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Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

> [Public Defenders'] work is as noble as ours. But we have an obligation to fight like hell on behalf of the People. It should go without saying that this must be done ethically and evenhandedly.

I was on Jury Duty last year and every day I had to walk past a tiny decrepit Public Defender office and then past sprawling, spotless floors of Attorney General offices. I probably have the wrong terms, the specifics are fading, but the general meaning of the signs seemed clear enough. What a shameful disgrace. Society doesn't have a thumb on the scale, it has a foot on the scale.

No, I don't think shifting the extreme imbalance even further towards Prosecution is going to fix crime.

Maybe things are different in Chicago, but I'd want to hear from Defense before just believing a rant from Prosecution.

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I wouldn't call this well thought out letter a rant. Further he is putting his money where his mouth is: he is leaving so that his son can live in a safer situation.

Your experience about jury duty is important, but it was not in Chicago. I grew up there. I get what he's talking about.

Depending on the neighborhood, things can get very unsafe very quickly. No one talks about "what a disgrace" when they can hear gunfire three blocks away.

I would be interested to hear where he is moving to, and how the safety of Chicago compares.

The applicable quote I heard once is “while you are presumed innocent, the system is designed to convict you”. I think I heard that on some random YT video I’ve seen through the years.

Given that 90+% of criminal cases result in plea bargains (exact number varies by source), I think the quote should be "the system is designed to force you to accept a plea deal and allow us to lock you up without actually having to convict you, and without any avenues for appeal."

The phrase is "Innocent until proven broke."

As purely factual matter do you believe that most people arrested have or haven’t actually committed a crime?

Some related questions also worth considering: are most people who have actually committed a crime arrested?

In what circumstances is arresting someone necessary or even beneficial for society on the whole? There are costs both to the people in terms of booking & housing someone in jail, and to the individual as for most folks not regularly dealing with law enforcement being arrested is at least somewhat traumatic.

I would guess "haven't", based on how many arrests do not even result in a case being referred to prosecutors. Certainly there is some portion of those cases who did commit the crime but the state lacks evidence, but my hunch is that this is not enough to tip the scales in the other direction.

What? Have you seen police in real life? When I see them, shit is going down, which is why they were called and turned on those flashy emergency lights.

How does that apply?

I don't think there's a good way to measure that. If you go by conviction rate, it's something like 75% +/-10% depending on jurisdiction and grading. Then you'd have to adjust for the 2-10% of wrongful convictions for the incarcerated. Then adjust for the people who commited a crime but were not convicted, but I haven't seen stats on that.

You can't use the results of the system to validate the system.

Your 2-10% wrongful conviction rate matches the rate capital defendants are legally found to have been wrongfully convicted[3]. They're a good subset to focus on because they're the cases get the most resources and attention, and are the only category of defendants who regularly get volunteer lawyers for postconviction review.

But that can't prove that the system doesn't wrongfully convict at a higher rate. If public defenders are underfunded that will reduce their ability to prove wrongful convictions, for example. Note that a successful postconviction petition is much harder without a good record established by the original trial counsel. The Glossip case is a good example of how "innocence is not enough" to get exoneration.

(Your stats are also off by a bit. The average state conviction rate is around 80%, but there's way more than 10% variance. California is up at 94% while Florida is at 55%. [1] Meanwhile the feds are all the way up at 99.6%. [2]

[1]: Table B-1 on https://www.paperprisons.org/statistics.html

[2]: https://www.doarlaw.com/blog/2021/04/what-you-should-know-ab...

[3]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1306417111

Edit: I forgot cite 3

Innocence is not enough to get a conviction overturned but it also isn’t necessary to get a conviction overturned. Procedural flaws are far and away the most common reason. So the overturned rate, in capital cases or elsewhere, doesn’t tell us much about the true facts of the matter—-not even as a floor.

Edit: I realized writing this response that I forgot to link my citation 3 in the post you replied to. I also wasn't clear what it was measuring. But to clarify that number is exonerations only, which requires innocence. A legal finding of significant procedural flaws might lead to a reduction to life in prison or a new trial and wouldn't be counted as an exoneration.

Getting a verdict overturned based on procedural issues isn't as easy as popular culture makes out. You have to show both that your rights were violated and that no reasonable jury could have possibly found you guilty if your rights weren't violated. Simply having signed statements from your jurors that they wouldn't have found you guilty if they knew what the prosecutors covered up isn't sufficient, for example.

It depends on the flaw. For example, if an appeals court finds that a search was no good and tosses evidence as the fruit of the poisonous tree that’s almost certainly going to lead to a tossed conviction. But it doesn’t mean factual innocence, on the contrary.

But that wouldn't be an exoneration. The exoneration rate for criminal defendants sentenced to death is around 4%, see my citation 3 in the original post.

(And it wouldn't "almost certainly" lead to a tossed conviction. The defendant would have a chance but not a guarantee at getting a new trial. See the comment you replied to for details)

The study you linked defers to The Death Penalty Information Center’s determination of exoneration.

It’s definition is here: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/criteria-for-inclusion-...

It includes acquittal or dismissal of charges after the original conviction was tossed. But that does not imply actual innocence. For example, if a key piece of evidence is excluded because of an unconstitutional search that could lead to acquittal or dismissal of charges.

I was using Wikipedia and the numbers were slightly different. Maybe they were older.

The innocence thing isn't just death row. There are groups who have helped people who are not on death row, mostly using DNA. The majority of the people they help are not on death row. Sure, it could be higher. The point was that there is already what I would consider to be a high wrongful conviction rate. In my own experience, I think the wrongful conviction rate for non-custody offenses is multiple times higher.

My impression is that it's higher than those numbers too.

What I meant to say is that death penalty eligible defendants get better representation than pretty much everyone else. So their wrongful conviction rate should be lower than average.

How does that apply?

Even if we all agree that minimizing type I errors (false positives) is of paramount importance, the optimal design of the system depends heavily on the true positive rate at the top of the funnel.

But then you need to go a step higher and look at how many crimes have been cleared. Even if we have a high true positive rate at the arrest stage, the system may not be working well if the overall clearance rate is low.

Worked at the public defender's office prior to working as a developer.

Despite the salary schedules being the same (or similar), the State will always have more resources; they have forensic labs, and an army of investigators. The multifaceted mission of a prosecutor's office necessitates the resource disparity.

The Public Defender's priorities are much more focused; (1) provide criminal defense services for those in need, mainly the indigent, (2) influence criminal justice policy through by identifying judiciable appellate matters; and, (3) working with private defense attorneys to challenge prosecutorial policy on a broader level.

With offers from various state attorneys general and public defender offices, I selected the latter for the more focused mission. Yes, resources were scarce, dollars had to be selectively spent on experts to get the most bang for our buck. But you would be surprised at what a feisty PD can do with a handful of retired state police investigators to assist.

> The Public Defender's priorities are much more focused; (1) provide criminal defense services for those in need, mainly the indigent, (2) influence criminal justice policy through by identifying judiciable appellate matters; and, (3) working with private defense attorneys to challenge prosecutorial policy on a broader level.

I would call this broad. How is the prosecutor's mission more multifaceted?

Yup. Anyone charged with a crime would be well advised to do whatever it takes to seek council directly, as in finding a way to pay for it.

Public defenders are doing noble work. They are also denied the resources necessary to perform that work with the same zeal seen in the prosecution side of the justice system.

Not necessarily. A PD might well be much better than an affordable private counsel. It's definitely better to go private if you're rich, it depends on specifics if you aren't.

You know when I faced this I called around and talked to three attorneys. Your comment may be more accurate then I realized at first.

One attorney I talked to was relatively inexpensive but I can tell I had a grudge against the cops and the justice system in general. They were not going to be a good pick

The second attorney I talked to said for $10,000 they can make this all go away. And they wouldn't file a tort. That seems more like a formalized punishment that I choose than justice.

And the last one was 2500 bucks she said I needed a trial told me why and that's the one I picked and it was a good experience overall. We filed the tort I got my money back and it was a couple of years and I came out clean.

So yeah, it does depend on specifics. And you're right to say that people shouldn't rule the public defender out. Good comment.

Maybe. I have not seen that in my experience. But, it is a big nation. Perhaps this varies considerably.

No, we are not. I’ve worked as a defense attorney. It is was terrifying to see how much leeway and how many extra chances were given to violent criminals. The DAs job is impossible.

Maybe you should try being a defendant to actually get a balanced perspective (a good thing to try would be to get yourself arrested for something that you didn't do but is just your word against theirs). For extra experience try doing that whilst being black.

For reference, I have being on the receiving end of an entirely unwarranted accusation for a trivial crime in the UK (which is often held up as being a good example of a fair system). It occupied an unbelievable amount of headspace and was hugely stressful. I'm educated, reasonably well off and white. The system felt very very powerful and unpredictable from my position and I was never even arrested (just accused, which is enough for the police to treat you as a perpetrator). If the prosecution had happened and had gone anywhere (it didn't) and I'd been convicted I would have got a small fine, but I was still far too worried that my innocence was insufficient to protect me. All the way through you're treated as though you are guilty, and the accuser is the "victim". Honestly, the only victim in the whole sorry affair was me.

I can't imagine what it must feel like if you're on the receiving end of an unwarranted accusation for a more serious crime. Especially if everyone thinks you're guilty because your have priors and "look guilty".

With conviction rates being about 75% depending on jurisdiction and grading, I'd say it doesn't seem so impossible.

People who commit violent crimes are almost always a victim of a fucked up system themselves that led them to those actions. Putting them in prison perpetuates and worsens the cycle. It is still less harm on the whole to give them leeway and extra chances.

The solution is fixing the social safety net for the poor and disadvantaged. Not throwing people in prison for trying to survive and making mistakes along the way.

I can only assume that you have very little experience of violent crime. Have you ever been attacked and beaten up by a random stranger? I have and I can hardly think of any of my friends from my progressive, soft-on-violent-crime country who hasn't. Several of them have been stabbed and many hospitalised.

None of the perpetrators were trying to survive or had any other excuses.

Poverty and other social disadvantages might breed crime, but they do not breed violence.

What we should do is stop locking people up for non-violent crimes and free up space for violent offenders.

Frankly they can stay locked up for all I care. They are a tiny enough minority that it wouldn't cost that much. We are causing irreparable damage to non-violent people by locking them up for minor crimes that can be rectified. We are basically feeding them to the real criminals and making them stronger.

I have worked very closely with lots people who are currently incarcerated for violent crimes and while there's definitely shitheads there, there is also a lot of people who made mistakes and didn't have the structure and support in their lives to avoid getting to the place of making that mistake. Most of these people would not have committed violence if they had the proper social structures in place throughout their life - supportive family, friends, mentors, and peers that allow for meaningful personal development and mental tools to deal with life's difficulties in a healthy way. A lot of it wouldn't happen if there wasn't financial constraints that prevented that healthy development. Growing up in survival mode is a traumatic experience that many people never recover from. And many people are driven into a place of desperation and extremes when they lack basics for themselves and their families.

They're all humans. Humans are largely a product of their environment. Sociopaths obviously exist, but most people in prison for violence are not sociopaths.

Good comment!

I am mentoring one who you mean. Left on the streets at 13.

That is the root cause of their trouble.

The baggage is incredibly difficult to get past. A lot of that is systemic.

I agree with this 100%, but the last paragraph is worded poorly, and almost guaranteed to attract debate from both honest and bad-faith dissenters.

Restated:

Throwing people in prison does not fix the problem. We have tried it for a long time at various levels of intensity and it has provably not worked, and no additional level of intensity has improved things. We can't _just keep doing this_ and expect that at some point things will get better.

We need to address the root causes that lead so many people into situations where they find it reasonable or are desperate enough to commit those crimes. That's how you make a dent in this problem, and that's what we should work on transitioning to. Fix the top of the funnel, and you won't have nearly as many concentrated violent problems down at the bottom of it to deal with.

Some percentage of the population is comprised of violent sociopaths. Those people need to be locked up for the safety of the rest of us. People who have committed victimless crimes, like minor drug use, should almost never be incarcerated. People who have defrauded other people in some way, including petty larceny, should be punished by some means other than incarceration.

Pretty much what I'm saying is that jail time should be reserved solely for the violent.

A very, very, very small percentage of the population is "violent sociopaths", though, and optimizing your society for solving that problem incurs huge amounts of waste.

Which isn't to say there should be _no_ answer to that question, but more that the answer to that question shouldn't also be the answer to all the other crime encountered. Not even all the violent crime, which is frequently a product not of the individual, but of the situation that individual is placed in.

Restorative justice, decoupled from moral judgment and lust for revenge, and effective and equitable investment in your entire population? Nah, not retarded enough.

This is a solid comment. People in general often failed to see these matters in an inclusive way.

I agree, and thanks.

That looks a lot like satire but I can’t quite tell.

So, to clarify: if someone is clearly a violent criminal, are you really saying we should feel bad for them and assume they are a victim of “the system”? Do we drop charges? What’s the actionable plan for reducing violent crime?

That approach is obviously equally unproductive.

The approach is to try to reform them. Get them psychiatric help if that's what's needed. Put them in a prison that doesn't just punish them, but also teaches them how to be useful members of society.

On the other end, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Well before that point, make sure everyone has equal opportunities while growing up. Ensure all citizens get taught how to be responsible with money and how to make intelligent life decisions in school. This helps a lot by itself.

Despite the above, some people may still fail, due to bad luck or due to actually not being great students. For these, institute a "poverty floor" below which no one may fall. People who are not desperately poor are less likely to commit crimes.

Of course, yes some people are lazy. That's unfortunate. Lazy people should still get some money, for the simple reason that it's a lot cheaper than dealing with criminals and crime. Obviously we shouldn't give them too much, since then they stay lazy and/or it just drains our coffers dry.

Worse, some people are just plain bad. That's when you put them in prison. But even there you can attempt to reform them. Those who don't reform stay in prison or get rearrested soon enough. Those who do reform can get out and have a second chance.

If you think all the above is hypothetical, it's not. Many western countries apply (at least some subset of) the above policies. This is a of course a very short summary of a very large and nuanced topic.

How about fixing the system.

Why do people have such a tiny, narrow view of life?

What does that mean, specifically? What policy changes need to be enacted to fix the system, and how do we verify they worked?

Expand social safety nets including single payer healthcare and remove laws targeting victimless crimes such as drug possession

The comment anthony responded to specifically referred to violent crimes.

Again, these things exist as part of the same system. If drugs are not illegal then drug business wouldn't be associated with gang violence. That's only one facet. This is why I said what I said about fixing the system

> are you really saying we should feel bad for them and assume they are a victim of “the system”?

Yes, absolutely. 100%. We should feel bad for people who find themselves in circumstances and life experiences that have driven them to violence. We should feel bad for sociopaths who inflict violence because the life and experience of a sociopath is objectively a sad thing. We should feel bad for non-sociopaths who were driven to desperation and extremes due to a lack of healthy coping mechanisms for stress and anger or anything else.

> Do we drop charges? What’s the actionable plan for reducing violent crime?

My comment isn't suggesting that dropping charges is going to fix the problem - it's the opposite. It's that we need a system of accountability that is a net-positive for society. Incarceration as-is in the US worsens the problem severely. It needs reform to be a place of actual rehabilitation and many people who need rehabilitation due to violent offenses absolutely need to be forced into doing so. But it needs to not be at the expense of their families, it needs to not further generational harm, and it needs to not harm the people being incarcerated. Harm for harm is a fucked up concept that doesn't help anyone except shallow people who crave a sense of justice, who are themselves inflicting violence too. People should leave prison in a better position than when they entered (in terms of dealing with their life better and in more healthy ways) and the opposite is happening. We're actively harming peaceful society with prisons today.

I agree with you and Dan commenting in reply.

Well, the Defense attorneys I know differ in their opinion of public defenders.

And defense in general? Necessary, unless we intend on jailing lots of people who do not deserve it.

I also feel we need to break this down too. There is a big difference between felony violent criminals and the average Joe who gets caught up in a resisting or interfering charge.

This you? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016632

Bluntly, I think you're lying.

Then fund public defenders better, this has nothing to do with abolishing bail or releasing people who need to be locked up for a good reason. Free representation may be important for individual justice, but impact on public safety is not huge. Vast majority of those arrested are guilty of something, what some deserve is reduced charges that indicate what they have actually done, not what can be pinned on them without a good lawyer.

It's not zero-sum: the plaintiff and the defense can both do their job.

This is the fundamental misunderstanding of anti-plaintiff reform. Justice isn't served when neither the plaintiff nor defense are doing anything.

> Maybe things are different in Chicago, but I'd want to hear from Defense before just believing a rant from Prosecution.

Given the contents of the rant, especially as it pertains to bail reform, I don’t think it is.

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