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Comment by psychanarch | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, unjust settlements like this are common place in our country, and after the outrage cycle dies down, this will be forgotten like the others. Nothing changes. What can we possibly do?

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Start by reforming the justice system. It is badly broken at all levels. It's slow speed, incredibly expensive interactions, and hard-to-understand system of laws need a big time upgrade. We need relatively simple laws that ordinary folks can understand, and a much faster time-to-judgement. It is really the complexity and cost of the system that leads to so many of these unjust outcomes, because hardly any actors in the system actually want to present their case and hear a verdict out of a judges mouth, because to get there takes years and millions of dollars.

Justice cannot happen without input from the those who are on the other side, the indicted.

You quickly realize justice TRIES to be a really bad cop. And then the indicted /convicted have to make deals for something that is terribly unfair. Just imagine negotiating with a person like Kamala.

When I see light weight no benefit deals like this, I think that it looks like both prosecutor and defendant got away with murder with little effort.

Further, let's stop the rhetoric that severe punishments will stop bad crimes. Not true. Even the lightest of punishments can stop crimes simply with shame. If more people get caught and are able to reconcile for their crimes, that would be sufficient to prevent 95 percent of future crimes.

This is all true, but I think its a symptom of a more fundamental problem, which is the complexity of the system, and the attendant speed and cost problems that drive agents to these outcomes. If the system worked transparently and quickly, then a lot of the other problems would go away. Plea deals should be the exception, not the rule.

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