Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

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In the case of LEOs or prosecutors, I think many give up the search for truth and give in to the us-vs-them mentality. The cognitive dissonance and pressure of group dynamics make it almost a certainty.

There is huge power in law enforcement and prosecutorial discretion. Yes, some parts of the job have to be strict for safety purposes. There are many other parts that don't.

I've had prosecutors and police know that our rights were violated as part of a citation. They did not care. Cop lied multiple times in court and was caught. IAD merely gave them a warning. The LT of the troop made a bunch of BS excuses - either he's actually that stupid or he's lying too. Filed a complaint about an incompetent magistrate whow also violated due process rights - judicial board doesn't care. Prosecutor instructed the court not to talk to us which prevented us from securing remote accommodations for our witness - the Bar didn't care. Civil rights lawyer said our rights were violated, but unless there was substantial monetary damages, the system doesn't care and would likely see it as frivolous.

Nobody cares. Nobody protects your rights. If nobody can enforce your rights, do you even have them at all? All the trooper/prosecutor/magistrate/judge had to do, was drop/throw out the case. They had the discretion, and even the responsibility, to do that. Their mentality was the problem. We were guilty in their mind because if we were not, that would make them participants in a broken and unjust system.

Defense & prosecution aren't on a search for truth, they are on a search to make the best possible case for & against you, respectively. That's their role in the system. Law enforcement (officers, investigators) I would hope to be on the search for truth.

Purely theoretically, prosecution should search truth. By law, they should follow exculpatory evidence too, give all evidence to defense and few other rules. Not saying they do, in practice they are rewarded for breaking those rules.

But, in theory it should be different.

They also aren't allowed to hold known incorrect charges against someone when that incorrect charge carries pretrial restrictions that the correct charge does not. In my experience, you are absolutely right that they do not follow these laws/rules. I highly doubt that they added the trooper's name to their Guiglio list even after I provided evidence that the trooper lied in court related to two separate facts.

Yes, as an adversarial system they are to make the best case. However, it still must be truthful.

The trooper didn't care about the truth. He lied in court... twice. We mentioned a third party witness at the scene - they never questioned them. There was no statutory definition of a term. The dictionaries had only one open ended definition for the term. We wrote to the state agency that is the authority in that area to see what guidance they have on the activity - they said it's legal (even if they didn't, the rule of strict construction requires ambiguity to be favorable to the defense). The people in the system didn't care. The trooper also knew that the other party committed a crime, but declined to charge them. What a one sided system... again, truth doesn't matter when they treat you as guilty until proven innocent.

> Defense & prosecution aren't on a search for truth, they are on a search to make the best possible case for & against you, respectively.

The most important things prosecution does are: decide who to prosecute, decide when to ask for bail, decide what sentence to ask for. This all has a lot more to do with societal values than making a strong case.

>> our rights were violated as part of a citation. >> unless there was substantial monetary damages

I take it that this was not a criminal prosecution that might result in actual jail time. Was it a minor traffic offense? Part of the "thick skin" i mentioned above is a pragmatism re the "rights" of individuals in minor cases. Highschool teaches us that every trial is the same, that beyond-reasonable-doubt, perjury and and all the rights apply to everyone in ever case. The reality is that absolute respect for such things is a limited resource. Impeach every cop with less-than-perfect testimony in a traffic case and you won't have any cops left to testify in murder cases. Give every drunk driving charge a full jury trial and the economy would stop as every able body would spend more time sitting in the jury box than working. Functioning within the system means working within those realities. Ideology dies a quick death when faced with the staggering number of charges brought each day.

"I take it that this was not a criminal prosecution that might result in actual jail time."

Criminal summary offense (dog off leash) which carries the possibility of up to 90 days in jail. Instead of charging the off leash offense, they wrote the charge for a dangerous dog. This incorrect charge carried with it pretrial restrictions only found under that charge (dog could not leave our property, etc).

"Part of the "thick skin" i mentioned above is a pragmatism re the "rights" of individuals in minor cases."

There is no such exception for ignoring rights simply because they feel it's pragmatic.

If they feel minor case isn't worth the effort to properly pursue, then it shouldn't be worth their time to pursue it at all. When you screw over enough people, there won't be any left to support the system.

"Give every drunk driving charge a full jury trial and the economy would stop as every able body would spend more time sitting in the jury box than working."

Um... they do have that right. The states fixed this, not by desecrating their rights, but by creating alternative and less severe programs like ARD.

"Impeach ever cop with less-than-perfect testimony in a traffic case and you won't have any cops left to testify in murder cases."

We aren't talking about less than perfect. We're talking about lies, or consistently making false claims (unreliable). For example, if the cop tells me he's going to amend the charge because he made a mistake 10 minutes before court, and then tells the judge he's amending it because he's cutting us a break... that's pretty egregious that he wants to hide his mistake to influence the court.

I've had first-hand experience with this but in the opposite direction. Had a cop cut me a break on a ticket and charge me with a lesser offense than the one I actually committed. When I went to pay the fine (this was a long time ago, before the internet) I was told the ticket hadn't been filed and so there was no fine to pay.

Fast forward a year and I get a court summons for this ticket. At this point I'm annoyed enough to fight it so I take it to trial. I argue that because a year has gone by, my Constitutional right to a speedy trial has been violated. This actually makes the judge (actually a "magistrate" -- still not sure what the difference is) look something up in a book before denying my motion with no explanation. Then the cop blatantly lies on the stand and says that he saw something that he could not possibly have seen. I have photographic evidence that proves that he could not possibly have seen what he claims to have seen. He is clearly lying to fulfill the statutory requirement for finding me guilty of this offense. Then the magistrate asks me point-blank if I was guilty. I take the fifth. Magistrate proclaims "the court will be finding you guilty". I pay the fine, enroll in traffic school, and proceed with my privileged-rich-white-guy life.

It's a pretty fucked up system even when you are on the non-shitty end of the stick.

>> Then the magistrate asks me point-blank if I was guilty. I take the fifth.

That's not the fifth. Pleading not guilty isn't considered a statement or an admission of anything. Nor can it be held against you in any way. We don't double down by charging every guilty party with "perjury" because they lost. That was done away with centuries ago.

I was being a little bit glib there. The judge did not literally ask me if I was guilty and I did not literally take the fifth. What she did was ask whether the thing the cop claimed to have seen, which he could not possibly have seen, nonetheless actually happened, and I said I could not remember because it had happened more than a year ago.

It was a very weird situation from a moral point of view because on the one hand, finding me guilty was not supported by the evidence, but on the other hand, letting me get off scot-free would have been even more unjust because the fact of the matter is that I did commit a fairly serious moving violation, and the only reason we were in court at all was that the cop decided to cut be a break and then took a long time to do the paperwork.

You said you had photographic evidence...were you not allowed to introduce it? Why does it matter if you can't remember if you have video proof?

I had proof that the cop could not have seen what he claimed to have seen, and that therefore he must be lying about having seen it. I did not have proof that the thing he claimed to have seen did not actually happen.

Yes...I'm confused about OPs story because, as far as I know, you can't just plead the 5th at various parts of a trial where it is not relevant. The judge would generally not move on until you plead something. Or they would hold you in contempt if you refuse to plead guilty/not guilty/alford/nolo contendere etc

Well, it's a magistrate. They tend to not know/follow the laws/rules in my experience. They aren't even required to have a law degree or even pass the Bar. I think in my state they only require 40 hours of training.

Based on their other comment it sounds like they said they didn't remember when asked by the magistrate if they committed the act, which isn't the same as invoking the fifth. Thwy also said they were able to prove the officer couldn't have witnessed the act they were testifying about. Then the magistrate found them guilty (based on false testimony?).

You need to share the actual details

"I've had first-hand experience with this but in the opposite direction."

I think it's the same direction, unless I'm missing something.

Magistrates don't have to have a law degree nor pass the Bar. They tend to be very incompetent considering that they are the ones deciding the initial hearing for misdemeanors and felonies (although most of the time they deal with more minor things).

I asked a magistrate to dismiss a case with prejudice, and he thought I was calling him prejudice...

> I think it's the same direction,

Yeah, it depends on how you look at it. I was thinking about this:

> I've had prosecutors and police know that our rights were violated as part of a citation. They did not care.

In my case it's, "I had a cop decide not to cite me for violations of the law that I actually committed, only to turn around and railroad me for a less serious violation that he could not possibly have known whether I actually committed or not."

My point was just that net-net the system worked to my benefit despite the fact that my ostensible rights were violated.

Ah, I missed that they didn't charge you on the more serious infraction.

I've only seen it go the one way in my experiences. It just seems so odd to me that a system with such power has such limited controls/protections, and such common mistakes and abuses.

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