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Comment by Andrew_Quentin | Hacker News Reader

That may be so, but it is difficult to suggest that the legal system is corrupt in the west.

The worst part about the article is the fact that there is no fair trial in Russia.

Imagine a fictitious world where everything is corrupt, but the legal system. It isn't a perfect place to live, but, you know that at the very least your freedom is protected, your contract if breached is remunerated etc.

Imagine a fictitious world where everything is not corrupt, but the legal system is. In such place, one has no freedom, for out of spite perhaps, out of jealousy, out of greed, someone could simply send you to prison.

7 acquittals in 1000 cases, and even then 5 overturned, so practically only 2 people being acquitted in 1000 cases is a practical tyrannical state.

In the west, at least, the legal system protects against corruption by itself not being corrupt. If such bastion of freedom fails, then the land is no longer free.

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>That may be so, but it is difficult to suggest that the legal system is corrupt in the west.

Is it? I think it's hard to argue that it ISN'T. How else can you justify poor people getting 20+ year sentences for relatively minor crimes, while white collar criminals can steal MILLIONS, and get a slap on the wrist? When's the last time you saw a major celebrity or pro athlete actually A: Get convicted for something, and B: Serve real time?

Why should a celebrity get convicted of something unless they have committed a crime?

I think America may be a bit of an exception actually since you guys elect your judges. That sounds ridiculous to me. It is like electing your doctor or your engineers. Some things simply are best left to technocrats.

That said, in the UK at least, you have the choice of five appeals before a final, conclusive say is given in your case.

Take for example Assange, the Wikileaks founder. It is difficult to find a more political example. He went up to the highest court. That final hearing was held in public, as all hearings are, it was televised, again as all hearings are, you can read the judicial decision, as with all judicial decision. No one was corrupted. You can't corrupt them, because there is complete transparency.

Now take the hacking scandal. At least 10 people have been imprisoned and are awaiting trial I think. Maddof is another example. We will see what comes out of Libor, etc. We don't live in a perfect world, but we are the closest to it I think.

In regards to your point about 20+ year sentence for a relatively minor crime, I think you will find that the media often sensationalises things to get attention. If you delve into these cases, by for example, reading the judicial decision which are available to everyone, you will most probably find that the decision if not to your agreement, is reasonable and justified.

To conclude with clearly showing that there is no comparison between America or the West and Russia, if you look at 1,000 cases, you are very likely to find way more non guilty verdicts than in 2 cases.

Nope, not at all. Non-violent drug offenders can and do get 20+ year sentences in the US. Especially heroin and crack cocaine. There are some insane mandatory minimum sentences here.

How exactly mandatory minimum sentences prove that legal system is corrupt?

Gross inconsistencies.

Have a little crack on you? 5+ year minimum, quite possibly more, especially if it isn't your first time.

Whereas the rich will pay some high-priced lawyer with connections, and get a plea deal, probably for probation, for just about anything short of murder.

I think at best your argument proves that there is a problem with legislation. I.e. with the laws that treat white collar criminals not as hard as crack users.

I don't know about unknown rich with connections. But a lot of celebrities got pretty harsh treatment. Michael Vick served more time than his co-defendants.

That proves the system is broken (and it is, the whole War on Drugs is America's worst mistake since Prohibition) but not that it is corrupt. To prove corruption, you need to prove that the outcome depends on something else than the (admittedly broken) law. Pointing out that the law gives unjustifiably harsh sentences does not advance this argument.

Sentencing is a result of the legislative branch and not the judiciary. These sentences are often mandated by law. Judges have no legal leeway to reduce them. I believe the argument is whether the trial system is fair, and not the unfortunate reality that we elect morons because they are "tough on crime."

> I think America may be a bit of an exception actually since you guys elect your judges. That sounds ridiculous to me. It is like electing your doctor or your engineers. Some things simply are best left to technocrats.

Except for federal courts. All federal court judges are appointed by the president for life after confirmation from the senate. Only state courts have an election process, in some cases.

> That final hearing was held in public, as all hearings are, it was televised, again as all hearings are, you can read the judicial decision, as with all judicial decision. No one was corrupted. You can't corrupt them, because there is complete transparency.

Not all court hearings are televised, as you stated. The court hearing for repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was not televised. Most federal trials aren't televised.

Also, just because you can read the judicial decision, doesn't mean that it wasn't a result of corruption during the trial. And once you get the decision, its not like you can fix it if something wasn't right in the decision. Complete transparency would only occur if all court cases were televised and unedited, giving the people access to all evidence.

All court cases are held in public, so if you are interested in the full evidence, etc, you can attend the hearing in person. Moreover, all cases are recorded, so you can request a transcript of the whole process. Most judicial decisions however begin by a summary of the facts and the laws that were in question.

Once you get a decision, you can fix it. You appeal it. If the court was wrong, then the higher court is likely to overturn it.

The point about being able to read the judicial decision is that if the judge applied the law incorrectly, whether because he was corrupted, because he did not like the defendant or anything, if you are a trained lawyer, you can see that the law was applied incorrectly, so you appeal it. If that appeal is successful, the judge below would loose a huge amount of reputation, especially if it was blatantly obvious that he applied the law incorrectly. So no judge would do it. They are paid very handsomely. They probably practised as lawyers before becoming a judge so made quite a bit and therefore they have nothing to gain and everything to loose if they accept being corrupted.

> All court cases are held in public, so if you are interested in the full evidence, etc, you can attend the hearing in person.

Most, but not all. The judge can hold a private session if he chooses.

> All court cases are held in public, so if you are interested in the full evidence, etc, you can attend the hearing in person.

Space is limited in a court room. That's why I was talking more about televised sessions.

> Once you get a decision, you can fix it. You appeal it.

Good luck with that. That's all I can say.

> They probably practised as lawyers before becoming a judge so made quite a bit and therefore they have nothing to gain and everything to loose if they accept being corrupted.

That's the problem. Lawyers aren't very good and the laws aren't very clear in a majority of the cases. I have yet to see a judge lose their reputation from having one of their cases appealed. Also, private deals are made with lawyers all the time that are protected by client confidentiality. Do you honestly believe that they would have nothing to gain by exploiting such deals?

Inequalities in sentencing are one matter. It is another thing entirely if trials are not fair. I think for the most part, western nations provide fair trials.

Furthermore, corruption - at least in the US - is taken pretty seriously. Where as a matter of course one might offer a bribe to a policeman in certain countries, it's actually pretty rare here. And in the cases corruption does come to light, it almost always ends public service careers, even (especially?) for high ranking officials.

I'd say they're fair if you can afford a good lawyer. If you can't, and have to take a public defender, you are, in most cases, screwed.

Whether the system is fair or not is orthogonal to the skill of the participants.

I think you're completely missing the point.

This is the system, and it isn't fair.

The outcome of a criminal trial being strongly correlated with your bank balance is pretty much the definition of an unfair legal system.

Is it correlated? At the end of the day 12 randomly selected people from the population decide whether the person is guilty or not guilty.

How that system can be corrupted, even by the skills of persuasion, is beyond me. Some facts are simply facts and no gift of communication can change that.

Lawyers are not magicians. Lawyers can't by simple force of intellect persuade the jury to acquit someone when the fact clearly show to any impartial reasonable observer, as normally is the case with a jury of 12 people, that the person has committed the crime.

You might have a stronger argument in regards to how decisions are made as to which case is prosecuted, how much resources are allocated to gathering the facts to prosecute a case related to drugs as compared to a case related to financial fraud, but in my opinion, once the person charged is in court, I think there is no corruption at all.

The a large percentage, perhaps even a majority, of trials end in the striking of some sort of deal before the case ever goes in front of a jury. You'd better believe that the successful local lawyer who's the DA's golfing buddy gets better deals than some zit-faced public defender who just passed the bar exam. I know that sounds quaint, but it happens all the time in America, especially in small towns where the good ole boys club is still very much a going concern.

The deals are predetermined by law.

In the UK you get 33% off the sentence if you plead guilty at the first opportunity, i.e. at the police station or the first time you appear in court, 20% at the second opportunity, etc.

The UK maybe, not so in the US.

Public defenders usually produce better outcomes than private lawyers, the exception being private lawyers who were once district attorneys or public defenders.

Public defenders get a bad rap because most of their clients are--get this--actually guilty of the crimes they are charged with. The vast majority of defendants accept their guilt and are unwilling to pay thousands for a private lawyer who will not produce a better outcome. For these defendants, the public defenders are merely there to make sure that their rights are protected (at this point, usually procedural rights, i.e., due process).

A lot of the remaining clients go to trial simply because they can without having to pay for it (i.e., go down fighting). These clients have no chance of winning (multiple eyewitnesses, caught on video, caught with the goods/drugs/weapons, DNA/fingerprints, unsolicited confessions, etc.), but the public defender goes to trial anyway because that is what the client has demanded. (Private attorneys would simply inform them that their rates for trial are usually double their standard rates; at this point most clients either switch to public defenders or plead out.)

>Public defenders usually produce better outcomes than private lawyers, the exception being private lawyers who were once district attorneys or public defenders.

Interesting! Do you have a source?

Working for the public defender in California and volunteering with prosecutor's office elsewhere.

Blue states have high-quality public defenders because they receive adequate support from the state. Certain Southern states also have high-quality public defenders, as a result of the civil rights movement (for example, Atlanta, Georgia).

In a lot of smaller counties (including in California), public defenders are private lawyers operating under contract (because there is not sufficient need for a full-time public defender). They're usually selected because they are extremely competent and/or have cozy ties to the D.A., but either way, they also produce good results.

Not all public defenders are good. In some states (specifically Ohio and most Southern states), public defenders are employees of the "county" but are paid minimum wage base salaries and receive the bulk of the compensation as commissions per-case (regardless of outcome). In those states, public defenders generally have little to no budget to hire experts or investigators, but face off against prosecutors who have essentially unlimited resources (and market-rate salaries with pensions). As a result, these public defenders are overworked and simply do not have the time or resources to do a good job on any of their cases.

If you're looking for the actual numbers, I don't know of a freely available source. There are usually a few law journals that publish these stats every year or two, but my current legal database subscription does not include access to these journals.

> How else can you justify poor people getting 20+ year sentences for relatively minor crimes, ...

Those laws are effectively a eugenics program to weed out low IQ and impulsivity. If you cannot figure out how to beat a cocaine rap or not knock over a gas station, boom, your peak reproductive years get spent in a single sex environment.

Actually research shows that these people that spend years in jail have more children on average than people without criminal record. In addition the more years you spend in jail, the more reproductive you are. So the "eugenics program" will never work because the human evolution doesn't care about low IQ and impulsiveness .

Interesting. Do you have sources for that research?

Sorry, can't find it now. It's somewhat related to papers about "Dark Triad" traits.

Right. I did not say it was enough, just that the goal certainly appears to be eugenic.

There's a huge, huge difference between:

a) a system in which paying a third party to spend their life understanding that system aids in better navigation of that system

versus

b) a system in which you must pay representatives of the system in order to engage with the system.

Yes, in both situations, more resources will get you better results, but process matters. System A is a whole lot closer to redemption than System B.

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