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Comment by owenmarshall | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this story could be titled “In Which a Smart Person Overestimates Their Competency With The Legal System”

Always get a lawyer.

It does seem like it would have saved a lot of heartache to have just coughed up the money for an attorney but that in itself is unfair -- it's a significant enough expense and for some is likely to be out of reach altogether.

Yep, it absolutely sucks. And while the average person in this circumstance has some limited recourse, they certainly have no guarantee of being made whole.

But here’s the rub: I’ve seen very intelligent people run up against the legal system before - some civil cases, some criminal. The ones that came out well were the ones that realized their opponent was an uncaring machine designed to grind people into dust in a competition whose rules they found alien. The others thought they didn’t need an attorney, and that their intellect would carry the day.

Totally unfair. Biased against plenty of disadvantaged people, even. Sucks, but them’s the breaks.

Unfair, but the practical solution.

She got everything dropped and her record expunged and didn't pay a dime in lawyers fees... seems like she estimated her competency with the legal system pretty accurately actually.

* EDIT: fixed gender pronouns

> seems like she estimated her competency with the legal system pretty accurately actually.

Or she got lucky?

You know if something in your home catches fire and smoke is billowing out of it is recommended to call the fire brigade and to try to put it out. Yes, sometimes you will get lucky and it will just peter out. And because of that sometimes you will find stories where something caught fire, they did all the wrong things and yet they ended up all okay. Would you conclude from that that they "estimated their firefighting competency accurately"?

she.

= always have $10,000+ liquid on hand in case you need to?

"on hand" being metaphorical here, because if you actually have anywhere near that amount of cash some cop could civil asset forfeiture you.

I said liquid :-). Might be just your credit card limit.

The article gives an estimate closer to $1000, which sounds likely in what sounds like a pretty straightforward case.

That is hindsight bias. How much do you need for the typical defense?

Part of the reason you call a lawyer early is so they can help steer things away from the point where you need a lawyer to mount a criminal defense. Cheaper that way, too.

In the USA. Typically you'd want to put $10,000 aside for a felony defense. $50K upwards is the standard for a decent murder defense.

Plus bail money.

Bail for murder is pretty low, though. Unless the court thinks you're loaded with bling.

This isn't the "typical defense" since there is ample documentation that no crime was committed which all parties acknowledge.

No crime being committed isn't really the standard. "Due process" is the standard. If you go through the process and the judge decides you're guilty, you're guilty. And you're going to do your time. It doesn't matter whether or not you committed the crime, only that you can prove you were not provided "due process."

Innocent people frequently wind up in prison and even after exculpatory evidence is discovered, it takes A LOT of effort to get them released. Because the state argues "they were provided with due process."

Which is still not really like this case. Hence the author ultimately managing to get out of it without the services of an attorney and without any actual trial taking place.

Yes. You're talking about a specific, I'm talking about a general case. We know that this wasn't the case here because the story didn't end with "I was carted away to prison." My comment was in reference to the general case of US jurisprudence the OP discusses when she says "not only is justice blindfolded, but is blind." In the GENERAL case, you can still be convicted even if exculpatory evidence exists. And this is the point I should have emphasized:

Do not assume that the mere existence of exculpatory evidence will allow you to evade successful prosecution.

(But thankfully, it worked fine in this case and works in many other cases.)

The article is 24 years old...

In today's money $1000 in 1999 would be worth about $2000. Which is still considerably closer to $1000 than $10,000. Any other trivial nitpicks you'd like me to address? https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1000&year1=199...

It's very characteristic of HN to suggest that paying $1000/hr well in advance of the court date is better than spending time calling people.

> $1000/hr

Oh, give over. It's a basic fraud case, you're not hiring a white-shoe firm to represent you.

A few hundred bucks gets a lawyer to look at the case and make the phone calls - or send a letter or two - on your behalf. And the bonus is that they actually know what to say, as opposed to whatever you frenetically google, and know who to say it to, as opposed to whoever you happen to find in the phone book. Just having a lawyer signals to your counterparty that you are not winging it; that combined with an incredibly weak (at best) case & a complainant who has backed away can lead to your case being dismissed with less investment in time & worry than if you did it yourself.

I read the link

What are you talking about? Everything turned out pretty much exactly as it should, albeit with a silly amount of beaurocratic overhead (as should be expected for the legal system).

Not saying you shouldn’t get a lawyer, but I don’t see how you can claim she “overestimated her competency”

But ... he didn't need a lawyer. He needed to threaten litigation but you don't need an attorney to do that for you.

This was related to a criminal case. Threatening any kind of litigation or trying to defend yourself without an attorney puts you in the category of pro se litigant, the territory of jailhouse appellants and sovereign citizens. Even if you are smart and right, the system has already decided you are crazy, stupid, or both. You’re screwed from the get go.

Except it literally worked in this case.

in my experience, pro se works more often than owenmarshall implies, but probably less often than it should.

> in my experience

Could you tell us more about the source of your experience please?

> pro se works more often than owenmarshall implies,

And there are very well documented cases where a pro se defendant gets themselves into bigger trouble.

Certainly not criminal, but I was on a county commission which put me in the position to watch people litigate pro se regarding land use suits in California. And I would occasionally be in court waiting for a final declaration (that for some reason had to be in the courtroom.) There were plenty of people who successfully defended themselves pro se, but I don't think I ever saw anything more exciting than someone bringing in documentation clarifying they weren't the owners of a property on which some crime occurred (apparently the county's GIS system is not the local sheriff / prosecutor's strong point.)

I'm not trying to imply you should represent yourself on a felony case, but at least in California in the past, people have successfully had cases dismissed when they appeared in court, representing themselves with documentation the prosecutor should have looked at before filing the case.

(she)

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