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Jarmak posted:This is perfectly fair, right now this would be a professional consequence not legal. Is creating a legal duty to provide adequate care a road people are interested in going down? I know when I lived in Italy it was a criminal offense to pass a auto wreck without stopping to render aid so that's kind of the line of thought I'm thinking of. IANAL. This is referred to as "duty to rescue" or "duty to assist", and it is very uncommon except in cases where the harm or risk to the other was caused by the person in the first place. Bottom line, there are very good reasons for there to not be a general legal duty to assist others. Requirements for people who cause the harm or risk are more variable and complicated, regardless of their profession (doctors are almost never subject to a profession-specific duty to rescue). A duty to rescue is more likely to arrive if you have some sort of specific personal responsibility for the person at risk, such as an employee or someone you invited onto your property that is injured by a nonobvious hazard. Again, though, this is a simplification of a really broad swathe of civil and criminal law. The situation you describe in Italy is itself pretty strange- are you sure that was the entirety of the law? Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 20:23
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Jarmak posted:I'll be honest, I don't know very much at all about the specifics about that law and I don't have the time to research it right now, my knowledge comes entirely from being briefed multiple times that if we witnessed a wreck we had a duty to stop and if we didn't we could face no poo poo criminal charges. If it was presented like that then it sounds like there actually is an honest-to-goodness general duty to rescue regime. Weird. That's pretty unheard of. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 20:59
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Jarmak posted:I should be doing work right now but I couldn't resist a quick google search, Wikipedia at least provides the following under the article "duty to rescue" Huh- that creates a lot of perverse incentives- I wonder how those countries manage them. Ah well 
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Dec 1, 2015 22:19
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Watermelon City posted:Someone is dying in front of you and you're scratching your chin going gee I don't know what's my liability? This is historically one of the reasons why duties to assist/rescue don't normally exist at common law, as well as the basis of a variety of other messy tort law concepts.
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Dec 2, 2015 09:06
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VitalSigns posted:Federalize the police This would require a constitutional amendment and also be a very bad idea. Imagine a federalized police under the Trump administration- or Paul, or Nixon. Police powers is frustrating, but it's there for a good reason. Also, given congressional funding of federal agencies, the training still wouldn't happen, even if other regulatory and conflict of interest elements would be improved.
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Dec 3, 2015 01:45
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Then their funding won't depend on how randomly poor their town is and we can have federal Law Enforcement Division that investigates police shootings and charges them so there's no conflict-of-interest with the cop's friends investigating him and his DA buddy bringing it to a grand jury. And hey, making cops EMTs would almost certainly save lives even apart from the duty it would impose on them not to deliberately kill people with incompetent care, right?
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Yeah, the states rights element is a checks and balances component of civic republican government as old as Machiavelli. It's very much a feature and not a bug. Imagine the effects of a federalized police force under the Bush W administration after 9/11- or one more directly controlled by the Republican Revolution of the 90s. The greater problem of state devolution is in educational administration, not police administration (they're also stronger root causes of racial inequality). The rationales involved are the same, though.
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Dec 3, 2015 02:15
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Frabba posted:What are the odds that this is legitimate? An update on this: Slate, and now a couple other reporters and agencies like SPLC are pointing out that the released documents substantiate essentially none of the claims.
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Dec 4, 2015 08:37
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Radish posted:I could understand "those cops just got lucky" if that UK example was an isolated event but the US police have a huge body count that no other first world country has so the idea that everyone else is doing it wrong but with somehow far better results for both police and suspects is ludicrous. You'd want to control for population size difference and gun ownership rates, at a minimum, in making that comparison.
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Dec 5, 2015 00:35
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Radbot posted:Why are leg shots less safe than any other shot aimed at a person, considering the rounds usually used by American police travel through unarmored targets? Because the effect of introducing a leg shot policy is to expand the total set of situations in which police open fire.
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Dec 7, 2015 21:03
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Ornedan posted:No it does not. That's the point of the examples - they're all situations where US cops would shoot to kill under current policies. It's worth noting that the examples provided don't indicate that limb wounds were the product of an intentional policy of aiming at the limb.
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Dec 7, 2015 22:50
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The immediately obvious counter here is to attack the collective bargaining agreement- even on policy grounds, particularly using the language that the department uses to justify the injunction.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:52
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PostNouveau posted:Googling around isn't telling me anything, so maybe I'll just toss this out to the lawyers in the thread. Yes and no. It's open to retrial, and it doesn't give the defense anything in particular to work with in the other cases. On the other hand, I don't believe it gives the prosecution anything to work on in the other cases, either- and a prior conviction would have been extremely useful for the prosecution in those other cases. chitoryu12 posted:Slightly related, are courtroom sketch artists really necessary now for any reason other than "We want a sketch artist"? Cameras are still banned in a lot of courtrooms as a distraction and to preserve privacy of others in attendance. There are some (fairly valid) concerns about public pressure on those present if they're constantly reminded of publicity within the room.
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Dec 17, 2015 00:25
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I don't disagree with much in your post, Toasticle, but because of the derail potential you mention, I think it might be best to put that in a separate thread- even if it would nominally fit into this one. vvvv That's a very good point. My personal torture fetish is reading DnD. But I'm a sadomasochist, so I post here too. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Dec 17, 2015 |
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Dec 17, 2015 03:11
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It would be interesting to see if, like habeas claims, some significant portion of the complaints are coming from a small number of crazy people flooding the system.Radbot posted:Except as was shown today in Lynnwood, police officers routinely bully women to retract their claims of rape. That...isn't particularly relevant.
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Dec 17, 2015 22:55
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botany posted:Oh is that something somebody in this thread said? No? Then how about you shut the gently caress up DARPA posted:I'd say Yes? Why does a statement need to be sworn to investigate something internally? It isn't a criminal trial. It's an administrative punishment by their employer. If what the officer did gets elevated to a criminal matter then the statement can upgrade its sweariness.  None of the relevant information is available, which isn't all that surprising in retrospect- given that such a large proportion of the filers weren't willing to swear an affidavit, it'd be difficult for anyone, including someone with access to all the reports, to make a frequency distribution. The distribution of claims has some suspicious outliers (a bit less than 10% was "inadequate/failure to provide service"), which defined deductively against other claims seems likely to contain a lot of empty "they didn't make those kids upstairs turn down their radio" complaints, but that's not the sort of data I was going for.
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Dec 18, 2015 00:54
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Dec 31, 2015 09:23
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Dead Reckoning posted:A majority voting against the interests of a minority or having a different idea of what constitutes justice without actually violating any enumerated checks on the power of the state or promised protections is sort of one of the fundamental downsides of democracy so IDK what sort of answer you were expecting. You could make the DA an appointed position, but I don't think fewer racists are going to turn out for the election of the governor or whichever state official appoints him. Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice: this quip about a ham sandwich has convinced me My two cents- independent of the Rice case, appointed judges are usually considered a better idea than elected ones-at least by lawyers. Elected judges are often terrible and underqualified. My understanding is DA appointment/election varies in quality of outcome depending on the electorate and other political concerns in the jurisdiction. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 22:04
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A Fancy Bloke posted:You conveniently ignored my 98-99% indictment rate figure. That number isn't meaningful for your stated claim when it's a sample of cases the prosecutor chooses to bring before the grand jury. The grand jury is a check because it limits the set of cases and evidence that prosecutors indict on.
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Jan 1, 2016 07:10
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Tiler Kiwi posted:are you certain they are deterred by an inability to indict, as opposed to an inability to get a conviction? In both cases it's still performing its intended purpose, and doesn't demonstrate what A Fancy Bloke is claiming it for. High indictment rates at grand jury aren't evidence that they're not a check on indictment- I agree that there are other mechanisms operant in some jurisdictions (usually those are called prelim hearings, not probable cause hearings-the latter is a more ambiguous term), but Dead Reckoning's brakes metaphor is valid and relevant- it's a check on what prosecutors will try to charge and indict, and it still has that effect. Indictment rates in cases that go before a grand jury aren't a particularly salient statistic for arguments to the contrary. There are a bunch of potential problems with the operation of grand juries, but my posts were with relation to the specific back and forth and weight on A Fancy Bloke's invocation of the 99-98% statistic, nothing more. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Jan 1, 2016 |
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Jan 1, 2016 10:00
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Is a grand jury proceeding considered a trial?A Fancy Bloke posted:I was mainly disputing his insistence that the GJ isn't generally a show trial. and the 99-98% statistic isn't evidence of that.
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Jan 1, 2016 22:10
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A Fancy Bloke posted:How do you figure? You think 98-99% of cases that pass GJ are found guilty? Or even close to that amount? That's not what a grand jury indictment finds. The grand jury finds for indictment, not guilt. Not all cases that pass the grand jury are going to end in a finding of guilt. They're not supposed to. It's a different proceeding, for a different purpose. That's why it's not adversarial, and the standard is different.
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Jan 2, 2016 00:07
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CommieGIR posted:And yet that is what the past few shooting cases have used the Grand Jury to prove. Regardless of the purpose of the Grand Jury, its being used by the Right and by the Police as ways to absolve guilt, regardless of the evidence. You need look no further than the Grand Jury in Missouri over that shooting, where it was blatantly obvious after the DA came out of the GJ that they did not go in to indict, but to absolve the police of any responsibility in their actions. The grand jury isn't a means of determining guilt. That's not what the grand jury is for. In this and most modern contexts, it's to prevent malicious or openly invalid state prosecution. The thing you want to attack is prosecutorial discretion, or McGinty's specific use of prosecutorial discretion in this specific case, which is not the same thing as a grand jury. As Dead Reckoning said, complaining that the grand jury found insufficient means to indict is like complaining that a car's brakes don't make it go faster. Citing high indictment rates at the grand jury doesn't prove anything about grand juries or their use. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Jan 2, 2016 |
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Jan 2, 2016 00:17
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CommieGIR posted:I'm agreeing with you on this point But that has not stopped the Right, Fox News, and others for USING the Grand Jury results, and even people in this VERY thread from using the Grand Jury ruling as 'Well, you see, they were right to shoot him' Discendo Vox posted:There are a bunch of potential problems with the operation of grand juries, but my posts were with relation to the specific back and forth and weight on A Fancy Bloke's invocation of the 99-98% statistic, nothing more. Sorry if that wasn't clear. A Fancy Bloke is attempting to argue that a high indictment rate at the GJ is proof that its standard is too low, which ignores the fact that prosecutors select cases for indictment based on the preexisting restriction that is the grand jury. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jan 2, 2016 |
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Jan 2, 2016 00:22
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CommieGIR posted:My point is more towards people like Jarmak and others. Then please indicate that that's what you're doing- you jumped into a discussion of a different claim to make an unrelated point, which just further confuses the discourse. Toasticle posted:Ignoring the concept that there can evidence used to indict you that can't be used to convict you It's really normal for evidence to be selective in its valid application. Evidence available for indictment that's not available for conviction is A Thing, much like evidence that's valid for past history but not for present action and a bunch of other counterintuitive uses. That's just how rules of evidence operate. Toasticle posted:Again, if someone wants to remain anonymous then any identifying info is withheld. If the accused wants to be referred to as John Doe, fine. All we are talking about is letting some view into the GJ to make sure there's no impropriety. And it works both ways, uncover the scum and show the good ones did the job as they should. Remove peoples speculations about what went on in a secret meeting and you help people regain faith in the system. The big reason I'm aware of is with relation to evidence from the GJ tainting the jury pool- a GJ leak is often enough to force a mistrial and/or extend a case for years, for the reasons CommieGIR is referring to-people, including jurors, are really easily manipulated by improperly introduced evidence. I think oversight wouldn't be a bad thing necessarily(I'm not sure exactly what it would be looking for, per se), but one of the reasons we have pooled GJ cases in the first place is because they're incredibly expensive and time-consuming; I'm not sure how feasible the oversight you're referring to would be, at least at the state level. My guess is DoJ already has an IA office that can do similar things at the federal level.
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Jan 2, 2016 00:33
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CommieGIR posted:My bad, I didn't mean to mislead. No worries- arguing grand juries as vindicators is obnoxious, but justice systems produce good results only in the aggregate, even at the best of times. Convictions, accquitals, failures to indict- none of them offer genuine moral certainty. Everyone-including everyone in this thread, feels an overwhelming need to construct a narrative for themselves about how the individual case "proves" something, even if it can mean very little on its own. I think that's part of why we're all so unpleasant here. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Jan 2, 2016 |
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Jan 2, 2016 00:57
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A Fancy Bloke posted:No I'm not. I'm arguing that it's basically a show trial guaranteed to indict UNLESS the prosecutor decides to throw it. It's not a trial, it's not guaranteed, the 98-99% doesn't demonstrate that it's a guaranteed indictment because it's 98-99% of the cases that the prosecutor selects. I've said it three times now. Discendo Vox posted:The grand jury isn't a means of determining guilt. That's not what the grand jury is for. In this and most modern contexts, it's to prevent malicious or openly invalid state prosecution. The thing you want to attack is prosecutorial discretion, or McGinty's specific use of prosecutorial discretion in this specific case, which is not the same thing as a grand jury. As Dead Reckoning said, complaining that the grand jury found insufficient means to indict is like complaining that a car's brakes don't make it go faster. Citing high indictment rates at the grand jury doesn't prove anything about grand juries or their use.
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Jan 2, 2016 06:15
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Tiler Kiwi posted:It's not really a convincing argument. I made the point before but I guess I wasn't clear, that I believe a prosecutor would be more deterred going after a case due to feeling it didn't stand a chance at a trial, rather than feeling as though it didn't stand a chance at a grand jury. Any case you couldn't get the majority of a grand jury to indict on, despite the permission of illegally gathered evidence, hearsay, and a lack of judicial oversight or any exculpatory evidence, is one that wouldn't stand a chance at a trial anyways. To make a wretched car analogy, it's like having a bridge that 20% of semis smash against, and then pointing to a warning pole in front that 98% of them clear and going "that pole does a great job keeping semis away from the bridge". There's judicial oversight of grand juries, though it's often not direct. They're not meant to prevent cases that wouldn't result in a conviction- part of the point is that there can be a separate, more thorough factfinding process during the period between indictment and trial. Grand juries are an inappropriate check against a thing they are not designed to be a check against. Malicious/baseless prosecution != cases that will not result in a conviction. Different purpose, different standard. If I were to extend your metaphor, the grand jury is statewide ban on unlicensed trucks. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Jan 2, 2016 |
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Jan 2, 2016 08:25
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Toasticle posted:I can't justify in my head that a single person has the power to let someone go because he just can is working as intended but I couldn't get a lawyer to say that nullification was allowed without a multi paragraph explanation as to why it undermines the foundations of the system. The DA has the authority no matter how damning the evidence to just go "nope" or if pressured into it can present it any way he wants and there's no check to his decisions but a trial jurist doing the same thing, something they are allowed to do, is a danger to the system itself. The defense attorney you spoke to was arguing passionately for a position that benefits themselves. DAs can be removed from office, have to operate within rules, GJs proceedings can be subject to review (the mechanism varies by jurisdiction), and the prosecutor's office usually isn't just one person. The situation you're describing is less a locus of centralized power than the positions of judge, governor or mayor are. Radish posted:A question I have is that there are those cases where someone is convicted basically on the testimony of one person and then a bunch of trumped up evidence or nothing much else at all. Did those cases go through the grand jury process or are they not required in every felony conviction? If they are they don't seem like much of a check if bad cases like that can sneak through and if they aren't then why are they so important they can't be changed? Grand juries aren't required in all jurisdictions- they're required at the federal level. Prosecution misconduct can still be subject to review and punishment. I don't know the details of that process and it's going to vary. Tiler Kiwi posted:far less judicial oversight than a trial, what with the whole "distinct from the three branches" precedent. The form of malicious prosecution that the grand jury was intended as a check for originally was systemic. The best example in the present day is probably Russia's tendency to repeatedly jail dissidents and opposition political figures. The grand jury in whitewater was, I believe, a different, older type of civil investigation grand jury that's basically used to gather the evidence in the first place. It's a relic of a time before prosecutor's offices and I'd be fine with it going away. The intended downside is the state isn't able to seize the person under investigation and lock them away during trial, or run a news campaign about how they're in jail. Tiler Kiwi posted:e2: son of a bitch vox, I liked your exploding truck metaphor better. why you gotta be lame The license version is (a little) more accurate, and in my heart of hearts I am a horrible pedant. See: my avatar. Darth Walrus posted:I get that you folks are enjoying your circular argument about grand juries, but can we chat a little more about the article I linked a page ago? Because even by police corruption standards, it's pretty remarkable. The main series of articles appears to be at this address.
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Jan 2, 2016 22:16
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