Recordings reveal how informant ring operated in Orange County jails | Hacker News Reader

Recordings reveal how informant ring operated in Orange County jails

america.aljazeera.com

27 pointspalidanx12 comments

Police and prosecutors misbehave frequently enough that the entire system is cast with a light of illegitimacy. The United States Government is one of the oldest extant in the world, and this epidemic of misbehavior, corruption and perjury is a good reason that it should decline and die. In my opinion, the only other alternative is to treat the misbehaving officials as criminals, but sadly, they are in practice protected from prosecution. One set of rules for the chosen, another set for the unfavored, and another set for those in the middle.

Pretty disgusting, but not surprising.

What amazes me is that juries place any weight on jailhouse informants. As the article suggests you can be convicted solely on the information provided by a single jailhouse informant. What sort of jury could come to an 12-0 vote that any case like this was beyond reasonable doubt?

>What sort of jury could come to an 12-0 vote that any case like this was beyond reasonable doubt?

People that have not ever had had friends or family ensnared in the criminal justice system tend to project popular myths and natural biases onto anyone in jail. One of those is that people in jail are all idiots that do nothing all day but sit around bragging to their cellmates about their crimes. This is why jailhouse snitches are believed by juries, despite the obvious incentive to lie.

Well yes. If juries gave no weight to the testimony of convicted criminals with an enormous incentive to lie then prosecutors would stop putting them on the stand. It tells us how broken the whole jury system is when prosecutors go to the effort of obtaining these testimonies.

Interesting here in Australia these jailhouse testimonies are not given much weight by juries and when used (rarely) they are seen as a desperate attempt by the crown to bolster a very weak case. I guess the more people learn about how corrupt these testimonies are the less juries will believe them and hopefully they will stop being used.

What sort of jury could come to an 12-0 vote that any case like this was beyond reasonable doubt?

If you have served on a few juries like I have your (anecdotal) evidence may indicate (as mine does) that most people are very stupid and unable to apply even the most basic logic. Then again, maybe it is only the stupid ones (myself included?) that can't figure out how to get out of jury duty so the jury pool self selects for stupidity.

I have been called to serve on a few juries, but have so far been excluded by either the defence or prosecution.

I still find it hard to believe that you could get together 12 people no matter how stupid that would convict on the basis of jailhouse testimony alone. What were they thinking - someone in prison out of the goodness of their heart and with no expectation of reward just decided to go to the authorities and tell all despite being in an environment where being a snitch gets you killed?

Agree. My small sample (3 cases) indicates hung jury is the expected outcome. Seems like long odds to get a conviction. The key - a skilled lawyer can win at the jury selection stage almost regardless of the merits of the case.

Is there an upper limit to how large a portion of the adult population of a country can be in jail before that country collapses?

North Korea would tell you it can be pretty high. If you consider slavery as equivalent to current life sentences then history would suggest you can have the majority of the population in jail and still have a functioning society.

Yes, but it's a matter of time, and it's more likely that the country would just decline in global status to a state of stagnation.

Last I looked the US were still below 1% of the population being incarcerated (~0.7% total, ~0.9 adult). This is (or was, there may be newer figures) the world's highest rate.

These numbers are disgusting (especially considering the number of people in US prisons purely because they can't afford to post bail), but I think it would take substantially higher rates to cause the collapse of a country.

The detriment of a country is a completely different matter, and this situation in the US is already recognized by most of the rest of the world.

Similar issues are being seen in China and Russia.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2... (which is probably well out of date by now):

"Half of the world's prison population of about nine million is held in the US, China or Russia.

Prison rates in the US are the world's highest, at 724 people per 100,000. In Russia the rate is 581."

Seychelles 868 USA 698 Russian Federation 468 China 119

http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison_popula...

Thanks for the updated stats! Did you see the graph of the Seychelles since 2006? What's going on there?

EDIT: I hate to post links from the UK Daily Mail but they have an article on this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2219618/Will...

EDIT 2: From http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/feb/23/... : ""I think countries that small are just not comparable," Wagner said, adding that his group’s 2014 States of Incarceration report filtered out countries with less than a half-million residents." ... "Only Seychelles technically has a higher incarceration rate than the United States. But experts said it’s an outlier because of its miniscule size and largely should be disregarded."

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