Comment by fleitz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fleitz | Hacker News Reader

The problem is not the law, the problem is the attitude that in the administration of criminal justice that the ends justify the means.

The government has long believed it has the power to do whatever it wants to secure whatever end it deems good for the people.

We saw it in the 30s with Olmstead, in the 50s with the FBI under Hoover and the House Committee on Unamerican Activities, in the 60s with COINTELPRO and use of FBI resources to disrupt the civil rights movement, and in our current time with the war on terror, the use of torture, drones, body scanners, and in the prosecutorial realm with mandatory minimums, etc.

Ortiz is not a bad apple, she is amongst the best and brightest of the US DOJ. You can tell from her other cases that she is extremely clever about using the resource of the government to bully the weak and advance the interests of the powerful.

Let me repeat, she is not a bad apple, she is the best the system can produce and what it aims to produce. It is not a law that needs changing but an attitude. The foul stench of the holier than thou zealotry starts at the top and permeates its way throughout the entire system.

If Ortiz's only interest is truly to bully the weak and serve the powerful then she's a bad apple.

You're claiming that the entire bushel of apples is rotten, but that wouldn't make any single one good.

This may be silly semantics, but the idiom "a bad apple" typically means one bad person in a group of people who are good.

I know, that's why I added my second paragraph ;)

It's the elected nature of judges and prosecutors that is the main problem - to much emphasis on news worthy cases to get elected and not on applying the spirit of the law.

No Judge or Prosecutor should ever be elected its just to dangerous and to make a start I suggest that supreme court Justices should have a minimum of at least 20 years experience as a Judge - not as one recent one zero experience being just an academic lawyer.

Federal prosecutors (like Carmen Ortiz) are not elected. Carmen Ortiz was appointed by President Obama in 2009. The rest of the prosecutors in her office were hired as part of the civil service system and are insulated from politics.

Federal judges (like the judge that was hearing Aaron's case) are not elected; they are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Same for Supreme Court justices; you may remember Justice Sotomayor being appointed by President Obama and being confirmed by the Senate. Given the way that politics are, it's unlikely that a judge with 20 years of experience will be appointed to the Supreme Court: over a 20-year career as a judge, they will have inevitably made a controversial decision that the "other side" would fairly/unfairly pick apart.

I believe he's saying they shouldn't be allowed to run for public office in the future. Once a prosecutor, always a prosecutor. Remove any incentive to bend the justice system to future ambitions.

Ah sorry I was confusing this with District attorney.

The point about Judges or prosecutors being not selected because they have pissed off one side or the other stands - I think the UK system is safer as it mush harder for politicians to block or influence.

The plea bargain was made legal in 1970[1] by the Supreme Court, is there any way to overturn it? What kind of implications would this have? Did the judges then have the foresight to realize that over 90%[2] of federal court cases would be concluded with plea bargains?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_v._United_States

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargaining_in_the_United_S...

Has anyone ever tried countersuing the DoJ once presented with a plea bargain. Given the numbers behind plea bargaining and conviction rates, it seems like you could convince others of the cruel and unusual nature of plea bargaining. Given the odds it's definitely unfairly coercive.

Why would you want to abolish the plea bargain? Generally speaking, contracting someone's choice set makes them worse off. (Here, the choice to take a known loss rather than roll the dice at trial -- the same kind of choice you make when you buy insurance.)

The problem, rather, is that prosecutors can credibly threaten to convict with such severe prison sentence that your best option is take an oppressive plea deal. Abolishing plea bargains doesn't help that; if anything, it makes the problem worse by sealing one relief valve in the whole process.

OTOH, there is something to be said for "DDOSing" the archaic justice system by collectively forcing all cases to go to trial, something others have proposed. But you just need enough committed accuseds to do that, not a new law.

Governments simply don't have enough money to try every case or enforce every maximum prison term. If the plea bargain was eliminated, prosecutors would be forced to prioritize a great deal more. Moreover, for better or worse, every single defendant accused would receive their day in court, as opposed to being forced to gamble with the years of their life, even if they are innocent or the crime is a minor one.

Abolishing the plea bargain would by no means fix the broken system, but it would be a good start.

If you could make every parent in the world unable to pay a child's ransom, wouldn't you? A harmful choice is necessary for coercion, or in the legal sense, menacing.

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