121 karma · joined August 10, 2015
The legislature, however, is not there just to nod its head when they think something is a good idea and voting no when it's not. Even if we were to create a space for exactly that, all we've done is push the fallibility to those who are doing the work to write and revise law--but now they're pitching to those off the streets who don't know anything about governance! If anything, lay congresspeople would magnify, not reduce, the problems we have with our current system.
No one's saving a felony docket by eliminating the need to prosecute niche crimes like aviation fraud or abortion or unlawful dog breeding.
No one can undisputedly connect bail reform with an increase or a decrease in crime or pre-trial recidivism.
No one can glean statistics from major cities only, conclude they are not harmful, and then imply reform must not be harmful for rural areas. There are usually more prosecutors elected in rural areas than populated ones.
Crime is tightly situational, geographically tied, culturally bound. Policies therefore must also be situational, geographically tied, and culturally bound. Some things might be universally bad. Those should be excised everywhere. But things that are not universally good should not be endorsed universally. I got the impression here that the writer wants some reforms to be endorsed universally.
I know some people may not agree, but an oft-overlooked component of crime and law enforcement is culture. American crime, at least in part, is what it is today from our country's own defiant and ignorant understanding of what freedom is. "You can't tell me what to do with a gun." "You can't tell me to get out of my own car." Combine it with an unhealthy dose of American exceptionalism and social circumstances that contribute to crime and we get stupid like sovereign citizens, election denialism, and hilarious black-or-white efforts to villify law enforcement. Our country breeds criminals and idiocy in the classroom almost as much as bad parenting because we're told over and over that this is the best and most free place in the world and children in africa are starving. It's in our collective psychology. So every social pain is both a source of cognitive dissonance and King George III back from the dead to tax our freedoms. This is evident to me in the way the law in other countries is both written and enforced. Japan's violence is a far cry from ours. Canada isn't some paragon of legislation, yet their crime rates are very low. Interestingly enough, Canada's indigenous people make up a disproportionately HUGE amount of their incarcerated, but no one cares. But American cops were just born bad and are taught only to shoot the black people. As if law enforcement doesn't come out of the exact same pool of people who become office workers who screw around when they probably should be working, teachers who diddle their students, and negligent engineers who cheated their way through school. School shootings in America exist because they're a cultural touchstone for malignant attention and perverse notoriety, yet the issue is reduced to being either mental illness or guns. The fact that nobody can touch our guns is a symptom of the death caused, not the source of the issue.
Prosecutor's are little more than a reflection of the cultural expectations and demands of a given area. Articles like this are therefore both laughably myopic in their conclusions and a little dangerous in the way they perpetuate this tug of war we seem to be in. That said, I'm glad there are efforts from new prosecutors to reduce both disparity in treatment of people and legitimate efforts to eliminate waste and unneeded suffering in reducing crime. But the solution isn't a decision not to prosecute ABORTION, for which there are probably like 10 cases a year for. We'll never come up with consistent cause and effect relationships with this kind of whack a mole policy making. America needs to start thinking differently, starting with an admission that where there are people there will be criminals and understanding those criminals is more important than any other effort to reduce injustice for anyone.
Turns out this particular game company (Falcom) had a habit of implementing their own compression on their assets. So I had to painstakingly read the disassembly. It got to the point that I had notebooks of hand written disassembly so I could read and think about the code when not at a computer. Eventually I figured out how to both decompress images and text and then save the decompressed assets in a way that bypass the compression. I wrote the hack and patch and was super happy. Of course it blew up the size of the game assets for translated materials, but it worked.
Of course this will depend on the state. I can’t give general advice in the US.
Consider that this white British journalist stands nothing to lose by taking his case to trial, if he must. In fact, it will be a badge of honor if convicted, considering his line of work. Most people can’t take that risk. I only wish people didn’t have an understanding of American “justice” through their TV.
You know the onerous discovery policies in Virginia. Prosecutors don’t have to give you much. Even the Constitutionally mandated stuff is impossible to check because the only people who could, defense attorneys, have no way of knowing what exists.
Last, and I think this was op’s point: a lie only becomes a lie if it can be exposed as a lie. Most statements are very difficult to outright prove as a lie. This goes for defendants claiming they have someone else’s pants and for officers who are VERY sure she had bloodshot eyes “which in (their) training and experience are consistent with intoxication by marijuana.”
One rule speaks to zealous advocacy of clientele. An attorney can't "quit" without doing so carefully, lest they face sanctions from the bar for hurting a client. Even when done carefully, many states won't let you out of a criminal case because you need out. Someone's freedom is depending on your availability. Complicating this is the fact that some areas of practice are not conducive to building large firms. Criminal defense, for example, is not the kind of practice where you can build a large firm. Most practitioners are solo attorneys. Generally, these attorneys practice without backup and without the ability to stop.
Another set of rules speaks to attorney client confidentiality. A disgruntled client now has infinite platform to complain (check out avvo.com which behaves a lot like Yelp does in every way), while attorneys have no recourse for most public complaints, lest the bar consider their speaking on the subject a breach of client confidentiality.
Bars in most states have tried to reach out with hotlines for lawyers. Seriously.
Check out the latest episode of Security Now, which talks about this. https://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm
What's more, it costs a publisher far less to produce and distribute an ebook. So there is legit no good explanation that a consumer will accept for a higher priced ebook.