Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonymousiam | Hacker News Reader

I'm a long-time EFF supporter, but I am always concerned when they (or any other organization that defends civil rights) chooses to intervene in a loser of a case like this. The defendant will likely be convicted of kidnapping, and hopefully the Supreme Court will not use some form of twisted logic to rationalize what the cops did. The correct ruling here is to force a mistrial and forbid any testimony about refusing to provide passcodes at the retrial.

View on HN

The downside to being a principled legal defense organization is that effective defense of common rights generally requires intervening on the side of people who are real criminals. A significant amount of 1st Amendment case law comes from the ACLU defending from people whose speech is abhorrent, but nonetheless protected. A failure to establish desired precedent often means allowing the court to establish the opposite precedent.

As the saying goes, "bad cases make bad law". In this case the EFF is weighing in at the appellate level to make sure that this otherwise abhorrent case doesn't lead to precedent that's damaging to all Utahns.

You would be appalled to know that the defendant in Miranda v. Arizona very likely did, in fact, kidnap and rape his victim, and yet that case established one of the most important substantive rights in criminal investigations.

It's about Due Process. It doesn't matter if you are guilty, you still have the same rights as someone who is not guilty.

That's not how it works: you're [supposedly] not guilty until conviction and so, like all not guilty people, have the same rights. But, on conviction your rights are severely curtailed if the sentence is custodial.

So I guess you could say "It doesn't matter if you are later found guilty [...]" to be consistent with the presumption of innocence.

Yeah, I could have been more clear. Thanks!

Maybe it would be better if they were more explicit about the "what should have happened" part, instead of just saying "no, the police shouldn't have done that and shouldn't be allowed to do that."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com