Public defender: it’s impossible for me to do a good job representing my clients

Non-violent crimes have been a concept long before someone stood to make money off them. (Of course, that doesn't imply that they make sense.)

Moreover, for-profit prisons barely existed in the early 1990's when states like California and Washington started passing three strikes laws. Law enforcement, prison unions, private prisons, etc, have definitely benefited from these things, but the actual policies arose from public outrage in the 1980's and 1990's about the government being "soft on crime." For example, either California's law was passed on the back of public outrage at the murder of Polly Klass.

One bit of context that's lost in current discussions is how much consternation existed in the 1980's and 1990's about crime. If you look at the media from the time, there is a ton of hand-wringing about criminals being let out early on parole or clearly guilty people getting acquitted "on a technicality" (usually a 4th amendment violation).

A movie that captures the zeitgeist of the time is the 1983 movie Star Chamber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Chamber: "Judge Steven Hardin (Michael Douglas) is an idealistic Los Angeles jurist who gets frustrated when the technicalities of the law prevent the prosecution of two men who are accused of raping and killing a 10-year-old boy. They were driving slowly late at night and attracted the suspicion of two police officers, who wondered if the van's occupants might be burglars. After checking the license plate for violations, the policemen pulled them over for expired paperwork, claimed to have smelled marijuana, then saw a bloody shoe inside the van. However, the paperwork was actually submitted on time (it was merely processed late), meaning the police had no reason to pull over the van and Hardin has no choice (see fruit of the poisonous tree) but to throw out any subsequently discovered evidence, i.e. the bloody shoe. Hardin is even more distraught when the father of the boy attempts to shoot the criminals in court but misses and shoots a cop instead. Subsequently, the father commits suicide while in jail only after he informs Hardin that another boy has been discovered raped and murdered and tells him "This one is on you, your Honor. That boy would be alive if you hadn't let those men go." After hearing all this, Judge Hardin approaches his friend, Judge Caulfield (Hal Holbrook), who tells him of a modern-day Star Chamber: a group of judges who identify criminals who fell through the judicial system's cracks and then take actions against them outside the legal structure."

Perhaps more importantly, if Wikipedia's account is to be believed, he lost the tax evasion case because he had bad lawyers: first, one who admitted to the facts of the crime, and second, an initial defense team who didn't raise objections they could have raised. So I don't think the Capone example contradicts my claims in the end. We need defense lawyers for actual, unquestionable criminals because they have the singular goal of making sure people aren't unfairly or vindictively prosecuted. We understand that having just a prosecutor and a judge risks unjust outcomes. So it's unsurprising that wasn't the passive-voice "approach taken" with him: a trial without good defense is expected not to lead to a just approach, just as much as a trial without good prosecution or a good judge.

At best it's not clear what your point is or what position you're espousing, which I think is a mostly valid reason for downvote-and-move-on. For instance, it's not clear whether you think the prosecution of Capone was just or unjust.

I definitely agree with you on just how bad existing legal research software is at finding factually on-point results. This was part of my motivation to help found ROSS Intelligence, which is building better legal research software with ML and NLP at its core.

And while pessimism and skepticism does help identify the difficulties in implementing different solutions, it's optimism that helps find the opportunities imbedded in the difficulties found :)

But are you arguing that those who are forced to use the PD because they can't afford a lawyer are getting the same deal as someone hiring a professional defense team?

That seems to be self-evidently false to me.

End the drug war entirely. End vice prosecutions. Focus on victimful crimes.

Increase the funds PD's get to the level DA's get. A PD's got a lot more to do than a DA, because the DA has police officers behind it feeding it cases. Funding parity is a Schelling Point.

Stop electing DA's, stop electing judges, stop electing sheriffs; "Tough on crime" is the only campaign strategy these people use, and it's implied to mean "Harsher than was the case last year". That outcome ceases to be remotely just after a few years.

Enfranchise felons with voting rights. The reasoning that they're incapable of voting correctly stems directly from racial persecution.

Cameras everywhere.

Training in conflict de-escalation, like the rest of the world's police forces.

Reduce the prison sentences you give out substantially, and drastically increase spending on the crime-avoidance strategies we pilloried as bleeding-heart liberal ideas. Turns out the most strongly supported finding in criminology is that they work a lot better than increased sentencing.

With the savings from all this prison reduction, build prisons that don't inflict trauma on their prisoners, don't require violence to survive in, and most importantly, don't require joining an organized criminal enterprise, a prison gang, to be comfortable in. Gangs destroy what little benefit you get from imprisoning people.

With what's left over, shift resources away from SWAT & drug enforcement, and towards dramatic increases in the size of the detective force. Higher capture rates beat longer sentences at deterring crime by a very large factor.

Rebuild at least parts of the public mental health system that we shut down completely in the 70's.

Both the police and the judges are part of the same State apparatus. As such, they will probably not bring any meaningful reductions to the power of the State.

> The police stopped the car because the driver failed to use a turn signal?

I was too brief: If the police stop someone for a turn signal violation, okay, charge them with the turn signal violation. But if charge the person with, say, some more serious crime, then have to suspect that the turn signal issue was false and just used as a means of unconstitutional unreasonable search.

My experience is that a good way to suffer an unconstitutional search from, say, a turn signal violation is just to drive an old car in a poor neighborhood, or really, any neighborhood, late at night, etc. Police just like to stop and search cars, for any reason or no reason, and will use any excuse as a way to do that.

In my case, after the stop, I'm articulate, calm, mature, and get away with it. But still I get stopped due to the violation of driving with an old car.

For my

> A police officer killed an unarmed person? Deliberate, unprovoked, unexcusable murder. Life or the chair.

The burden of proof would have to be strongly on the side of the police to prove that they had no alternative to being seriously injured or killed themselves. For the police to say "I felt that my life was threatened" is not nearly enough.

In such a confrontation with an unarmed person, the police have enormous advantages in force -- radios, backup, cameras to identify the person in case they run, clubs, guns, bullet proof vests, etc. For a person to die looks really bad.

We've had at least one recent case where the person was running away, was over 10 feet away, and the police shot them in the back and killed them just to keep them from running away.

At present, apparently the real standard is that a person has to obey every command of an officer, be pleasant, object to nothing, defend themselves against nothing, hand over money and personal belongings that they may never get back, not make a recording, not call 911, permit any search, accept painful restraints, not try to run away, be verbally insulted, be sexually molested, etc. or the officer can just shoot and kill the person and get away with it.

One response I have would be what I would do on jury duty. But, right, likely a public prosecutor would never let me on a jury.

Another alternative is to have my startup work, get rich, be careful, and set up some funding for some essentially sting operations to catch police misbehaving, where there was overwhelming evidence from hidden cameras and microphones, long distance cameras, etc. that the police did something wrong. Then have the legal resources to prosecute the police. Use such actions as examples, and then try to get some better behavior from the police. E.g., civil forfeiture, that is, the crime of carrying too much cash, that is, legalized highway robbery.

I can't feel guilty for sticking up for our Constitution.

Also, dirt bags beware -- if I'm on a jury, I'll work hard to support the Constitution. So, I'll set an example, that I hope will spread.

I agree. I hope and expect that such for such a criminal a good and honest conviction will be quite possible in our legal system. E.g., per capita, we have a lot of people in jail, too many on silly, nearly trivial, charges. There certainly should be enough room in the jails for the serious criminals.

We need police -- no joke. I can easily respect the police because of the dangers they do face and if they are honest, actually "serve" the public, obey the Constitution, etc.

But the police abuses are too common: E.g., apparently quite generally they can lie in court and get away with it; they can confiscate cash just because they want to (there's a consulting company that goes to police departments and teaches them how to do that); can hassle people based on trivialities as in the broken windows approach; can lock people up for months, in dangerous circumstances (that some of the jails are very dangerous places is a well known, long standing situation and not an isolated issue), before a trial; they can strongly coerce guilty pleas as in plea bargains (commonly public defenders say that that situation is wildly out of control and has been quite generally for decades); they have long standing practices such a "nickel ride" where they put someone in a van and drive around violently causing the person to bang against the sides of the van, and much more. Here I'm talking not isolated instances but wide spread practices.

> How does whether the suspect was armed have anything to do with whether his death was justified?

> A suspect who does not have a weapon is perfectly capable of being a legitimate threat to the life of a police officer.

Sure. But the police have so many advantages in force that an unarmed person is quite generally at a huge disadvantage. So, when an officer shoots an unarmed person, especially at, say, 10 feet, it looks like the officer just took the easy way out: He very much didn't like the person or their attitude or behavior so just gave up and shot him. Sure, each case needs very careful, objective review.

And, really, likely an officer who has shot one unarmed person will have to be very reluctant to do so again for some years.

Still, there are well documented cases that are outrageous -- maybe they are too rare to form a pattern to be addressed, maybe not.

> Many unarmed suspects have been legitimately shot dead while trying to steal firearms from police officers. How would you recommend dealing with them?

Sure, if there is a real situation like that, the officer needs to use force. If the officer does get to shoot, say, not at point blank range, then the officer should shoot for a limb and wound enough to win the fight but not necessarily shoot to kill.

> On the other hand, we do have the Second Amendment, and it is perfectly legal to carry a firearm with a permit in most of the country. The fact that somebody possesses a gun is not an automatic justification for killing them either.

I know, and just by my saying "unarmed" I know I'm already giving up this Constitutional right. But the police keep saying, "I felt threatened." and find that that is justification enough to shoot to kill. Well, if the person had a gun, it's easier to believe the "threatened".