for the victims, weinstein? the PD? the lawyers? what? Mr. Nice! posted:The sixth amendment to the constitution guarantees the right to the counsel of your choice. B) The sixth amendment binds the government and not me C) Even if I thought the sixth amendment was some sort of legal authority over me, I could argue it is morally incorrect and should be opposed through whatever mechanism available
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Jun 13, 2019 21:34
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