Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

FTA:

    Just one example: a federal judge haunted by a
    55-year-sentence he was forced to give a 24-year-old
    convicted of three marijuana sales.

And from a link in the sentence above[1]:

    "I do think about Angelos,” said Paul Cassell,
    a now-retired federal judge in the Utah circuit.
    “I sometimes drive near the prison where he’s held,
    and I think, ‘Gosh he shouldn’t be there.
    Certainly not as long as I had to send him there.
    ... That wasn’t the right thing to do.
    The system forced me to do it.”

Notably, this is the same system he remained a part of for a few more years, until finally quitting in 2007 because of low judicial pay[2], as opposed to, y'know, making a principled stand against unjust minimum sentencing requirements.

Cassell also mentions that Angelos' incarceration puts a significant burden on taxpayers:

    “I thought the sentence was utterly unjust to
    Weldon Angelos, but also unjust to the taxpayer”

And yet, he's still a proponent of capital punishment[3], which costs taxpayers even more than imprisonment for life[4].

[1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/federal-judge-regrets-55-year-marij...

[2] http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/09/21/judge-paul-cassell-resig...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20150107005109/http://www.reuter...

[4] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty

There is no shortage of lawyers who would love to be judge in his place. Making a principled stand against an unjust system is great, but making an effective stand is much better. I would rather have a judge who recognizes that mandatory minimum sentences are a bad idea and simply gives the minimum sentence--even if it's too severe--than one who doesn't see a problem with mandatory minimum sentences at all.

Basically, this is a problem which was created by Congress, so ultimately the people of the U.S. are to blame here, and the responsibility for electing the right representatives to fix it lies with them.

I think the problem here is that while you would rather have that judge, this particular person has decided not to be that judge for you. He would rather not be a judge than be the judge that you want.

Anyway, you can't blame "the people of the US" for how their legal system works. Most of them were born into it and trained from birth to have enough apathy to let it be what it is. Most of the people who are at fault are dead, so there's really no point in trying to blame anyone. I don't know why you have that impulse, except to say that you are employing the same kind of thinking that leads to these problems in the first place; Namely, claiming it isn't your problem.

So that's a right useless thing to say, if you ask me. If you want a revolution, blaming your public is essentially going to make them believe they are stupid, lazy, apathetic cynics; it's not going to cause it.

You may be giving GP entirely too much credit here. When I've heard these arguments before, it has been from those for whom "revolution" would be anathema. Such people like the system we've got, and they say "blame the people" in order to avoid admitting their preference for injustice.

> as opposed to, y'know, making a principled stand against unjust minimum sentencing requirements.

While occasionally highly effective, it should be remembered that falling on your sword is not generally an effective way to make a significant difference in a large system.

What do you think the judge should have done, bearing in mind that resigning in protest would almost certainly have resulted in little but his replacement?

A Bush 43 appointee and former Scalia clerk resigning in protest over what he sees as unjust sentencing, and perhaps working for the ACLU, like Steve Schmidt did on same-sex marriage would have sent a powerful message and also perhaps done some good by virtue of having a clearly very skilled legal practitioner working to change laws he found wrong.

It would have sent a very powerful message to those already listening and looking to agree with it. It would not have sent a meaningful message to most, who would have never encountered this hypothetical message.

That is generally the nature of "powerful messages". If you're advocating change, most of that time will be spent talking to people that don't, won't listen. If not, change would already have happened.

That's not the nature of activism, friend. If you're spending most of your time talking to people who don't or won't listen, it's because you aren't communicating effectively. People listen when you communicate effectively.

That said, do not ever confuse people listening for people agreeing. They are very different things. Just because someone honestly listens to you does not mean they will come to agree with you.

Also, people listen when you are willing to listen to them. Too many "conversations" are thinly veiled preaching.

> A Bush 43 appointee and former Scalia clerk resigning in protest over what he sees as unjust sentencing, and perhaps working for the ACLU, like Steve Schmidt

...who?

What would have happened had he simply assigned a lesser sentence? Would the judge face criminal penalties? Seems unlikely, but IANAL.

Maybe the right principled stand is to "do the right thing" and let a higher court face the same moral decision when challenged. Eventually you get to the top.

As I understand it - and I am also not a lawyer - a judge generally does not have the power of disobey mandatory sentencing. I don't know if attempting to do so would be criminal, but it would not be a legitimate use of power and probably would not hold.

Perhaps you're right, but what happens when you "do the right thing", it makes it to the top, and what comes back down is "Congress was clear"?

Maybe someone at the top makes a principled stand as well. At the very least, they get to make subjective decisions about what is "cruel and unusual". And even if it doesn't hold, at least this particular judge can have a clear conscience.

This is why I wonder what the penalties are. I can fault the judge for not wanting to be thrown in jail. On the other hand, if he's doing something that he recognizes as morally wrong simply to "follow the rules", he's a coward. "Following the rules" is not a moral defense. For sufficiently severe crimes, it's not even a legal defense (see: nazi camp guards).

More likely what comes back down is "This is a general harm, not a specific harm, meaning it's the problem of Congress". At which point your principled stand has consumed significant time and money to accomplish very little.

Activism has to be balanced against the costs and odds of success.

It seems to me that consuming significant time and money is a fair accomplishment. Morally offensive laws, processes, and behaviors should gum up the works. It provides an incentive to remove them.

Gumming up the works tends to be the sort of thing that is both morally satisfactory and gains you more enemies than allies. So I submit that it's very rarely a good choice of tactics.

Noting that overly harsh and unjust punishments are a waste of taxpayer money is not the same thing at all as opposing punishments that are (believed to be) just but that are expensive. By your reasoning, since sending someone to jail costs more than not sending them to jail, this judge should believe that nobody ever should be sent to jail.

In the US jails are for-profit. Justice is secondary - never mind rehabilitation.

So while costs come out of taxes, those tax revenues are paid to benefit prison shareholders and managers.

Bow does the public benefit from this arrangement? It doesn't exist to prevent crime. In fact it increases it by labelling low-impact activities like marijuana possession as serious crimes deserving of jail time.

Jail vs not-jail is a false dichotomy, because reality-tested alternatives do exist. See e.g.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/06/glasgow-murde...

Less than 10% of US prisoners are housed in private prisons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison#In_the_United_St...

There are still people who profit from the non-privite prisons. The money is going somewhere.

You could take my comment as a request that people trying to discuss the issue try to do it in an at least a slightly nuanced way.

If they are including the farmers that grow the grain that ends up in the prison bread as part of the prison industry, I want them to say so.

Your reply has nothing to do with what I posted. Thanks for the downvote, though.

I think its more that if the "value" to society of sending the person to jail is less than the cost of sending them to jail, then you shouldn't do it. In this case, he's expressing that the value of sending them to jail is much lower than the cost.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com