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Comment by joeax | Hacker News Reader

I want to extend my comment. The big takeaway from all of this is that to beat the system, you need to be prepared to defend yourself at all costs, to the very end. The system depends on everyone taking plea deals. It's a well-oiled machine where by taking the plea deal, everyone wins but you. The defense lawyer made his money, the prosecutor gets their "win". The judge looks "tough on crime" for their next election. The cop gets a plaque for locking up lots of people.

My advice: Save some money. Just like a car accident, or some health or other emergency, it's best to be prepared with some kind of emergency fund.

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Plea bargains should be eliminated. It's insane that people are basically punished for insisting on their right to a trial, and everybody is OK with this. If somebody wants to avoid a trial by pleading guilty, that's fine, but it shouldn't affect their punishment.

The typical argument in the other direction is that requiring every case to go to trial would overwhelm the courts. I think that means that we either have too many crimes or not enough courts, or some mixture of the two. A society that pretends to have the rule of law must be able to afford to give every accused person a trial.

The court system is absurdly underfunded, but no one is willing to pay more for it. And, unfortunately, too many people have the attitude that if you're arrested you must have done something so you're criminal scum and deserve whatever you get.

It's strange, because the amount of government money spent on courts is pretty small relative to everything else. If we had to scale them up by an order of magnitude, it could be done without too much fuss.

I guess your second point causes people to be biased against spending any more money, no matter how little.

Yeah, you would think the tax dollars spent on prisons vastly outweigh the extra dough it would take to actually try everyone who goes through them.

Plus, the innocent who aren't jailed pay taxes and do productive things for society.

This is all ignoring the human cost of the equation.

For profit prisons and the politicians paid off by them have an incentive to keep plea bargains because money.

Yep. Another reason to disallow private prisons.

It isn't underfunded; it's just being asked to deal with too much inane nickle and dime 'crimes'.

I really look forward to when self driving cars eliminate ALL traffic cases.

Court system underfunded but enforcement (police) overfunded - sounds like trouble.

Reminds me of the ludicrous idea of medical savings accounts. Hardly anyone below the top 0.1% could ever hope to "save" enough money and put it away to cover a medical or legal disaster or a really bad accident involving personal injury or destruction of extremely valuable property.

It just isn't a realistic proposition. Insurance with all its flaws exists for good reason.

There is no "criminal defense insurance". Believe me I looked all over. There are just some surprise expenses out there you have to be prepared for.

Start a company?

Most people don't take plea deals because they are too broke to defend themselves, by going to court you risk a much higher penalty if you lose. Would you take a guaranteed 12 months in prison or gamble on a 50% chance of 10 years?

If you are guilty a plea deal is a good deal. If you are completely innocent, and have some money to defend yourself, you have a moral obligation to fight the charges. (Note: I'm no expert on moral authority, it's just how I feel. Sorry)

Why should that burden fall on a group of people who, are in general, least able to take it up?

Completely innocent people can still be convicted. Some even get put to death. One of the distressing things about the courts is that everybody can just "know" the guy is guilty, but in truth they know the evidence is crap. But luckily his defense is crap (good defense costs money) so they can get away with it. This happens time and time again and eventually the odds catch up to them and they've convicted a lot of innocent people.

Even worse is when the evidence is poor but they want to convict the guy anyway because he looks like a bad guy. "Even if he didn't do this, I know in my heart that he's guilty of other crimes."

The problem is, US lawyers are ridiculously expensive. I'm not aware of any other country where one court case against you can ruin you financially. So it doesn't matter if you are innocent or guilty, if you are charged, you've already lost.

EDIT: Why not make it a law that when you are found innocent then prosecutor's office should refund whatever it cost you to hire your lawyer?

Good question. It's rare to be reimbursed. You can sue for malicious prosecution after you have been aquitted, but many times these cases don't prevail.

Do other countries have this? It would discourage nuisance suits if this also applied to civil cases.

It is my understanding that in German civil suits it's customary for the loser to pay the cost of the law suit, including lawyer's fees (which are usually coupled to the monetary value of the lawsuit, so frivolously racking up the fees is difficult).

In the US, the winning party in a civil suit can sometimes get their legal costs paid by the losing party. It depends on the type of case, and sometimes on whether the losing party is determined to have brought the case frivolously or for the purpose of being a nuisance.

The question, though, was whether a person in a criminal case would be reimbursed the cost of their defense by the government after being found not guilty.

Unfortunately that "moral obligation" doesn't pay for itself, and if you can't afford to fight you're SOL.

Does anyone know if there are insurance policies for this? Something like life insurance where you pay monthly and if you need a defense attorney because you are accused of something you will receive a capped sum of money for that purpose.

prepaid legal exists

quite a bit better than public defenders, still a lot of incompetence from my experience on the paralegal side, but they'll do the research. I haven't had experience with criminal cases though

Funny you ask. I looked into this very thing when I became involved in this situation. There are pre-paid legal services like LegalShield, but most will only cover 20-25% of the cost. This represents a possible startup opportunity IMO.

I feel like you'd suffer heavily from adverse selection.

You mean folks who already decided they will commit crimes and take out insurance for "free" money?

That's a good point. This is where working with experienced actuaries to build risk models will be important. This idea would not be a tech startup per say. Just a good 'ol insurance policy with a shiny iOS app wrapper :)

Yeah, I could see this turning into a nightmare scenario where you waive privacy rights and carry a tracking device everywhere so they know you have an alibi. Sort of like how car insurance companies offer those plug in things to monitor your driving habits to lower your premium.

Has this already occurred? Has anyone been able to use their phone's location history for their alibi? The data exists. Isn't this what subpoenas are for?

It's not the best alibi since your phone isn't physically attached to your body. Someone intending to commit a crime can easily drop their phone somewhere else to conceal their true location.

That's quite a complex plan, especially if the phone in question is making http requests and taking calls.

I used my Google Location History as part of an alibi with the police (it never made it to the courts). My guess as to why that was successful despite the obvious flaws was:

1. The crime occurred in another city about 3 hours way, so poor granularity or precision really didn't come into play.

2. The crime itself was a hit and run on a road worker. Not something you'd generally believe to be premeditated where I'd have thought to have a friend haul my phone around town to provide an alibi.

I don't see how it would be different than any other insurance product. If you're an established criminal no adjuster would recommend you be insured. Or maybe the premium would be astronomical, like thousands per month.

I still can wrap my head around the fact that judges are elected!!!

Are there elections for judges in other countries too?

Basically no, and it definitely baffles people.

That's not to say there isn't corruption and cronyism when appointing judges in other places :( . No system is perfect.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/world/americas/25iht-judge...

there are only two nations that have judicial elections, and then only in limited fashion. Smaller Swiss cantons elect judges, and appointed justices on the Japanese Supreme Court must sometimes face retention elections

> My advice: Save some money. Just like a car accident, or some health or other emergency

Isn't this what legal costs insurances are for? Why should everyone save huge amounts of money individually if you can spread the cost (as well as the risk) over a large group?

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