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Comment by Keverw | Hacker News Reader

> I had to plead guilty and pay the fine to restore my license, then try to repeal the guilty plea at traffic court.

Having to admit guilty when you didn't do it? What kind of system is that? Sounds like you are guilty until proven innocent in that case... instead of the other way around.

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The issue is that she wanted to be able to drive before a (possibly months away) court date. Or that she wanted a job that needed her record clean within a week.

"Presumed innocent" means that at the _end_ of the trial, if the prosecution has not made their case then you are free. But in the time between being charged and the end of your trial you are not innocent. The court will suspend or revoke your license until after trial, you'll have all the charges on your record until after trial, and you can be held in prison until the trial is resolved. In all these cases, you will probably not get any compensation when it turns out that you were innocent, and meanwhile you may have been fired from work and had your property confiscated for non-payment of bills.

The US justice system is a farce.

Because let's be honest, there's precious little to motivate for law enforcement, prosecutors and judges to actually process your case quickly; and indeed there are various incentives to convict possibly innocent parties. Similarly; there are virtually no incentives for law enforcement to do no harm; nor are there any meaningful protections against abuse of power. It is more common for police to do the punishing than courts at this point - which begs the question whether the very existence of a criminal court doesn't do more harm than good at this point; for by having such a facade of impartiality it becomes much easier to excuse lack of oversight, accountability and proportionality on the enforcement side.

Sure; it could be even worse. But is it too much to ask for at least some kind of self-corrective measure to be built into the system?

This happens all the time in the US, especially for poorer/disadvantaged folks. They'll be advised to plead guilty whether they did it or not because they'll be given a lighter punishment + be done with it instead of missing more work going to court and possibly still being found guilty.

Hell I did it and i'm white middle class, but I was actually guilty too so...

In her case, it seems she would be rejected for a job. Wouldn't it be trivially easy to sue the government/DMV/police for that and win?

If your definition of trivially easy is hiring a lawyer and waiting months or longer for a trial all while having a hard/impossible time to hold a job. You'd still have no guarantee of winning either.

Sadly, suing for the harms caused by someone else's presumption of guilt flips the responsibility around - now you have to do the expensive work of proving they acted harmfully and illegally.

Probably what they did was legal, but even if not it would be the work of months or years and many thousands of dollars to get any kind of compensation.

It's always hard to tell who would win a court case, but it seems to me like she would have lost that case. In general, it's hard to recover damages from honest mistakes, and doubly so when there was a procedure in place, and that procedure was followed.

In addition, driving in the US is a privilege rather than a right, so despite the fact that the majority of the US needs to drive to work, the burden of proof for revoking or suspending a drivers license is relatively low.

It could be a bad system or just bad legal advice. She should have at least been able to plead 'no contest'.

Depends on jurisdiction and charge. Sometimes no contest isn't on the menu.

I think thousands of people who have plead guilty to something they didn't do, so that they could move on with what they still had of their lives, would be laughing bitterly when reading this and thinking "Oh, you precious thing."

This happens all the time.

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