A website ranking judges by elo for the cases they dismiss in SF | Hacker News Reader

A website ranking judges by elo for the cases they dismiss in SF

sfcrime.pages.dev

24 pointsgrand_larsony15 comments

A very important note about being charged with something, it's not evidence of guilt but rather an accusation. As an example, of all unsolved murders in the United States, I theorize that you the reader have committed all of them. How does it reflect on your local law enforcement, courts, etc. that you're not sentenced for these crimes?

It would be useful if this site included a human-readable explanation of what terms like "Disposition: Diversion" compared to "Disposition: 871PC/No Sufficient Cause" meant.

Or a clear definition of what the question "Which released charge sounds worse?" means.

This site is dangerous, honestly. It's asking people to rate things that are outside of their domain knowledge. You might ask well ask me to rate the quality of control valves on the Space Shuttle based on part numbers.

I take it you don't believe in the "jury of your peers" either?

The thing with a jury is that there are motivated experts on both sides explaining the technical details in a (hopefully) easy to understand way, a judge to help ensure fair play, and an appeals process as an escape valve.

Where are any of those safety measures here?

To clarify.. we judge which charge is worse and the judges get a higher rating _for_ not releasing on the more serious crimes? Basically is a higher rating good or bad here. You'd think higher rating good but I was confused by the wording

This is crazy, because two things:

1) There is no way to see inside these cases; the charge might sound crazy on paper but could be a nothingburger in reality [1]

2) Cases can be over-charged by cops and prosecutors since it is easier then to get a plea deal on a lesser charge when you are threatening the defendant with a large amount of prison time on a higher (unjustified) charge

[1] Just one off the top of my head that I remember: Defendant was having a mental health episode while at his mother's house. She calls an ambulance. Police arrive first. They Tazer him. While he is on the ground being Tazer'd he grabs the bare skin of an officer and they receive an electric shock. Defendant's only charge is Aggravated Battery to a Peace Officer. It sounds really bad, but the case is obviously a lot more complicated than the name of the charge.

You can click on the docket button and see the entire thing...

Criminal court dockets don't include the discovery or the oral transcripts of each court hearing. They tell you almost nothing except the number of continuances that have happened.

This is crap. Rating judges is a horrible task because it's hard for the public to make any kind of objective decision on whether a judge is doing a good job. If you ask the public what they want from a judge, I would assume most would say: detain as many persons as possible, find as many people guilty as possible, and sentence them for the maximum possible time.

The reason judges go unopposed in elections, or get reelected until they die, is because the public doesn't have the knowledge to make informed decisions about these elections.

Not all judges are elected, of course.

Why do you view the judges as some superhuman unassailable truth oracles?

Your view is extremely dangerous, tbh., and rather anti-democratic.

Where did you get that from my comment? I simply said it's an incredibly difficult task for the public to rate judges.

Honestly, most judges are horrible. A vast majority are ex-prosecutors and are chronically biased against defendants' rights in criminal cases.

some might think tamificarion of everything was actually prep for gambling on everything.

This is really funny to me.

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