Zoom court hearing postponed after accused found in same location as witness
sturgisjournal.com
sturgisjournal.com
There is so much to learn about the legal system and, more broadly, about the nature of people in trying circumstances watching court proceedings. The pureness of exchanges and the total lack of editorial bias is refreshing and too hard to find these days.
I have a theory that if more people watched court proceedings (daily misdemeanor, not just OJ/Floyd cutups), political opinions might shift toward humanizing both the accused and the victims.
1: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS8gM5S889oBPyN6K07ZC6A/vid...
Are there any other court feeds you've found interesting?
There has been a lot of work on this, showing that people's reactions to newspaper stories about court cases are polarized, but similar people on juries generally find common ground. I don't have any citations handy, but I'm sure they're easy to find.
The stream I watched was a landlord-tenant dispute hearing. It was sad to hear people's pretty desperate circumstances, but also fascinating to learn just how long a leash the court might give you on debt and eviction if you know how to work the system, as some tenants and the anti-homelessness orgs helping them seemed to understand. We have a pretty weird system all in all, patch after patch on this "Capitalism OS."
This young man appears to be able to go from 0 to 100 very quickly with little self control. I can only imagine the kind of environment that helps create a person like that… It is so sad.
The compilation starts briefly from the later jail incident. The part depicted in the article (edited) starts at 0:34.
Maybe this is Captain Obvious speaking, but poor impulse control seems like the single common denominator among a whole load of social ills that consistently land people in trouble (legal, financial, social, across lots of spectrums). From crimes of opportunity/passion, to short-tempers and "blowing up" on people in public or private, to impulse shopping, to road rage, to everything you see on r/PublicFreakout, and so on. Seems that some people just entirely miss that part of their upbringing, and suffer needlessly for it for the rest of their lives.
EDIT: This thread took a wild turn. I guess I never considered there might be a genetic or environmental explanation. Much food for thought!
...and make things worse for the rest of us; but god forbid the state do anything about it with proactive evidence-based early-interventions or treat the perpetrators of crime with compassion and understanding too - otherwise it's called being soft-on-crime or worse: "liberal".
Also to mention... to challenge preconceptions about who's behind this stuff, the current US president (who many would consider "liberal" or "leftist") made great efforts and progress toward locking up lots of people ("tough on crime"), especially minorities, in the past. The last president (who many would consider more to the right of the political spectrum) actually did a lot to reform and fix that, especially for minorities.
https://www.bop.gov/inmates/fsa/overview.jsp
(I'm not taking a position on which president was better or worse on this issue.)
It's hard to take Trump seriously in the realm of criminal justice reform when considering -- for example -- his reaction to the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. And that's just one example among many. I won't claim that Biden is a saint here, but painting Trump as a criminal justice reformer is a bit absurd.
Regardless, incarceration isn't really something that changes a lot based on federal-level action, as federal prisoners account for less than 10% of the prison population (the rest are incarcerated at the state level).
Later, after being elected president, that president (who most would consider pretty politically incoherent on traditional ideological divides, and animated almost entirely on the single issue of defending the American ethnic against "others" without and within, and who spent most of his presidency calling for the broader use of violence against perceived criminals, oversaw a record return to federal capital punishment, expanded the use of paramilitary law enforcement, and directly assumed control of law enforcement using loopholes in the executive branch's authority to do so) signed a bipartisan crime reform bill he had nothing to do with at the urging of a reality tv star who is pretending to become a lawyer and who was briefly married to a mentally ill rapper who for some reason endorsed the president.
If we're looking to ascribe an ideological dimension to crime politics in the US, it would be easy: during the entire modern party system, Republicans have consistently been to the right of Democrats on crime (even in periods where Democrats have been, in a global sense, to the right of the median). The bulk of major crime bills have been nearly unanimous consent, including both the 1994 Crime bill and the First Step Act, but the contents of those bills have compromises where the right seeks "tougher" provisions and the left seeks more conciliatory provisions.
Court politics has been even more obviously partisan. Of the current Supreme Court justices, Thomas and Alito favour obviously expanding the use of capital punishment and view most litigation related to it a liberal plot to undermine the justice system; Breyer and Sotomayor have signalled they believe the constitution more or less mandates abolition. It's a clear as day divide. Most other criminal justice issues have the same dimensions in the courts, and even lower in the circuit courts as well.
Have they talked/written about it being a "liberal plot" or is that just a (quite possibly entirely accurate) description of a belief that would explain their actions without their having come out and said that?
I'd be interested to learn more if you have any suggested reading on the current members of the SC (not an area I know a huge amount about).
> “Those who oppose the death penalty are free to try to persuade legislatures to abolish the death penalty. Some of those efforts have been successful. They’re free to ask this court to overrule the death penalty. But until that occurs, is it appropriate for the judiciary to countenance what amounts to a guerrilla war against the death penalty, which consists of efforts to make it impossible for the states to obtain drugs that could be used to carry out capital punishment with little, if any, pain?” Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito [1]
[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alito-death-penalty-guerrilla...
> During his 15-year career on the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Alito participated in 10 capital cases. Five were decided unanimously by three-judge panels and involved fairly straightforward issues. The other five provoked strong differences of opinion between Alito and his colleagues. In every one of the five contested cases, Alito voted against the inmate and issued an opinion. Individually and especially as a whole, these opinions show a troubling tendency to tolerate serious errors in capital proceedings.
> Although O’Connor’s approach to capital punishment has been solidly conservative, she has at times supplied a crucial vote in contentious cases in favor of greater care and fairness in the application of the death penalty. Yet it is precisely in the most contentious cases that Alito has shown an unbroken pattern of excusing errors in capital proceedings and eroding norms of basic fairness. [2]
[2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-nov-27-oe-liu27...
> In Murphy’s case, Justice Alito, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, accused defense lawyers of “inexcusably dilatory litigation tactics” and complained that “the great majority” of applications for stays of execution “are almost all filed on or shortly before the scheduled execution date … [with] no good reason for the late filing.” Staying Murphy’s execution, Alito wrote, “countenance[es] the dilatory litigation [and], I fear, will encourage this damaging practice.” While acknowledging that “[t]he claims raised by Murphy and Ray are important and may ultimately be held to have merit,” Alito said that “[p]risoners should bring such claims well before their scheduled executions so that the courts can adjudicate them in the way that the claims require and deserve and so that States are afforded sufficient time to make any necessary modifications to their execution protocols.” [3]
[3] https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/death-penalty-opinions-exp...
[4] https://www.ontheissues.org/Court/Samuel_Alito_Crime.htm
[5] https://www.ontheissues.org/Court/Clarence_Thomas_Crime.htm
Biden has never been a leftist (not even in the extremely loose sense that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party might be considered “leftist”), he’s always been associated with the centrist/conservative wing of the Party, and that was even more true in the 1990s (when he was involved in the crime legislation you are talking about) then in his post-Senate career (where he has been involved in national campaigns where the centrist faction is weaker within the party than it was in the mid-late 1990s, which were pretty much the peak of its dominance.)
> The last president (who many would consider more to the right of the political spectrum)
I think “corrupt authoritarian opportunist who seized on a perceived opportunity in the more right-leaning party, and particularly with mobilizing its extremist fringes” than describing Trump actually being ideologically to the right in some kind of coherent way that motivates policy over more immediate calculations of personal gain and opportunism.
I think it's worse than that: they get too much shock and awe beatings/ unpredictable rage from parents who were raised the same. It's a cycle/ disease. "My parents hit me and I turned out fine" is often a revealing statement. And a defense of parents who may not deserve it but coping with that is harder.
They did their best with the tools and knowledge they had available to them.
Would I hit my kids? Probably not, I can see some value in it, but I think ultimately your parenting style shouldn't deviate too much from their own surroundings - that is what causes more harm IMO.
YMMV
So what does this statement reveal about me?
I mean, you can let someone touch a hot stove, or not. Is letting them learn for themselves abusive? I believe that was how I learned that specific lesson, not by being hit when I reached.
On the other hand, there are things that you can't let someone learn for themselves because they won't live through it.
And what about hurting other people? Is it possible that there is an empathy circuit that doesn't necessarily get wired properly if early on, pain isn't connected to hurting others?
This doesn't have to be applied by humans in all cases. You bother the cat, it slaps you.
If physical punishment is unacceptable, does that mean the cat should be declawed so it can't do that?
I provided a few things that I thought were in kind of a gray area, in order that you might clarify how you categorize them and how you think such situations could be avoided or handled differently.
It seems to me that my comment was manifestly a combination of factual claims and questions about your beliefs, not justifications of anything.
The other is softer - I am curious how normalising pain may positively benefit a developing child. Could it build toughness? Might my child be more likely to stand up to a bully?
From a self defence perspective, a big part of personal development is overcoming aversion to pain - eg not flinching in boxing/mma.
In any case I think there are alternatives to learning these lessons and disciplining your children and I think in our environment it would do a lot of emotional damage that isn't worth the benefits - hence why I probably won't hit my children.
That said, I find it curious that only one to two generations ago it was fully the norm.
Aren't you worried this de-stigmatizes violence, and could lead either to adoption of violence as a problem-solving tool, or in general a society that accepts everyday violence?
I'm living in a place where I never have felt physically threatened, not at dark streets or drunk alone or whatever. I do recognize large part of this is privilege of being a male, but I've always felt my physical well-being isn't threatened. I'd never try to fight back unless that's the last option, rather de-escalate, run away, call police.
>I am curious how normalising pain may positively benefit a developing child
I feel like this is a story we were handed in prior generations (for context, I am 45) where people (specifically men) need to be "tough" but I don't think anyone really defined what that meant or why.
Maybe tough is a dirty word. Not tough in the toxic masculine sense but tough as in resilient.
Being physically tough can often build a self confidence and mental strength that many people underestimate.
You'll never get me to agree that people don't need to be tough. Just as you should wear a seatbelt even if you're the safest driver in the world, you should be tough because you never know when adversity may come. Just like how you can't control for drivers around you. Maybe in a world only operating self driving cars can we stop wearing seat belts - and yet random failure will still happen. Bad weather, network failure, cosmic ray bitflips take your pick.
Given you are 45, people of your parents' generations came from truly tough times. Plenty of people I know from my parents' generation remember what was like to be truly hungry.
I've seen the UK slowly become more violent and dangerous in my own lifetime.
We're facing increasingly unequal times, geopolitical tensions are high as world powers go for hegemon. We have a displaced workforce - much like the run up to WW1. Climate change may well bring even greater hardship.
Summer lasted all of about 1.5 generations, I hope my children will be tough so that they have the resilience to face whatever the world throws at them and pick themselves up and always move forwards when they navigate the world we leave behind for them.
By the time I was 18 I had that reckless abandon and confidence that only an 18 year old can have - that feeling of invincibility and that belief that anything is possible.
Fast forward 10 years later after years of working super hard and not doing much exercise and accruing postural issues, I went skiing and felt very vulnerable and mortal - a stark shift from the me of 10 years prior!
When I hit my 30s I made reacquiring that fitness again and started exercising super hard. Like 10-15 hours a week of intense physical training. To my surprise, I actually started to feel almost like an 18 year old again. I couldn't believe my subconscious outlook on life could be so malleable.
What does this have to do with hitting kids and toughness? I've digressed a bit - I guess having some of that stoic grit is worth developing in children but I am undecided whether hitting children builds it in them.
It is only recently that we’ve (in the West) had a generation or two of the majority of us being raised without suffering direct experience of war.
Just as children who are abused often go on to be abusers in adulthood, I suspect societies that suffer war often become abusive post-war.
Maybe it's not a cycle, but genetic instead. It would appear like a cycle because the children will end up doing what the parents did, but they might simply be predisposed to it.
On the flip side, self-control, impulse control, being able to manage your emotions with a toolbox: these are skills that are learned, honed, and mastered. Sure, many people learn them through other means than from their parents, often as a survival necessity in their environments, but I don't think that e.g. the people who fly off the handle and get into a bar fight when someone's hitting on their girlfriend, are doing so because of heavy metal poisoning or genetics.
That's far from obvious. You can't just observe some trait in an organism, and conclude "that must have genetic origins".
I got news for ya bub. They aren't learned. They can be honed to a small degree. They cannot be mastered.
When you have ADHD you realize this.
And to your last thing. Not in all cases but in some.
(I'm not arguing for or against the point that they can be learned, just against the "proof" that someone with ADHD has - and not because of ADHD specifically, but because generally speaking any argument which relies on "my experience proves X about humans" is likely to be short-sighted.)
Anecdotally, I grew up an environment with good parents and siblings with different genetic parents. One of us had been in jail and juvy several times by age 18 due in part to impulse-control related problems.
Today a diagnosis of significant ADHD might have been given. Then it was not as well understood.
The hyperactivity component of ADHD is often expressed as impulsivity, so that fits.
This can be due to an old head injury. Head injury syndrome is a thing and one study found that upwards of 90 percent of people on Death Row had a history of head injury so severe that you could find evidence of it with an x-ray machine if there were no medical records.
In other words the skull still bore the scars. So it went well beyond just a concussion.
Edit: And of course there will always be the assholes with an excuse for their intentionally malicious behavior, which complicates the hell out of finding good solutions.
I imagine that poverty and poor diet do all kinds of bad things to the populations that tend to be most at risk of ending up in jail in the US. I have at times fantasized about trying to do something about nutrition in the US prison system as a means of trying to break the cycle, but I'm probably never going to be in a position to do that.
Even the Bible posits that feeding people is the way to promote the peace, basically. Psychological research and firsthand experience suggest that's pretty sound as an approach.
Edit: See discussion here:
I don't have any other sources at my fingertips that wouldn't involve just doing a search myself.
"The most important lesson from 83,000 brain scans | Daniel Amen | TEDxOrangeCoast" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esPRsT-lmw8
My summary of the thesis of the talk: Brain injury is far more common than is generally realised, contributes to many kinds of behavioural issues far more than is realised, is visible on scans, and is to some extent treatable, but it's usually not considered or examined.
Since nobody mentioned it, I’ll add that toxoplasmosis seems to reduce the ability to control impulses in humans.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5579228/
Patients with latent toxoplasma have a higher chance to get involved in car accidents.
I recognize that this incident is a microscope’s view of this young man’s life painting.
> “I’d like to fire my attorney and represent myself for the rest of this case, please, because he hasn’t done anything that I’ve asked him,” Harris said. “I asked, I sent him a whole paper of questions to ask her and I asked him to come see me before this court date. He hasn’t. Paul Gipson’s a bum a* dude, and he should not practice this profession ‘cause he’s not doing anything for –”
https://www.yahoo.com/now/defendant-viral-michigan-assault-h...
I get the feeling this person is going to be spending an extended period of time in jail.
Judge Middleton and Deborah Davis (the attorney) from this case are very popular over there. She is even a member of the subreddit IIRC.
The idea being that law is applied in public to keep process in check, unless there are exceptional reasons not to do so.
Though there is a substantial difference between having an modestly-sized, in-person audience of dispassionate local journalists, plaintiffs, relatives and the occasional curious member of the public - and having potentially thousands of Internet gawkers and potential doxxers. Especially in cases like rape/sexual-assault and the like: there's definitely a public-interest (for the accused, the victim, the guilty and the innocent alike) in having a limited audience.
...can/would any judges agree to limit the public streaming audience to a smaller number in those cases?
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ng9g/judge-has-no-patience...
This would be akin to accidentally showing up to a courtroom in a suit and forgetting that there's a decorative penis pin on your jacket because the last time you wore it you were at some sort of party. You clearly didn't care enough about your situation to dot your i's and cross your t's, and it suggests to the judge that you think this is a farce, mistake or not.
But I must ask again; would you show up to any kind of disciplinary hearing for yourself with "Buttfucker 3000" showing on your name badge?
Even if the defendant literally did spit in the face of the judge, a good judge should not react in a way that would give anyone reason to think they let that affect their ruling.
uhh, depends on the case?
There is no way to know that the defendant's Zoom screen-name was set intentionally, or even with his knowledge. Prior to showing up on the screen the judge was already leaking bias - "Then we'll bring this...fool in".
While I am inclined to "assume" that it was done intentionally, assumptions is not what the judicial system is about.
"Your name isn't Buttfucker 3000, you yol-hole" along with the initial remark are both incredibly unprofessional (and worrying) things to hear from a person who's literal job is to pass unbiased judgement. Name calling from a judge, really?
Yes, the dude was probably being an ass, but it doesn't matter. The judge judged the guy without concrete evidence and displayed a ton of personal distaste and bias against the defendant over the following minutes. He should asked the defendant to fix his screen name and moved on. This is not the kind of behavior you want to see in a judge who presides over cases of any real meaning.
The trial before them is not their only concern.
Respect is earned, regardless of statute.
The judge could have simply asked the defendant to fix his screen name and moved on, and he would have had my respect for the professionalism. Instead, respect has been lost.
The charge is for a syringe found by some cop rifling around this guy's person/vehicle during a traffic stop. They are not only perceived as fools but they are fools, for facilitating the trying of this individual for such an unjust law for which there is no victim. The only lesson this man could possible learn from this judge sentencing him is to toss the syringe in a playground or something before driving off in his vehicle, since apparently having it in your car instead of wherever you used it is a big problem.
These tyrants deserve no respect, and I hope the entire system of trying people for the crime of owning an inanimate syringe collapses. The sooner we lose respect for all judges sentencing people for these crimes the better.
People don't go to court because they "respect" the judicial process or the judge - they go because they are compelled by force or threats of force/imprisonment.
That said... it seems foolish to disrespect the judge, not because he/she deserves respect, but because they can abuse their power and punish you over slights to their ego. It's the same reason you don't run your mouth at a cop during a traffic stop - they would likely wield their small authority over you in a way that you found unpleasant.
HN is an echo chamber of tech-savvy people (myself included), but for anyone who's job isn't to work on a computer for 8 hours a day, this type of mistake can happen completely without intent.
In regards to the "decorative penis pin" scenario. Benefit-of-the-doubt is a basic principle of the judicial system. It is completely feasible to do something like this unintentionally. A good judge should ask the pin be removed, and move on. If the defendant refuses to remove it, handle that situation appropriately.
In this same video, the judge asked someone to remove their hat. The hat was removed, and everyone moved on. This is how professionals do their jobs.
The same thing generally applies to the courtroom - it's showing a lack of respect for, and understanding of, the situation one is in. Were a judge to think they may want to give an individual a lenient sentence, they may change their mind were they to find out that that individual is basically saying, "Fuck you and fuck all of this, I don't care."
A nice start would be to recognize having "buttfucker 3000" in your name might simply be an acknowledgement of the unjust law and probably circumstances (found in traffic stop, likely questionable 4A grounds) (although the article states that he stated it was unintentional.) So the easiest thing would have been just to let it slide and continue on like it doesn't exist.
Judge could also instruct jurors on "jury nullification" or make the prosecutor's life hell in other ways if they bring about these cases.
Yes I think there is a moral duty to ignore an unjust law, even if it is illegal to do so.
Court isn't an MMO; you don't get to choose a pithy username. You use your legal name, and the judge is right to enforce that.
> The same thing generally applies to the courtroom - it's showing a lack of respect for, and understanding of, the situation one is in.
Others have said this, but I want to underscore it with different phrasing: you seem to not understand the difference between "fear" and "respect".
> Were a judge to think they may want to give an individual a lenient sentence, they may change their mind were they to find out that that individual is basically saying, "Fuck you and fuck all of this, I don't care."
Justice should not depend on how good you make a judge feel about themselves or how fearful you show yourself to be of the system; justice should look only at the facts of the case and be blind to these unrelated details, no matter how much they make the judge personally feel bad.
I appreciate it isn't like that: justice is not blind, and is in fact horribly unfair. And this means we tend to leave laws on the books that disproportionately affect certain groups of people because we let law enforcement and judgement proceedings favor use "discretion" to "discriminate" (note the relationship between these words).
But that someone knows this to be true and thereby chooses a strategy to play that maximizes their benefit, has nothing to do with "respect": it is out of "fear" of what the system will do to you if you don't put on the outward appearance of "respect", even if--entirely internally--you are feeling nothing but "contempt" (a feeling that I personally couldn't blame anyone for having).
Insisting that people respect the court is a large part of why this works. Even if maybe in some particular instance you could get away with not insisting on that, that's a dangerous experiment to run.
The legal system is just a buttress for social norms and conventions; and if the latter break down, there's not much hope for the former.
Of course, there are many legal issues that genuinely need lawyers and courts - for example, where there is real disagreement as to the meaning of a legal text such as a contract. But on the whole, the role of courts and lawyers is to tidy-up around the edges; if society only worked because of courts and lawyers, then it wouldn't really be working at all.
I'm not big on formality in general but I think that there are times when it makes sense to expect people to present themselves with a basic level of respect.
So far as I've seen hats aren't allowed either. I'd be willing to claim it as a religious necessity.
That kind of obvious, blatant disrespect would not be tolerated in a traditional court proceeding. And it shouldn't be tolerated in an online proceeding, either.
There's something about everyone being remote that worries me about how flippant / careless people could be about every aspect of it.
Dude looked over 30, wife looked under 20.
Traffic court sometimes makes you grateful.
This should NOT have been publicized. There is enough information in the above sentence that I was able to Google for her exact address. This is a gross danger to violence victims.
You can have remote trials but just don't put personal information in records, and prohibit unauthorized recording. Have one official recording that redacts personal addresses and contact information.
That would encourage victims to not bring wrongdoings to trial in fear of their personal info being exposed.
If someone is convicted, then yeah, go ahead and put them on a sex offender registry with their address. Loss of privacy is a consequence of their actions. That's justice.
But goddamn no don't put the victim's address in public view.
Even if we could keep the identity of witnesses secret, we don’t want to. We have the right to confront our accusers, and we don’t want secret trials.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210311055900/https://www.youtu...
Is this bordering on a Fifth Amendment violation since the judge asked this or a future mistrial since the defense attorney didn't try to stop it?
There is no reason to lose your privacy over this.
Zoom is blowing the doors off access, but there is appetite for specialization.
IMO the best way to facilitate this is for the courthouse to deliver an officially-sanctioned device on the date of the trial to everyone involved (defendants, attackers, witnesses, jurors, judges, lawyers), that device come with its own LTE connection, and it be a federal violation to modify that device.
In addition, the courts should NEVER divulge the location of the participants in a trial or put it into any document, as that might put violence victims at further risk.
Muting or pausing the recordings during testimony of private information, or redacting them from the recording might be a good compromise.