That's one thing I don't understand: why isn't violation of Constitutional Rights a crime in itself? I mean, speeding by 10mph on a road with noone around gets you at least a ticket; but violating someone's rights? Nothing. Of course, by definition, this can be done only by government actors, but I still feel that there should be a price to pay even for government actors when they violate the fundamental law of the land.
I doubt repayment for wrongful imprisonment would make that worse.
1) let you out (drop charges) and expose the public purse to wrongful imprisonment damages,
2) take it to trial and lose, also exposing the public purse to the same damages,
3) take it to trial and win, which is expensive but at least looks good for the prosecutor, or
4) plea you out to a lesser charge, preferably one that carries a penalty of at least as long in jail as you've already served, so as not to expose the public purse to those damages
The last option is probably the best-looking one for a prosecutor. It's cheap, quick, and doesn't look bad for their bosses. I would think we would get more 4s and less 1s than the current system. 1s are good for the accused. 4s are very bad, but not the worst.
Again, I'm not saying reform is impossible, just playing devil's advocate on this particular proposal.
> 2) take it to trial and lose, also exposing the public purse to the same damages,
If a doctor makes a mistake, he or she is liable (in addition to the hospital). In the case of wrongful imprisonment, there should be exposed liability for the officers too. They are the ones who make the judgement call to arrest someone based on the information they have and the threat they perceive. If they fail at that and end up causing a net harm to individuals, they should be bearing (within reasonable limits) responsibility for that.
If the police get a call that someone is being robbed, then pick someone up that matches the description that was jogging along a block away, the person may turn out to just be someone somewhat similar that was jogging. Imposing a penalty on the officers, department, prosecutors, etc for failing to convict this innocent person doesn't seem like something that would particularly improve the course of justice.
Certainly it would be an unfortunate situation, but I'm not sure it should be something actionable without showing the arrest itself was intended to harass them, rather than being a case of reasonable mistaken identity.
In USA, the courts are open for anyone's business. No misdiagnosis is required, merely an unhappy patient (or survivors) and an opportunistic lawyer.
The time I said "your honor, we find for the defendant" as foreperson of a malpractice jury was surprisingly uplifting for me...
The time between arrest and bail hearing max out at a few days. Not great if you're innocent, but much different than the weeks to months before a trial.
If we want to build a town hall, we don't just take the next person that comes along and force them to build the thing that everyone then gets to benefit from--that's what taxes are for.
What if there were a "speedy trial" clock? It ticks down faster (6x) between arrest and arraignment, when the accused is held in jail awaiting their initial hearing. It counts down more slowly (x/6) when the accused is released and preparing for trial. And it counts down at the baseline rate when the accused is arraigned and held in jail awaiting trial. The defense, and only the defense, can request that the time to trial be extended. If the case is dropped unilaterally, or the trial verdict is not guilty, the state is on the hook for the amount of time counted down off the trial clock.
So if the cops arrest you on Friday at 5 PM for the express purpose of keeping you in jail for the maximum amount of time before seeing a judge or magistrate on Monday morning, they piss off the prosecutors, who counted down 2 weeks off their clock for the 2.5 days spent in jail awaiting the initial hearing. And if the judge denies release because the prosecutors claim the accused is a danger or flight risk, they have to back up that assertion by throwing more resources into the pending trial before the clock runs out. Maybe the clock allows 30 days for someone arraigned within hours and held without bail, and 180 days for someone released pending trial.
If you don't want to bind up your court calendar, you release everyone who isn't dangerous, put extra effort into processing those held in jail pending trial--possibly preempting trials on lesser crimes--and try to make more deals when too many trials are running their clocks out at the same time. Prosecutors that lose too many cases to "failure to provide a speedy trial" motions and pay too many of the subsequent false imprisonment claims risk losing their jobs after the next election.
The New York system has a similar clock, but they allow the prosecution to pause it by engaging in dubious and deceptive practices. Not a good model. The problem is that the prosecution side gets no negative feedback for egregiously failing to honor the rights of the accused. They don't get checked when they commit an obvious wrong.
At the least, this would encourage more municipalities to have an on-call weekend magistrate.
I’m sympathetic to the no-cash bail movement, though I’ll admit that there are a lot of edge cases to worry about. Plus, it may unfairly distort the calculation of who truly is a risk to release if you combine it with the possibility of suing for wrongful imprisonment on a not guilty verdict.
This isn't quite correct. They have the ability to hold you for 24 hours without formally arresting/imprisoning you.
The prosecutor would have a 5th option (drop charges and release the person within the first 24 hours). That is more likely than #1 and #2.
> Again, I'm not saying reform is impossible, just playing devil's advocate on this particular proposal.
Understood but a 24 hour hold wouldn't be affected by this proposal as far as I'm aware.
Right now the equation for deciding whether to hold someone in jail is entirely weighted to indiscriminately holding them for an indefinite amount of time. Why? Because it has zero impact on the state. The state finds it a little more convenient to hold them until trial (risk of runaway etc) so they do it for any minuscule reason while the life of the accused is thoroughly fucked.
Wrongful imprisonment compensation re-balances that equation. Now when setting bail instead of only considering runaway risk, they also have to consider the strength of the evidence and severity of the crime and balance it against the risk of losing the case and having to pay out compensation. This is still a little weighted towards the state but is much less one-sided than the current system.
But it is a tricky wicket. You would have to go after the governmental authority, local, state, or federal. Those authorities are usually protected by the ones above them. Assuming you could go after them, their argument will probably be something like "We don't completely control the entire system you are holding us responsible for." This also is controlled by the next level up.
So there are at least two major structural problems: protection by the next level up and dozens of people in various other governmental units contributing to the problem. The social worker hired by the state that says the father who broke a local law is a flight risk is not somebody the local government has any control over. The state or federal government requires that folks like this be an important part of administrating law, yet local governments don't manage them. You end up beating local governments up for nothing -- and the problem doesn't change since they couldn't do anything about it in the first place.
Oddly enough, if you continue to pressure these folks, the only thing they can do is let a bunch of people go, some of which are actually violent folks who need to be locked up. Do that enough and they'll replace your local government with one that doesn't do that.
I really wish this problem was simpler than it appears to be. It's a terrible situation.