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We are happy to have him with us.
I knew the person, and whatever was done in the past. Is the past. He's done his time. It is not mine to add penalties over what the state imposed.
Thank you for making society a better place.
It's obvious from the comments in the thread that the internet hate mob still wants its pound of flesh and for Preston to be judged for life regardless of current circumstances.
They don't realize how damaging their posts are to people who have done wrong in the past and want to change their lives. Once again I am ashamed to be part of the Hacker News community, but thank you for your fairness and goodheartedness.
He has had more than enough time to pay for all of it, and he clearly has a transformed heart.
The biggest issue is that once the perpetrator is removed and/or charged the victim often petitions the prosecutor and police to drop the charges. The prosecutors I know will generally not do this and will push for a guilty plea or trial. It's hard for the prosecutor to know whether the victim is being manipulated into asking for the charges to be dropped, and regardless, a crime has probably been committed, and in the justice system the plaintiff is the state, not the person who was battered. This can lead to a stand-off where the victim refuses to come to trial to testify, and where the prosecutor has a Hobson's Choice of whether to arrest the victim and jail them until trial to get them on the stand or let the case drop.
DV cases are hard.
DV applications: ~8800
DV ex parte granted (no chance for defendant to defend him(her)self): ~5100
DV final order granted after defendant able to defend him(her)self): ~3200
So for example in CT on just a civil standard, only 2/3 of the accusers were able to get even a temporary order when the defendant had zero chance to tell their side of the story. Once the defendant was able to come to court and defend themselves, only about 1/3 of them made it to a final order. And that was by the much weaker civil rather than criminal standard.
[] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tYBTsF7-px-3lCnBFOol...
Some notes: in Connecticut, restraining orders can be granted for a variety of reasons, not restricted to domestic violence alone. Fairly close correlation but it does include, for example, stalking.
It seems unwise to assume that restraining orders alone represent the entire count of domestic violence complaints that reach the legal system. For example, surely domestic violence arrests should be counted? Which seem to be a much higher count than restraining order applications -- 24,850 DV arrests in 2011 vs. 9033 DV applications. I'm not sure how to count the 32,111 "Family Violence Protective Orders" in 2011; are they the result of arrests? Are they yet another possible outcome of law enforcement involvement, separate from either a requested restraining order or an arrest?
There are way more reasons a restraining order might not make it to a final order besides "the requestor was proven wrong." I'd want more detailed data here before reaching a conclusion. Otherwise, this assumes that failure to grant a restraining order proves lack of DV. I am not sure that it would change the percentages you've shown significantly -- we're all aware of cases where restraining orders weren't granted with very bad results, but there's always a tendency to report on the most clickbaity outcomes. Still, worth digging into that one a bit more.
Again, appreciate the cite.
This is the key of this two-pronged approach, one commenter can bury the data driven comment in source rejection (without being beheld to prove a counter point, since the asserter has the burden of proof) while the sister comment can drive the more approved comment unchallenged. Of course we really know, in many cases, the two separate commenters are advancing the same line of opinion, but using this split strategy both are compartmentalized in their burdens.
Although, the truth is, the scrutinizer is rarely offering counter sources of their own, which they of course are under no obligation to provide. But barring that, we're left at worst with "I don't know" which is a terrible standard under which to assume the word of the wife is predictive of guilt, thus even if all the sources are rejected you leave from a practical perspective no off no better than you started in predictive guilt.
I also, for what it's worth, think that "did you talk to the wife" is too high a standard in this case. For one thing, the wife didn't bring a complaint, as I understand it.
The divorce industry and divorce lawyers request these orders like candy, as leverage for proceedings and to take away custody briefly during the temporary order while the custody hearing is going on so that during custody hearings it can be argued the child already is only with the mom or dad and they should get full custody. It also lets you eject the partner from the home without a legal eviction process, so they are at their weakest and homeless when fighting in court. They produce a massive number of weak DV claims, the point was never to take them final but to provide enough of a discontinuity in their life to crush them.
I understand that you're simply using this as a proxy for the actual unknowable data, but I think it's worth pointing out that the map is not the territory.
The final order is more difficult, but quite often (i.e. in divorce / custody court) the only goal was to evict them from the home and disrupt custody to get the upper hand in hearings, so temporary is all that's needed to do the job and then no need to actually defend the claim made 14+ days later when they're already homeless and with the baseline of out of the kid's life.
"I am the one who hired Preston. Whatever he has done in the past, I have all the evidence in the world in front of me to assure me that he has a transformed heart."
Instead, you had to drag down others, the people who you haven't blessed with your benevolence.
"It is not a common thing to see."
You are being praised for showing kindness to one of us (a nerd, a programmer) while disparaging the others. You can show kindness to Preston without condemning the others. Ask ChatGPT to explain exceptionalism to you if you still do not understand. Every person in prison is a person who can change given the opportunity.
Preston isn't uncommon, Preston isn't rare or exceptional, Preston is the average prisoner: someone who, when given an opportunity, has been able to reform. You can celebrate Preston without disparaging his less fortunate cellmates.
The only rare thing here is that he was given an opportunity (and for that you should be praised).
> The defendant, Preston Thorpe, appeals his conviction for possession of a controlled drug with intent to sell
He may have done other things, but his conviction was for possession with intent, and that seems to be why he's locked up. It doesn't make anything else he's done acceptable, but in America he's innocent until proven guilty, and it doesn't seem he was found guilty of assault.
The original link does not say that the girlfriend reported the broken arm to the police. The police were called by her mother, who made the allegation against Thorpe. The article above says:
> According to [Thorpe's lawyer]’s appeal, Abogast told police she had fallen three days before Thorpe’s arrest and doctors at Elliot Hospital said her arm was broken in three places.
The original link says that she had scars and scabbing on her face, but this link says that Thorpe also had scars and scabbing, which the police noted in their report as consistent with drug abuse.
I'm not one to disbelieve women when they report abuse. In this case, the alleged victim didn't report any abuse, a third party who was not witness to any alleged crimes did. It's also very unusual to have your arm broken in three places, call your mom to say what happened, and then not seek any kind of treatment. I feel sad for everyone involved, because it's clear to me at least that the drug issues were the crux of the matter (which is corroborated by the actions and findings of the state). Without a statement from the girlfriend or a finding by the state, any suggestion of domestic abuse is unwarranted speculation.
Just because someone is guilty or not doesn't separate other facts of the case.
In an extreme example: I'm ok with the court letting someone off who murdered someone, because the police didn't follow proper procedure wrt evidence/confessions/witness testimony. Our legal system should be held to the highest standard when convicting someone of a crime. That doesn't stop me from believing that the defendant actually did the crime or not.
Everyone is of course free to make up their own mind, but when making public accusations I would at least expect an honest effort to keep those accusations factually correct.
https://www.wmur.com/article/man-facing-carfentanil-charge-r...
In any case, HN is very selective about this high evidential standard. People will make a lot of effort to give probable domestic abusers the benefit of the doubt, but pick one of HN's official enemies and suddenly any little scrap of evidence is considered quite sufficient!
That being said I wouldn't have much patience for a "merely" accused murderer or child predator in my personal life, just as I also don't have much patience for a doctor who refuses to prescribe me antibiotics because the chance they could help me is "only" 1%. I don't really care that it's socially irresponsible when it comes to my personal assessment of risk.
Civil cases are probably the best (counter) example to bring up, because they also involve a judge and lawyers etc.
However, on any individual case the same is not true, because that moves from talking about averages and general cases into specifics, and the burden of proof changes significantly. While there is a connection on average, that isn't enough to say any specific drug abuser commits domestic abuse. For that, ideally, you need criminal charges proven in court. That's missing here.
...in a court of law. Innocent until proven guilty doesn't extend to internet comments.
That's not a good thing.
Edit: I cannot really believe that this, of all comments, is controversial. Living life treating everyone as guilty until they prove themselves innocent is... just shitty, let alone exhausting. Do people forget about how many times reddit and other ruined innocent people's lives?
Sometimes HN amazes me with new technology, interesting conversations, etc. Sometimes it amazes me when people are arguing that we should go through life treating people as guilty first, until they are proven innocent. I think I'll go back to not participating for awhile.
There's no scenario here where this guy is innocent. The distinction here is whether he's a wife-beating drug dealer or just a drug dealer. There's some evidence to suggest the former but not really enough that you can definitely state it.
Personally, I'd give a convicted drug dealer less benefit of the doubt than the average person.
The conservation expanded past this specific case when we started talking generally about internet comments.
On the other hand, GP is objectively right ("innocent until proven guilty doesn't extend to internet comments"). I also think that it’s better for random people to be able to post their terrible judgements than any feasible alternative, because such an alternative probably leads to good judgements also censored. We can mitigate (not eliminate) bad judgements, e.g. by educating people better and shaming those who shame others more; and we can minimize mob justice’s effect on critical government functions like welfare and prison sentencing, e.g. by running them on mostly objective procedures and with staff who aren’t influenced by mob opinion.
Targeted harassment and doxxing (and swatting, getting people fired/divorced/ruined when they don’t deserve to be, etc.) is different (and to be clear, IMO very bad). People posting opinions in a way that the target can block (which they can usually do with blocklists and word filters) is fine. The main point I’m trying to make is: if opinions in random internet comments lead to targeted harassment and real-world consequences even when the opinions are “bad” (e.g. bigoted, hypocritical), it's less effective to try and prevent the internet comments' existence, than to reduce the factors causing them to influence the real world and create factors preventing influence.
There's a difference between "we want to lock this person up and take away their liberty, so we should be basically certain" versus "look man he's been done for drugs and she ended up with a broken arm, I don't trust this person".
That's not close to what I was saying, and I don't know how people are interpreting it this way.
Why should internet comments follow criminal law, and not eg civil law, or some other standard?
Going through life treating everyone as guilty until proven innocent sounds like an exhausting and negative way to treat everyone, and harms more people overall.
So... base assumption is innocent.
That's all I was saying.
Just get some background rates, and assume that people are guilty with eg 0.1% probability. (Just a made a up number. Real priors should depend on a lot more context.)
There's no actual confirmation in that report that her arm was actually broken or that she was actually beaten. There's no medical examination that happened here that is cited.
That would still be required in a civil trial with preponderance of evidence. What if she was on drugs and did it to herself? (Not saying that's what happened). We don't know what happened from this document and that has nothing to do with this charge or his appeal.
People proven guilty are not necessarily guilty. People proven not guilty are not necessarily innocent. The legal standard exists because a system needs standards.
Is your assertion that random internet commenters get it right more than the courts...?
>"innocent until proven guilty" should apply outside of the legal system is lazy
How is guilty until proven innocent less "lazy"?
The person you love comes to you and tells you that they've been attacked by your shady friend. Do you defend your friend from the accusation because "they're innocent until proven guilty" or do you use your judgement and decide that the person you love is telling the truth because you have a lifetime of trust in them?
Then how do you explain laws against slander and libel?
You can't label someone guilty of a crime just because you feel it to be true.
so you saying that court is useless because its not perfet???? its easy to complaint about something but give NOTHING to improve it
You would not do better than people in charge because EASY to say something is wrong but you dont have ANSWER that improve this current standards
There's a reason people don't like drug addicts, and there's a pretty significant portion of the population that wants them all dead (except for my little Muffy, who was corrupted by her boyfriend, of course).
The Second Chance stuff is important. Surprisingly enough, Jaime Dimon is a big supporter of it[0].
I wish this chap well. The proof will come, when he leaves the structure of prison.
[0] https://www.jpmorganchase.com/impact/careers-and-skills/seco...
Lists other companies which are part of the coalition.
Some surprise me, others, don't.
However, the point of a program of hiring or educating people who are in prison isn't to judge them. They are already in prison. 10years is a long time, so it's likely they did something bad and have been judged for it.
This is to give people who are capable and willing a chance to grow and integrate. From the little knowledge I have about this, it seems like this is very effective.
https://apnews.com/general-news-d68dca63e95946fbb9cc82f38540...
> 15 to 30 years in prison for possessing a synthetic drug with the intent to distribute it
> like many synthetic opioids, the exact effects of U-47700 are little understood and a small amount could be fatal
> charged with possessing carfentanil, a powerful synthetic drug much more powerful then fentanyl
https://www.wbay.com/content/news/New-Hampshire-man-suspecte...
But he will also be met with His mercy, and I am happy to extend him some mercy for his repentance here on Earth before his day comes.
It’s like saying: it’s your fault that you got shot for being in the wrong neighborhood at night. Were they knowingly taking a risk? Sure, but the murderer is still a murderer.
And we long got rid of the concept of “outlaw” where if you commit a crime any subsequent crime on you is fair game. That’s rather barbaric.
EDIT: I was assuming that it is obvious that no one takes such synthetic opioids on purpose. They are known not to be much fun and very dangerous. They are mostly used as a cheap filler in other more mainstream drugs, most notably in fake branded prescription drugs.
If not, what is the reason you decide the two situations differently?
I don't see how that's similar to a driver running into a jaywalker. Just because he's jaywalking doesn't mean he wants a driver to hit him.
> A brief summary is that I'm currently serving prison time for poor decisions and lifestyle choices I made in my twenties, all related to drugs.
Is that their poor decisions were related to drugs.
>My name is Preston Thorpe, I'm 31 years old and I've spent just under 10 years of my life in Prison (all for non-violent drug crimes.)
People are real quick to forget about innocent until proven guilty for some reason.
It's not the place of random hacker news commenters to try to and hold assault against him because you think, after reading 2 minutes about the case, that he should have been convicted.
> I've spent just under 10 years of my life in Prison (all for non-violent drug crimes.)
This then combined with the fact that the abuser is going to jail for on unrelated convictions. This is a huge relief to any abuse survivor. The person is going away, and I will be safe.
The other component is all the steps involved with filing charges which will often feel invasive and have to bring it all up again.
I have seen this up close and personal on a few occasions, I have begged the victim to go to the police but they would not do it.
The worst outcome of this is when the abuser is let out, the abuser may seek out the victim again, or the abuser will find new victims.
In this case the police had a call from a close family member accusing the person of domestic abuse. They had suspicious behavior from the accused person. They also witnessed that the possible victim had multiple injuries consistent with domestic abuse. As well as the arm injury the call from the family member had initially reported. But probably no charges or at least no convictions.
You assert that there was domestic violence unrelated to drugs, but you present no evidence for this, and substance abuse is strongly correlated with domestic violence.
For fucks sake, have some human decency. If your name was the one involved, how would something like this make you feel?
There is no actual confirmation in that document that her arm was broken, just that that was what was reported to the officer and that it was injured/swolen.
You're free to say "allegedly", just like the standards the media has to go by.