Hacker News Reader

Comment by whiddershins | Hacker News Reader

First of all, I basically agree with this.

Here’s something I don’t know: Sometimes I wonder whether some people in prison for non-violent drug offenses did a plea bargain down from a violent offense.

And if that were the case, should this affect our opinion on any of this?

View on HN

On the federal level in the USA that is not possible. Firearms and violence add on points to your sentencing and are often linked with mandatory minimums. Firearms in particular really tank your chances of a short sentence. Prior to the First Step Act you couldn't even participate in RDAP with a firearm linked to your crime.

I outlined this in a different comment, but programming like RDAP should be developed and standardized to aide convicted in rehabilitation.

to clarify, since most people without personal experience in the US criminal system don't know: in the US, you can be, and usually are, sentenced based on crimes and/or facts you were not convicted or even charged for.

Yeah but (almost?) nobody is in federal prison on drug possession charges, especially after the latest reform bill. There are a lot in prison on trafficking and sales, but not possession ("minor", per the headline).

The vast majority of drug charges are in state prison systems, where plea bargains are absolutely a thing.

I agree. A number of the ones in the federal system are also only in the feds because of career criminal charges. You can be convicted multiple times as a juvenile and then 1+ times as an adult and receive a federal sentence for something minor.

I agree. It needs a little more nuance, especially the plea bargaining. And on top of that, prosecutors are known to pile on tons of only vaguely-applicable, probably-not-convictable charges just to get someone to plea bargain down, so that complicates even the plea bargain exception.

I'll throw in another part where more fine-grained control would be nice: the amount of said substances is measured by gross weight, baggie included, even if whatever the substance is has been "stepped on."

Now, wave a gun in someone's face to take their money for drugs? Keep that charge. But otherwise we should not only free, but expunge the record, retroactively. Some kid with a dime bag ends up having to suffer for that decision for the rest of their life.

And what about trafficking 100kg of heroin? Everyone likes to pick the seemingly trivial examples to justify liberal values on jailing (“what if the 3rd strike is stealing a loaf of bread!”) but the reality is there are a broad range of crimes by a broad range of people. That’s why we have judges and give them latitude.

I think in there case of something like Acid the weight can be an incorrect measure of substance.

I heard it was popular to use the old books of stamps. So five doses on a stamp book is a silly about of weight. Then over a certain weight it is considered distribution and boom the sentence is jumped. Thanks to the war on drugs I’m not sure how much can even be reasoned by a judge.

Now, keep in mind, I’m not necessarily on the side of no more crimes. I do see the cracks in how the offenses wer e codified.

Things like marijuana outside distribution should probably be ignored. I was horrified watching someone on a cop show get arrested for a roach they found nearby on the ground. This was also a person who was strolling through a walkway in the forest between residences.

> That’s why we have judges and give them latitude.

See "Mandatory sentencing" aka "Mandatory Minimums"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_sentencing#United_St...

This is going to be unpopular, but I say legalize it.

Watch "My 600 Pound Life." People can destroy their lives with food, they can destroy their lives with alcohol. One is merely legal, one is a necessity. People make terrible life choices constantly and selecting heroin -- once prescribed for asthma -- as a no-go is just hating the newcomer versus giving traditional old alcohol, a civilizational favorite, a pass.

We should spend the money from the war on drugs on instead trying to prevent the root causes of these kinds of disastrous decisions. We don't even have a great grasp on why people make some of these choices yet. I'm not saying we just set up a Needle Park or anything, but frankly we've lost the war on drugs. It's time to re-evaluate our priorities.

that's a good question, but I don't think there's a good way to distinguish between people who pled down from charges they likely would have been convicted on at trial and charges that were heaped on for leverage but had little chance of sticking. from a criminal justice perspective, I think we need to consider only the actual convictions. we might take into consideration whether there are any meaningful priors though.

What would you consider a "violent drug offense"? Or, am I misreading your question?

It's easy to see how pistol whipping someone over a bad drug deal could be plead down to a non-violent possession/dealing offense because proving assault and battery is hard when the prosecution only has testimony and circumstantial evidence the prosecution's star witness is an addict with a mile long record. Possession is very easy to prove. A&B, DV, etc, etc are much harder to prosecute (and by "much" I mean "some work" vs "practically no work") so possession is a good offense to anchor a plea bargain for those other things to.

Personally I say release them all and just wait for the bad ones to filter back into the system but I can see why some people are hesitant.

But, neither assault nor battery are drug offenses.

The original charges are always shown in the judicial record even if they are later dropped from prosecution.

True, now what happens when prosecution systemically throws the book for the purpose of securing better plea bargains? Maybe you didn't pistol whip that guy, maybe you just smacked him upside the head but you were packing when you did it so the prosecutor throws all the possible charges on the list.

Both sides of the problem relate to each other. People plead from "real crimes" down to "petty crimes" but prosecutors know this so they charge people with "real crimes" that won't stick just to get better plea deals on petty crimes and pad their stats.

Wouldn't that be held in the legal records? In which case, a judgement can be made?

Compared to someone's record of convictions, that information is pretty inaccessible. You'd have to go all the way back to court records at the time of their conviction.

as implied in a cousin comment, I don't think this applies if they're currently incarcerated. at least at the federal level, the BOP should have records of who was sentenced with firearms or other violent sentencing modifiers in order to properly segregate them from non-violent offenders. that wouldn't work for the idea of purging their records, but for the OP argument, it ought to work reasonably well. for the rare cases where it doesn't, some burden could be put on the inmate to collect and submit their documents for approval, the same as if they were filing an appeal.

They make it very easy on the federal level with PACER and in the majority of states with an equivalent.

Fear holds justice back.

At this point, I really don't care if some people who plead down to non-violent charges get released along with the immense number of actual non-violent offenders.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com