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Comment by msabalau | Hacker News Reader

It's increasingly seems that the powers of prosecutors are deployed in arbitrary and unjust ways: either overreaching (as in the case of Aaron Swartz or Xiaoxing Xi) or non-prosecution of police brutality or corporate crime (just changing now that the statute of limitations run out on those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis)

It's not clear what can be done about it, other than occasionally writing a check to the ACLU to help limit the damage. Any ideas?

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Prosecutors have almost absolute immunity. A prosecutor can intentionally cheat the system, get a conviction, put a person in jail, and if caught, there is no lawsuit that can be filed against them and it's almost impossible to get them disbarred.

There are incentives to cheat; as long as there are no ramifications for it, it will continue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqChMa4GV3w

This is a very very US-centric problem on the basis that most civilised countries don't elect prosecutors because that'd be insane.

I honestly think the only thing that could ever change it is if some vigilante with nothing to lose started bringing the same flavor of extreme justice to the doorsteps of the people passing it out - fear of potential ramifications will very quickly change behavior.

Consider that the behavior that is changed is that of everybody but the prosecutor: taxes go to personal security and maybe their staff, increased controls and inconveniences for those sharing space with them, like at the courthouse, and increased penalties for behavior not previously considered to be threatening. That is, the person acting with nothing to lose, "at all costs," may be misunderestimating where those costs will be borne.

That would cause change, but in the opposite direction. People would rally around judges and prosecutors and you'd see fewer people questioning the status quo. It would be a disaster.

Both proposals have been purely theoretical. I can provide three practical historical examples of turning it up to 11:

1) abortion clinic bombing changed nothing; if anything it helped raise funds (you'd almost think they were false flag operations? Is there anything that helped the pro choice cause more than the bombings?)

2) the War on drugs has ruined uncountable lives, certainly far more than drugs have ruined, none the less neither the fear of drugs or the more realistic fear of the war on drugs keeps people sober, business has always been booming.

3) the war on black men has gotten about 1/3 of them involved in the criminal justice system. The result? None, no change. They haven't become refugees, their culture has changed as little as possible under the circumstances, no serious rebellion...

In those three examples taking normal level actions and turning them up to 11 has either been utterly ineffective or counterproductive. I'd have to say the tsotha theoretical model fits observed reality better, although I admit further research could find observations overturning that... although I don't expect it.

Those aren't bad analogies, but I wouldn't consider them good.

1) The public and perhaps even many scholars are split on abortion - I personally don't think there's a clear cut "correct" answer.

2) I wouldn't expect people to quit. Drugs are fun, most are relatively harmless, using them is not immoral, and you most likely won't get caught.

3) Similar to #2, and much of the issues here are a direct result of #2

Turning it up to 11 (great expression btw) to be effective should be used only when there is obvious wrongdoing, when innocent people are clearly being railroaded by people who either know the person is innocent, or made no effort to determine innocence (which, let's not forget, is the job they are being paid very handsomely to perform). I'm not sure if this particular case is a valid example example for turning it up to 11, but there are certainly plenty. I think this would be effective, and I believe there would be widespread public support with sufficient communication.

It could definitely be a disaster if it was indiscriminate and no reason was communicated.

>fear of potential ramifications will very quickly change behavior.

Considering that fear of ramifications has proven entirely ineffective in preventing certain kinds of behavior in other aspects of the justice system, I don't think this would be as effective as you might think

Keep in mind that you're survey of examples is likely biased by what makes a good story... and journalists have become very good at figuring out which cases will make a good story.

It's a problem that there is enough material to keep the stories coming, but let's not conclude that the stories we read about represent the bulk of the justice system's operations.

Agreed. "Fixing criminal justice," is a vague if noble goal. I think it's pretty clear at this point however that the standard of evidence is too low. And out of the humility wrought by the awareness of our own fallibility, perhaps we should stray from punishments as final as death.

The fact that the egregious examples exist is proof enough of the insanity and incompetence that's permitted by the justice system. The appeals processes seems too restrictive to allow for proper review in many cases. Just because a system has existed for a long time doesn't mean it's ideal in any way.

The murder of Meredith Kercher is another prominent example in another country. All evidence pointed to one murderer, who was duly convicted. And then the state decided to spend years prosecuting two innocent people based on some odd behavior and not the slightest shred of credible physical evidence. They're just lucky they finally got a sane judge at the highest level.

> The fact that the egregious examples exist is proof enough of the insanity and incompetence that's permitted by the justice system.

It's more like proof of the law of large numbers.

> The appeals processes seems too restrictive to allow for proper review in many cases.

Appeals processes should be restrictive, otherwise the time and expense of the trial itself are essentially squandered. That said, I have no doubt that at least in some, and possibly many systems, it's over the line.

> Just because a system has existed for a long time doesn't mean it's ideal in any way.

I hope you didn't think I suggested anything to the contrary.

Even if the awful cases are a tiny percentage of all cases (which I don't believe is the case considering how common plea bargain extortion is), it is still a huge problem that is quickly eroding confidence in the justice system.

Who do you think sets policy? DAs are elected. US attorneys are appointed by the president. Vote.

I think he meant (and I'm also curious) what we could individually do that would have a tangible difference. Not what could a large swathe of people in the US do collectively, which is a different question.

Kamala Harris beat Steve Cooley in the 2010 CA attorney general election by 74k votes. That's a relatively direct impact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Attorney_General_el...

One vote is nowhere close to making a difference there? And that is the edge case, 99.9% of elections won't even come down to that.

when the margin of victory is under 1%, then yes, a relative handful of people can swing an election

Far more than 0.01% of elections have narrow margins of victory, particularly less well known ones like attorneys.

Did Kamala Harris turn out to be any better?

Steve Cooley -- and I believe he would agree with this characterization -- is enthusiastically for the death penalty in the right circumstances, and campaigned against Prop 34. In his own words [1]

   There are some offenses that demand the ultimate sentence. We’ve got 
   individuals down in Los Angeles — for example, the Grim Sleeper case which 
   is pending — this gentleman killed 23 young women, in the most cruel, 
   inhumane way. Life without possibility of parole is not the appropriate 
   sentence for somebody who slaughters so many of his fellow citizens. Cop 
   killers, baby killers, serial killers — they deserve the death penalty. In 
   my county, we only seek the death penalty in 11 percent of the 
   special-circumstance cases, and they are well-selected and well-deserving of 
   the death penalty.

Kamala Harris is not a shining light, but she took no public position on Prop 34, and while she has supported a state appeal to defend the constitutionality of the death penalty [2], as sf da, she stated she would never charge the death penalty [3].

So the contrast is a full supporter on one hand, and someone who, at minimum, is conflicted about the use of the death penalty and widely acknowledges the racial disparity in its application.

I would call that a real difference, though in case it isn't clear, I would support banning the death penalty on both humane/equality and financial grounds.

NB: Prop 34 would have banned the death penalty in California. It lost by a couple percent [4]

[1] http://blogs.kqed.org/election2012/2012/10/11/two-district-a...

[2] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-death-penalt...

[3] http://ballotpedia.org/Kamala_D._Harris

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_34_(201...

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