alt Hacker News* authorities have offered Smith a plea deal including a $1,000 fine, $1,000 in restitution and three years' probation.*
This is the goal ... They know they are at fault but admitting they made a mistake is damaging to careers.
In a lot of cases a carrot is dangled in front of people ... You can wast a lot of time (and money) fighting for your innocent, and take the risk your still going to get convicted.
Or you can take the plea deal, and it absolves us from our mistakes. And you save money because its cheaper then paying all those lawyers and court costs. And your innocent anyway, so that probations has no effect on you.
I forgot the source but the amount of prosecutions that are plea down is staggering. A lot of actual innocent people take plea's because its cheaper, then the alternative. And there have been plenty of people innocently convicted (even on shaky evidence), so most people take plea deals and they can move on with their lives.
This results in a culture where investigations are annoying. Where pressure is ramped up again and again to break people into taking plea deals. The biggest issue is, if you actually refuse to take a plea deal, then all resources are put against you to get a actual conviction, even if they know your innocent. "Why did you not just take the plea deal". Well, time to punish you for not taking it. Because repeat after me again, careers are on the line and losing cases hurt those future (potential political) careers.
Its the same why prosecutors fight tooth and nail, even if clear evidence is shows that a person was innocently convicted and spend X years in jail. It not about justice, its about protecting those careers.
The proof of innocents is heavily put on the other party, and it really hits hard on people who do not have the financial means.
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Carmen Ortiz, a prosecutor, was accused of driving reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz to his end with her plea-bargain tactics per this article [1][2]
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/01/17/aaron-swa... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20260227061241/https://www.forbe...
It's similar to the Iowa courthouse break-in by hired pentesters. They had a contract for the work and very small people in the place where it occurred wouldn't let go. This kind of behavior is shameful and should result in jail time for bad-faith prosecutions.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/how-a...
Podcast eps about it (with the testers):
>This is the goal ... They know they are at fault but admitting they made a mistake is damaging to careers.
Is this actually true? The way the techspot article was laid out certainly implies that prosecutors knew about all the contradicting evidence, but they offered a plea deal. However, if you read the article carefully it doesn't mention any interaction with the prosecutors or that the contradicting evidence was presented to them.
Plea bargains used to be considered unethical by courts and the Bar in America pre-Civil War.
We have the Reconstructionist South to thank for normalizing turning judges into form stamping Vogons and allowing prosecutors to routinely use a form of blackmail as a normal course of prosecution.
Prosecutors "protecting those careers" is 100% true
Source: I work with a top defense lawyer in Chicago
I remember reading about this story awhile back. Some young twenty something was caught with a small amount (MDMA I think?) and the ADA was pushing for him to take a deal. Before anything was inked or signed - the father of the son has his lawyer draft some legal process to the DEA/DOJ to get what sort of evidence they had on him. The ADA called the father and bitched at him for a solid few minutes about how that action will result in months of them having to do work - and at that point the deal was off and it was retribution time.
It was a very telling experience where doing things our constitution permits is considered a burden on law enforcement and prosecutors.
That is the theme. A jury trial is inherently risky. While conceptually a good idea, you are betting the outcome (and your future) on a bunch of folks without any legal training - and who did not manage to get out of jury duty.
And so the prosecution heaps on threats of years and years of prison time, or "take this little plea bargain". They still get their "conviction."
This is partially fixed by making The People of the State of __________ pay for the lawyer of the defendant's choosing. It imposes real costs to the state in these cases.
Easy fix make prosecutors become defense lawyers every second case. Outcomes of both affect careers.
its sad peoples job security or toxic work culture can cause innocent people to rot in jail. humans really suck at being human.
the app providers dont want to admit fraud is running over their platform. the justice department cant admit any mistakes either.
Its a problem which will only get worse as the economy declines. And as the economy declines, more places get breached because more criminality and at the same time less money to secure things.
I cant see this getting any better which is kind of terrifying.
One more reason i can think of is that if people get super afraid of these problems, then they might even start asking for mass surveilance to help prove their innocense in these kinds of things. Which again is an incentive / reasoning for higher government not to do anything about it, because it creates opportunities where current population sentiment is taking them away...
Our society is like a beastly machine that feeds on the souls of living beings (Human and animal) in order to keep functioning.
I studied Masters in Criminology and I have to say that Justice is absent from the Criminal 'Justice' system.
Plea bargains should not be allowed. Rewarding someone for not going to trial is equivalent to punishing them for insisting on their ancient legal right to a fair trial. If the prosecution wants to make a deal with someone in exchange for testimony then they can request a lighter sentence after the defendant is found guilty, but they should still be required to prove guilt.
Yes, I know the legal system doesn’t have anywhere near enough resources to take every case to trial. Don’t care. Give the system more resources or prosecute fewer people or some combination of the two.
I stated above, part of a plea requires the defendant to affirm that they were not coerced into the plea, because you can't legally waive your Constitutional right to trial under coercion, you would still retain that right if coerced. But how can the Courts accept that a threat of many more years of incarceration over your head is not a threat, and you weren't coerced by that into accepting a lessor plea? Plea deals are constitutionally invalid because they coerce defendants into giving up their constitutional right to trail with the threat of the 'trial tax' (a much much longer sentence if you DO go to court and exercise your Constitutional right).
One of these days someone, or some people, will finally lose it and this time hopefully they aim away from the schools.
It would be an interesting mechanic if the plea deal also altered a ceiling penalty (multiplier maybe?) in the event of a loss for the defendant.
The job description of US criminal persecutors is wrong. People there should work into fixing it.
> I forgot the source but the amount of prosecutions that are plea down is staggering.
I'd wager that 99% of the plea deals that occur in the world occur in the US. No other country uses it to the extent we do, and it's not even close. In many countries it's not an available option, or when it is and it's used, its use is heavily regulated and requires (meaningful) oversight by the judge on fairness, likelihood of conviction, etc.
And once you've accepted a plea deal it's not just a matter of making your plea - you also have to sign a whole raft of documents waiving a whole raft of rights, about appealing your conviction, about the right to present evidence in your defense in the future, or to witnesses, you have to sign a statement saying that even if you were to (attempt to) change your plea that it is your acknowledgment, "based on material facts" that the state is in possession of enough evidence to convict you.
And the worst part is that once you take the plea deal, you are guilty. Both in perception and by record. So once it comes out that you plead, your employers will fire you. Makes it impossibly hard to find another job as your name comes up as a criminal. What I'm really confused about: Can't they have just checked the victim's bank records? The money would be taken out of the the Cash app and back into their own account. Or, if used for other service, there would be records of where it was spent and you could see the geographic activity.
On an entirely different note. Just wow. I know a lot of people who don't "do online" finance anything. And this kind of stuff is terrifying, because they would not even know that someone else had setup an account using their PII.
> This is the goal ... They know they are at fault but admitting they made a mistake is damaging to careers.
I iamgine bullshit easy plea deals also get you nice numbers for a "tough of crime" image for political clout even if some of the most vile crimes get some of the lightest sentences imaginable
This shit is why my hippie dippie state where it’s hard to prosecute people is actually a good thing. Sadly, more fenty street walker is a sign that cops aren’t as empowered to deprive random people of rights.
But everyone knee jerks into voting out the cool DA who drops victimless criminal prosecutions because they don’t like a fenty zombie screaming in the streets.
I happen to love my mostly low policed state for this exact reason. They’re almost never there to help you, and mostly just want to fuck you up!
I was in a jury pool for a case where the DA was attempting to prosecute petty vandalism to pressure a young adult over a minor crime ($500 worth of graffiti) because they wanted cooperation on another larger crime.
It wasn't going anywhere. When I finally got called up to voir dir I explained that I thought the real crime was sequestering 300 people for a day over $500. I suggested we collect $2 from each person in the jury pool (far less than we paid for parking that day) and cover the alleged damages and not only be done for the day, but have achieved some real measure of justice.
Lets just say the judge didn't agree and I got let out of voir dir.