Hacker News Reader

Comment by an_account | Hacker News Reader

Alternatively, it is the sign of a very healthy justice system. When cases are cut and dry there's no reason to go to trial. A basic example: I know I jaywalked, and I got caught, so I pay the already predetermined fine. Why wasted tons of resources taking everything to trial and redifing the system with every case?

View on HN

Some of these folks are taking plea deals to get out on time served. That time they are serving? It's accrued while they are waiting to go to trial. In a hideously over crowded prison system with overworked public defenders, the right to a speedy trial is a thing of the past. Here is a particularly terrible story of this kind: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-law

Tragically, the young man from the story committed suicide last year: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/kalief-browder-1993-...

The core principle of the US system of government (and of the British system that precedes it) is that no single person should have absolute power in a criminal trial. Power should be subject to checks and balances, even if those checks and balances are cursory in 95% of cases.

Put another way, the US criminal justice system is the equivalent of a software development process where the vast majority of changes go in without code review.

That's wrong. The defendant and their lawyer are doing a code review.

Most people arrested have to use a public defender.

Public defenders have something like less than five minutes to even review the case file before going in front of the judge.

Then like doing a code review in which the reviewer is underpaid and overworked and may not have access to the full code.

That's not true if prosecutors can lie about strength of case with immunity plus have a ton of leverage. Great explanation by this former prosecutor and judge:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-peop...

> I know I jaywalked, and I got caught, so I pay the already predetermined fine. Why wasted tons of resources taking everything to trial and redifing the system with every case?

Why punish jaywalking?

Because in a society believing in punitive justice, punishment is morally right.

There's also restorative justice of course but it's more complex and does not bring the same simplistic carnal satisfaction.

That's beside the point here, really.

It certainly shows the proliferation of ridiculous criminal laws.

How many of these "99.9 percent" of "just" cases are simply just persecuting someone for an invented victimless "crime"?

If the questionable legality of walking across an empty street doesn't perfectly illustrate how our minds have been warped by a draconian sense of "justice", I don't know what could.

You stepping in front of my car, going through my windshield, and hurting me, is not victimless.

No, jaywalking just means you walked across the road where it wasn't allowed. The road can be empty, with a low speed limit, and enough distance to safely cross without any car getting to you. That's pretty much when I run across the road. I also find intersections are more unpredictable in less-dense, areas than crossing about 20-30 yds away from it. Crash data supports my point about intersections.

So, safety risk is low and I'm a criminal anyway. How to not be a criminal? Stop traffic and reduce others' productivity using the crossing lights. What a choice... So, I just kneel down, keep looking back and forth, wait for traffic to be nonexistent, and then sprint across the road far from intersection. Has benefit of conveying to cops watching that I was playing it careful while saving everyone else a stop. Tested it in front of a few cops with success. :)

This is exactly the type of knee-jerk reaction that perpetuates the status quo of immoral laws.

In your scenario, there is a civil case for the accident. There can still be a criminal sanction if a pedestrian fails to avoid vehicles (that are obeying traffic laws). This does not change my example, which is an empty street.

You must also be against drunk driving laws, and just about every law.

Waiting until after dangerous behavior causes damages, injury, or even death to to happen, then hiring a lawyer to sue to damages is terrible to way to organize society.

It benefits the privileged on both sides and monetary payouts do not bring back dead people or cure lingering injures.

So let a jury decide guilt or innocence, based on information such as whether there was a moving car within range of the pedestrian's crossing. The point of plea bargains isn't to save the government money. It's to prevent jury trials.

Isn't preventing jury trials done to save money?

Jaywalking is a textbook example of a failure of the criminal justice system. The offence was invented by the auto industry to shift liability from drivers to pedestrians. It became law through lobbying. It is highly pertinent to the Swartz case.

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/...

I don't think so (and it shows that you really didn't understand my argument).

You claimed:

> Why wasted tons of resources taking everything to trial

With my sentence I wanted to point out that perhaps the problem is perhaps that part of the problem is that there are too many criminal offences - thus the judicial system is much too expense, which leads to the problem that most cases have to be regulated in the dubious way of plea bargaining.

I really don't think we're talking about jaywalking cases here.

(source, 2000: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/dccc.pdf)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com