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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

WTF. Ten years locked up without trial, isn't that unconstitutional?

I really don't want to start a flamewar, but as a central european, this sounds crazy ! What is the reason for that ? I'd expect you to be released (well, maybe not for murders and such), and called for the trial when the time comes ?

I was in a EU prison. I have seen 5 years pretrial detentions with one guy. There is no rule of law.

Me, they put for a month into solitary confinement under 24/7 video surveillance when I demanded to speak to the US embassy, since they did not believe me that I am a US citizen.

No, there were 92 people on bail for murder in my county at the same time I was locked up. They just had the $50K, $100K, $200K .. whatever the judge asked for to secure their release.

There were people I was with doing months in jail because they couldn't come up with $50. I had a homeless cellmate with a $200 bond. I told him I'd get my wife to pay the damned thing, but in the end he managed to get all his homeless buddies to come down to the jail and give $10 or $20 each over three days until he had enough to get out. I won that case for him, he was only jailed because the local police chief was a piece of shit and put a false warrant out for him even though he had committed no crime.

It's not as rare as we would wish unfortunately[1]. Though years is extreme.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/presumed-innocent-but-detained-for-mon...

That's a good article, thank you.

Sadly nothing in the constitution limits the length of pretrial incarceration. I don't understand the full constitutional implications of the those in Guantanamo, but that issue probably had something to do with why their detention was allowed to continue for so long.

I've known several people who managed over 11 years in the Cook County Jail.

I did 8 years and 1 month in jail, then 11 months on house arrest, then another 5 months in jail for Tweeting about police misconduct. Then another 4 months in prison because they didn't want to phone my release site.

So I guess the right to a speedy trial only violated if the prosecution delay the trial for no good reason, but if the whole system is under resourced it doesn’t count?

This. Illinois has a 120 day speedy trial statute (and the constitution has a vaguer requirement), but as you say it is only really violated by the prosecution. If your attorney agrees to any delays the speedy trial clock does not tick.

Yeah, if you waive the time, it's called a waiver of speedy trial. Or just a waiver of time, then it can be delayed, but I don't think I've ever seen indefinitely. You should see if you can get your trial televised for that lol.

Yeah that can happen as well. If the state isn't prepared, it will just be delayed indefinitely. Although I have seen cases where that has happened, and the judge will eventually step in and set a trial date, usually 6 or 8 months from then. I don't think I've ever seen 10 years, that's something ridiculous!!

That's true, but usually if it starts adding up, and not progressing fast enough, you'll start hearing the judge say hey, let's get on with all of this. That is of course unless we're having problems with not having an attorney etc. Although there are cases where that doesn't happen definitely. Or one side chooses to waive way, way too much time, for some ridiculous reason.

It generally would be considered unconstitutional, yes. When immigration status is thrown into the mix though, you never really know what can happen unfortunately. 10 years without trial is in fact a whole lot too long though!!

Kevin Mitnik was famously held for 4 and a half years before his trial. That's where I learned about this shitty practice.

Anyone else rocking the "Free Kevin" bumper sticker back in the day?

This and civil forfeiture stuff always has pissed me off immensely.

I'm not a fan of civil asset forfeiture!! That's only a fraction of what makes me registered libertarian though hah.

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