Hacker News Reader

Comment by logicchop | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you that failure to pay traffic tickets is hardly grounds for that sentence, and that it would in fact be stupid if those were the grounds. And that is exactly why it is a pretty uncharitable initial interpretation of what happened. There are always publicly cited "endorsable" reasons that must conform to the law, and then there are the underlying messy reasons that actually motivate the decision. It fits in a similar murky category as "prosecutorial discretion"

View on HN

Hang on, there was a judicial inquiry that found he handed down hundreds of punitive sentences to people too poor to pay fines. He was found in violation of 10 state laws. It’s all in the article.

This wasn’t a single aberrant case where maybe he made a mistake, it was an long term persistent pattern of deliberate behaviour identified in a inquiry. He even said he was ‘very remorseful’.

I don't understand what you are saying. Are there more details that know about this specific case that explain the sentence?

Perhaps contempt. Perhaps a disregard for public safety. Who knows? It of course was outrageous, but there was certainly something going on that pushed the judge's buttons. Because, every traffic violator didn't get that sentence, right?

> but there was certainly something going on that pushed the judge's buttons

Yeah, but who's to say whether that something was remotely reasonable versus something completely frivolous (she rolled her eyes at him, she didn't cry convincingly enough, some other bullshit).

Anyway I'd argue that our justice system should have zero room for such capricious, emotional judging.

That's a defensible position, but you then have to accept something like mandatory sentences, which introduce their own set of issues.

Nope. Just prohibit jailing people for being too poor to paying tickets and similar "crimes". This definitely does not require mandatory sentences which is an evil on its own.

Your "Just prohibit.. " line sounds like a mandatory sentence to me; just in this case a mandatory sentence of "none." What would be left to the judge's discretion exactly?

"sounds like a mandatory sentence to me" - it is not sentence. It is a correction of gross injustice (actually crime in my eyes).

"What would be left to the judge's discretion exactly" - f..n work within the limits of laws and regulations. The existing framework gives judges plenty of discretion as it is.

And the last thing. Sounds like you do not mind people being jailed for the sake of the judges having discretion? I guess you would not mind then going away for a couple of years for spitting on a sidewalk or something similar.

Most jurisdictions do indeed have maximum sentence tarriffs for crimes, yes. UK example: https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/magistrates-co...

i.e. someone who has been banned from driving due to previous offences but who is caught driving may be sentenced to a maximum of 6 months in prison.

The culture demands and thrives on capriciousness and emotional judgements.

I'm going to speculate, in the same vein as you, that she was an otherwise law-abiding citizen who was nothing but polite and kind, and that the judge saw an opportunity to make an example of her. Judges have the power to hold people in contempt and jail them, so why did he not do that if she was a bad citizen, as you assert? He chose to jail her over a year and a half for unpaid parking tickets. Why? I think he didn't like something about her, and I don't think it was her demeanor.

There’s no need to speculate, we know from the enquiry reported in the article he had no good reason to impose such a harsh penalty on this, or the other hundreds of people he did this sort of thing to in violation of judicial codes.

"there was certainly something going on that pushed the judge's buttons"

Well, duh. She is black. That pushed the judge's buttons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com