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Comment by giraffe_lady | Hacker News Reader

An emergency protective order is usually given with no verification because it's much better to give one out incorrectly then to fail to give when you you should have.

But those are only pending a court date, a few weeks at most. A "real" one is issued by a judge after interviewing both parties (or by default if one doesn't show up) and those are very reliably real. I don't know anything about the letterman thing. If it was an emergency one yeah you don't want to read too much into it. The real ones though are very reliable indicators that something fucked up went down.

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> A "real" one is issued by a judge after interviewing both parties

A judge who doesn't want something bad to happen, under any circumstances. Therefore, they are extremely likely just to issue a PPO "just because."

> The real ones though are very reliable indicators that something fucked up went down.

TPOs/PPOs are absolutely not reliable: In most states, they are civil and issued subject to a preponderance of the evidence and not beyond a reasonable doubt. Evidence is not subject to any verification or real evidentiary standards: you could fake text message screenshots all day long and net a PPO before you ever had an issue with perjury.

FWIW: someone with ill/violent intent couldn't care less about a random status violation that would pale in comparative severity to whatever other crime they wanted to commit.

> FWIW: someone with ill/violent intent couldn't care less about a random status violation that would pale in comparative severity to whatever other crime they wanted to commit.

Violence in general and domestic violence especially are not always premeditated. What starts as an attempt by the abuser to hash things out can devolve into violence. A protective order can stop abusers from making the attempt in the first place, and when there is an attempt they can help the victim get more immediate help from law enforcement.

And of course nothing calms an abuser down like being set loose without a proper conviction, now with the ire of being dispossessed perhaps rightly of children and home.

Convict and jail them, with the full rights and penalties that go with that. Not this halfass paper shield against an otherwise free person.

> And of course nothing calms an abuser down like being set loose without a proper conviction, now with the ire of being dispossessed perhaps rightly of children and home.

Absolutely, some murders do seem to be triggered by protection orders. Presumably those cases would also occur when they are charged with a crime with cooperation from the victim. Are we going to instead consider pretrial detention for all cases of accused DV? And wouldn't that have all of the same issues with a lower standard of evidence but infringe even more on their rights?

Edit: I should clarify, when charges are filed we should consider pretrial detention. Unfortunately there are tons of reasons why DV victims often end up not wanting to press charges, or when someone is charged, not wanting to cooperate with prosecutors. Creating a situation where their only avenue for safety is pressing charges and cooperating with authorities creates its own set of issues and I feel they still deserve some level of safety even if they don't cooperate with criminal charges.

About everywhere I've lived police will absolutely arrest and book upon probable cause of criminal DV and they're often required to by law or policy. Yes we should absolutely consider pretrial detention. In my state refer to ARS 13-3883 and note it pertains to criminal justice instead of civil, which are significantly different with different standards than an ex parte civil order.

If someone is an abuser by all means take advantage of criminal justice system .

Note: not legal advice

> Are we going to consider pretrial detention for all cases of accused DV? And wouldn't that have all of the same issues with a lower standard of evidence but infringe even more on their rights?

I think we should.

The reason permanent orders are handed out like candy is because the judge wants to err on the side of caution. It's the same reason cops are more willing to use force when they have a taser than when they have a gun - there's no consequences for doing so.

Make there be real consequences for wrongly issuing a protection order, and you'll have fewer wrongly issued protection orders.

Is this opinion, professional expertise?

Why not just address the point? Its a casual opinion informed by basic research on domestic violence. I didn't feel like I needed a citation for "sometimes violence is impulsive" but here we are I guess.

Comparison of impulsive and premeditated perpetrators of intimate partner violence: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19039796/

Premeditated versus "passionate": patterns of homicide related to intimate partner violence: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30100045/

This is absolutely correct; not sure why you are being downvoted. TPOs are often issued without the targeted party being contacted or having a chance to defend themselves. PPOs tried in family court do not have a “reasonable doubt” requirement; they are regularly granted without substantive evidence or signs of physical abuse. No judge wants to read about somebody being killed after they denied the PO.

> not sure why you are being downvoted.

A quick graph analysis of the upvoters/downvoters on each comment and then clustering those across historical posts would probably elucidate this reason.

> No judge wants to read about somebody being killed after they denied the PO.

A judge or magistrate suffers no penalty for issuing a PPO but can suffer great ridicule when this exact situation happens: how is it not obvious that this would perversely inflate the numbers?

> A "real" one is issued by a judge after interviewing both parties (or by default if one doesn't show up) and those are very reliably real.

Why? Based on one party being able to tell a more convincing story than another?

Based on whatever fake text message screenshots, sob story, crying children, paid witnesses can convince the judge that some potential threat exists beyond a preponderance of the evidence.

> Based on whatever fake text message screenshots, sob story, crying children, paid witnesses

You don't need any of that. Allegations are enough.

Yes. Assuming you're willing to purjure yourself, this is basically the full time job of a family court judge and they're much more practiced at figuring it out than a normal person would be.

You'd be hard pressed to find a person with less confidence in our "justice" system than I have. And as I mentioned in another comment, I have, unlike almost everyone else here, actually been on the receiving end of a misuse of this system. I still find it overall pretty reliable and the best mechanism we currently have for reducing intimate partner violence, one of the most common ways for women to be murdered.

It's civil court: can you please give me some Lexis cites on any case you are aware of for someone being prosecuted for perjury incident to evidence forged in a PPO hearing?

I've witnessed 100+ of these hearings: they are a disgrace to our justice system. Evidentiary standards are a joke, and thankfully, get absolutely smoked upon appeal 9/10 times - instant suppression.

It's wonderful that they may have helped you at one point.

You keep citing this "intimate spousal murder" schtick with zero non-anecdotal citations (try proving a negative.) Can we please see some formal, peer-reviewed evidence to suggest that someone willing to commit murder is going to be deterred by a DUI-equivalent?

> It's wonderful that they may have helped you at one point.

That's not what they said, you're misreading.

> Can we please see some formal, peer-reviewed evidence to suggest that someone willing to commit murder is going to be deterred by a DUI-equivalent?

I did a very quick search using neutral terms for studies on this. Here are the first three I found.

> PO victims had police incident rates that were more than double the matched group prior to the PO, but dropped to the level of the matched group during and after the order. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4151113/

> Results showed significant reductions in threats of assault, physical assault, stalking, and worksite harassment over time among all women, regardless of receipt or nonreceipt of a protection order. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448307/

> Permanent, but not temporary, protection orders are associated with a significant decrease in risk of police-reported violence against women by their male intimate partners. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/195163

That last one had a pretty good study size - 2691 women.

I don't think it's incredible that a protective order could stop an expanding pattern of abuse and violence before it becomes severe enough for a murder to occur. You say "someone willing to commit murder", and it's probably true that if the culprit is already very willing or actively intending to commit a murder, a protective order is useless. Abusers cannot be placed into permanent "murderous" and "non-murderous" groups, though.

> an you please give me some Lexis cites on any case

Why are you holding other people to higher standards than yourself, when making equal if not stronger claims?

https://jaapl.org/content/38/3/376 . I also note that in your comments on this article you have asked people multiple times for sources, but don't provide anything other than your own anecdotal experience as contrary evidence.

> Can we please see some formal, peer-reviewed evidence to suggest that someone willing to commit murder is going to be deterred by a DUI-equivalent?

Others have talked about how abusers don't always intend to commit murder, but there's also something to say about enforce-ability. Suppose someone yells and screams at you and threatens to hurt you. You call the police. Unless you've got injuries or recordings, what are the police going to do? Without hard evidence it's just a he said/she said and is unlikely to even end up with charges. Even if you have recordings, unless it's a specific threat that isn't a crime. But you then go to a court for a TPO. This person shows up again, screaming and yelling and threatening you. You call the police and they show up. Now all you have to do it point to the person standing in your front yard, and point to the TPO, and that's the case.

> this is basically the full time job of a family court judge

> You'd be hard pressed to find a person with less confidence in our "justice" system than I have.

I was "mandated" into "optional" pretrial mediation by a District Court when my stepdaughter was in a car accident.

The mediator, who said she was a Family Court judge when introducing herself, among several other problematic things, attempted to write a mediation agreement where -I- was purportedly binding not just myself but my insurance carrier to several things, with language like "FireBeyond agrees that Insurer or himself will pay X by date Y. He agrees that he and insurer will be in default if they do not", etc. And when I stated that I had no authority to agree on behalf my insurance carrier to binding agreements, she was frustrated and exasperated that I was correcting her/objecting to her language.

I've also lived in a place where it was settled Family Court precedent that men could be (and were often found to be) liable for child support for children that were not theirs, in marriage or out, by virtue of the fact that they were in a relationship with the mother at the time of birth and beyond (regardless of awareness of progeny).

Please do not mistake this for a lack of sympathy for what I see as unacceptable levels of intimate partner violence and our poor handling of it, because as a paramedic who sees far more of it than I should, I am not. It is difficult at times to find a nuance with which to criticize the family court without coming across MRA/incel/redpilly.

I'm sure they're trying to do a good job but it's concerning that only the false negatives are visible, what's the false positive rate?

> The real ones though are very reliable indicators that something fucked up went down.

Any numbers on how much more reliable they are after the initial order kicks you out of the spousal home and asks you to get a lawyer while navigating being homeless and losing access to assets in your house and any evidence inside? It's hard to believe the short hearing a couple weeks later with pretty low standard of evidence with you now at a severe disadvantage is that much more accurate.

Are you speaking from personal experience? Because I've lived through exactly that, and I still understand protective orders as one of the most effective ways to prevent intimate partner murders.

Why would someone who intends to commit murder care about a misdemeanor status offense?

Because these crimes are often not preplanned and come out of bad situations that start comparatively cool, and then escalate out of control.

By preventing the situation prior to the escalation, the more serious events don’t happen as often.

> I still understand protective orders as one of the most effective ways to prevent intimate partner murders

I don't see how that makes them a reliable indicator that something went down. That could be true even if 99% of restraining orders were against innocent people.

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