vol

Some are scapegoats.

Inertianinja

i hope you're kidding. if you're not, I wish you would realize that the privilege that you imagine is extended to the rich or the discrimination extended to the poor/minorities simply isn't real.

how exactly do you think that people like him "bought" their way out of prosecution?
do you think that the police or prosecutors just let these guys walk because they're rich? or are they taking bribes?

OJ Simpson walked because of the skill of his trial team and the crappy prosecution strategy. that's another discussion.

dougmc

Oh, the privilege is certainly real -- it's just not nearly as effective as xizangstan suggests ("you WILL get away with anything").

OJ didn't get lucky and get a good trial team -- he paid lots and lots for that trial team.

The wealthy also don't languish in jail because they can't afford bail like the poor do. Public defenders are generally spread so thin that they can't properly help each of their clients. The rich can easily pay fines. So many things about the system affect those who can pay so much less than those who can't.

I'm not sure that the prosecution actually discriminates against the poor in most cases -- but the system clearly does. Still, if the rich really screw up and it's well documented -- they're likely to get nailed for it.

Inertianinja

(1) are you suggesting that everyone have public offenders? that defendants should not be allowed to choose their lawyer, or pay more for a higher-skilled attorney? or that good lawyers should not be able to charge more?

(2) the purpose of bail is to ensure that someone actually comes to court, not to put people in jail.
-wealthy people often have less incentive or ability to flee, since they have more ties to their community. bank accounts, professional career, family, etc. they often want to address their legal problems as fast as possible and move on with their lives. on the other hand, a petty thief with no bank account who has a cousin in another state - probably needs high bail set.
-when bail is set, it is supposed to be a dollar amount that will actually provide an incentive to come to court. therefore, if i know that a guy is a multi-millionaire AND a flight risk, i would ask for higher bail. you can order the minutes of my last arraignment - that's exactly what i did.

the system does not discriminate against poor people. it is not a crime to be poor, nobody wants to put innocent poor people in jail. their wealth simply doesn't matter. anyone who tells you different has no real world experience.

you're suggesting that innocent poor people get convicted while guilty rich people don't.
not true. i say this as a former prosecutor who has dealt with everything from petty crime to multi-million dollar white collar crime.
i have looked into the face of some of the area's most highly-paid attorneys, retained by rich men, and told them i that their client would not be getting a break on our office policies just because their client is an attorney at a huge NYC law firm.

vote inertianinja 2020.

xizangstan

Would it make everybody happier if I changed my mind and said, "Let's agree to dismiss anyone who hits a pedestrian or bicyclist, takes off and if caught, simply says they're sorry and will do their best to not do it again"?

eddubal

Would that make you a cop?

(He says lapping his milk and cleaning his fur)

dougmc

You're reading things into what I said that aren't there. I said how things are and didn't really say it was right or wrong.

However, if you want to know my thoughts on the matter, yes, it would be better if everybody charged with a crime was give the same chance -- the same quality of legal representation, the same difficulty in making bail, etc. and one couldn't spend extra money or know the right people to get out of trouble. However, such a system would be a radical departure from our current adversarial court system, and I'm hard pressed to think of a way that such a system could replace our current system -- too many well connected and wealthy people benefit from the current system.

Sure, but fair or not, the poor tend to stay in jail and the rich get bailed out.

Come up with all the reasons all you want (and they're likely all true), but the poor tend to spend more time in jail unable to make bail when the the rich spend less. Time spent in jail is time spent in jail, whether you're there because you were found guilty or because you couldn't make bail. (And it seems that the jails people tend to stay in before trial tend to have worse conditions than prison. It would be a smaller issue if the Sixth Amendment were taken more seriously ... but it's not.)

So, are you saying that the rich don't have an easier time getting bailed out than the poor? Or that the rich don't hire better lawyers than the poor? Or that the rich get, on the average, the same penalties for the same crimes as the poor? Or that a $10,000 fine affects a rich man as much as a poor man?

Perhaps not, but it does make the punishments for other crimes more severe, statistically speaking.

Of course not, but the rich can get better lawyers to help convince you that they're innocent -- and if they can't convince you of that, they'll at least reach the "beyond a reasonable doubt" level and get an acquittal that way.

Being rich certainly isn't foolproof, in spite of what xizangstan suggested -- but it certainly helps.

So not being able to make bail doesn't matter? Better lawyers don't matter? Having an easier time paying fines doesn't matter? Perhaps the DA, judge and jury don't use wealth to make their decisions -- as they should not -- but it seems to me that wealth matters a whole lot outside of that.

No, that was xizangstan. I think the rich still get convicted, but less often, they're more likely to make bail and when they do get convicted, they tend to get smaller sentences.

I think you're using a very narrow version of "doesn't matter'. It may not matter to you, the prosecutor, but it matters in a lot of other ways.

If you think that these highly-paid attorneys are typically more effective than the public defenders, then I'd respectfully suggest that you are admitting that it matters.

A side note about one part of this -- https://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=122725771 was a pretty good story about how the bail system is heavily stacked against the poor.