I have seen and read most of the “evidence” provide (I couldn’t look into the still missing 299 pages of bate stamped pages from our inept friends at the CHPD almost 1 year later). Detective Joe “Barney Fife” Rangel would make a hilarious character if his actions weren’t so harmful. He subscribes to the Fire, Aim, Ready school of police work. The Sac Bee and other media outlets treat anyone accused of a crime like this, as guilty until proven innocent.

These are two of the post on today Sac Bee article.

• Well, well, well… anothe delay. Like that is a surprise… maybe he won’t have to muster up another “heart condition” for another few months… his bag of tricks must be getting a little empty. From bendoverbob (bendoverbob’s only post is this one … the illiterate forgot the word another ends with an “r”)

• I just knew by the headline that it was not just a “normal convict.” It has to be someone that can have some influential lawyers or friends to keep getting a case delayed. from jocko666

What kind of sick waste of human flesh jokes about getting raped in prison? Should he be tried in public opinion by cowards who are not willing to sign their names to their post? Maybe these people are connected to the investigation? There have been a small handful who have slandered and besmirched Bob’s character. They never show up to courthouse like the 40 of us who know Bob. They want to forget Bob’s constitution rights of a speedy trial. The prosecution is the one responsible for these numerous delays. I believe it is a tactic to drain all resources and then try and push a plea agreement down his throat. That will never happen!

Thank you again for shining another light onto this travesty. I look forward to your future post William.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v15n5/v15n5.pdf

One last thing….you have outlined your ideas of “radical” reform you’d like to see. What you utterly failed to do is to provide even a rough road map on how to get there.

I would argue that not only will the reforms have to be “radical” the method of obtaining them will also have to be “radical” and the citizens of the U.S. don’t do “radical”.

But maybe you have a very clever idea….

Yes, I do believe in individuals. The vast majority want to do the right thing, even when they have warped personas.

The right thing would be to curtail the expansion of the criminal/legal system. To stop turning the police into paramilitary units. To find another solution to frivolous lawsuits hurled at prosecutors other than absolute immunity. To come up with institutional changes so that the “good cops” don’t have to feel compelled to protect the bad ones.

But none of this ever gets done. Ever. Have you asked yourself why? I’ll tell you: voting is not a rational process. That is it does not result in rational outcomes.

Consider something slightly off topic. Would you agree with the following proposition:

If you tax something you get less of it.

Do you agree with that? If yes, now let me ask a second question:

Why do we tax income?

If you agree with the first proposition, then the conclusion is that as a society we want less income.

Does that make any sense to anyone?

The number of examples I can give on policies we have enacted and put into place in this country are quite numerous. Here are a few of them:

–We hear bemoaning about our low savings rates, but we implement programs like Medicare and Social Security that discourage savings.

–Our health care system is really, really badly broken in that costs are rising faster than our economy will be able to support. So why do we keep granting tax preferred status to employer provided health care benefits?

–The Social Security tax is extremely regressive and in line with the notion of if you tax something you get less of it (in this case both labor and income….at a time when unemployment is stuck above 8%) why don’t we switch to another tax…something were there are several negative effects and will not be nearly as regressive….like a tax on gasoline (google Greg Mankiw’s Pigou Club)?

Again and again we see government doing things that make little or no sense. Like bailouts. Do bailouts help stave of (economic) disaster or do they merely postpone the day of reckoning and create a perverse incentive to keep engaging in the very activities that necessitated the bailouts in the first place? Have you looked at the magnitude of government bailouts over time? They are getting bigger, not smaller. Could we not conclude that bailouts are part of the problem and not the solution?

The idea that we can reform things and solve these problems is naive and foolish. There are many who have a tremendous interest in keeping the status quo and that includes every single politician out there. Reform is a pipe dream. The State has all the chips. The State is the only entity that can use force and violence against its people legally. You can’t. I can’t. No other commenter here can…well unless they are an agent of the State, but even then they can only engage in violence that the State wants them to engage in. And given that so many of those in the top 10% and 1% of the income/wealth distribution are dependent on the State and many politicians obtain their wealth from the State….it is a powerful incestuous relationship that mere voting is not going to stop.

Keep thinking otherwise if you wish, but the fact is you are facing something with vastly more resources than you have…or any group you put together. And failing that you have no legal right to use violence against the State. The State on the other hand can use violence against you with impunity.

Could you refer us to a source for more details? It seems that yours may be a worthwhile case to research.

I guess you are so far down the hole of pessimism that the surface looks as far away as Pluto.

Yes, I do believe in individuals. The vast majority want to do the right thing, even when they have warped personas. The biggest problem most people have is not getting enough information, very much like being at the bottom of a well and seeing only a tiny pinprick of light in an otherwise shadow world.

1. Double jeopardy is something I hadn’t thought much about, but if prosecution were limited to victims, not too many cronies could stage a dummy inept prosecution. But if there are multiple victims, one might be bought off to rush an inept first trial and pre-empt the others. You’d need some way of combining cases, but what if the victims couldn’t agree on a strategy? On the other hand, a victim’s staged inept trial to pre-empt the others would be no worse than a DA refusing to prosecute.

What happens today with civil trials? What happened in OJ’s wrongful death lawsuits? There were two victims, must have been multiple lawsuits at least initially.

2. Maybe the defendant should be able to include their own charges of false charges as part of the continuing case, so the jury would have to consider them together. I don’t think this is much different from being able to prosecute DAs for false charges. Maybe the burden of proof would be higher than in normal cases, but the intent is to get rid of the most corrupt cases, not all of them. Maybe as the public got used to finding plaintiffs vexatious, they would be more inclined to consider the less-than-infamous cases.

Or maybe juries could return one of five verdicts (:-) — so guilty as to pay all court costs, guilty but not so obviously as to pay court costs, no decision, innocent but not so obviously as to pay court costs, and so innocent as to mark the plaintiff guilty of malicious prosecution.

I think the Wikipedia page on private prosecutions that I cited in #6 above may shed light on some of the issues you raised.

En Passant, there is no libel to “the killer shot the victim”. An “allegedly” there doesn’t protect anything. And if libel suits were a concern, then why print “after the shooting, the suspect fled”?

I didn’t say there was.

However, there is libel in “Joe Smith shot John Jones”, if Smith did not shoot Jones. That is the example I stated.

There is no libel in “Joe Smith allegedly shot John Jones”.

Some reporters use qualifiers when there is no need to. I speculated above that the use of qualifiers arose for good reasons in appropriate situations, and some reporters use them profligately because they do not understand the reason for using the qualifier.

Then why even bother writing this up? I’ve been reading here a while, and I’m hoping the blog shifts away from posting every puppycide story towards how future puppycides can be stopped. I get it, the state has some obnoxious agents, but rather than throwing Internet temper tantrums, at some point we’re supposed to be doing something about it.

The set of feasible solutions is empty dude….doesn’t me people can’t still talk about it or write about it.

Felix,

How are things out there on Pluto?

Jesus….talk about an over abundance of optimism.

Burgers Allday,

Yeah I know right? Like this post…oh, wait that is one of yours.

Basically, what Mr. Anderson is talking about is similar to regulatory capture, but in reverse. In regulatory capture, the regulatory agency, usually government, is captured by the very industry it is trying to regulate. Thus neutering the regulatory agency when it comes to doing the job it is tasked with.

In this particular case it works in reverse. Since journalists often go to government officials as a source they’ll often form a working relationship with these officials and help each other out.

As for reform, there is no possibility of real reform. No politician will want to appear “soft on crime”. Most politicians are themselves lawyers. Many DAs have higher political aspirations. And nobody wants to be seen protecting sex offenders especially child molesters. So injustices will continue to happen and since it is a low probability for most people they wont be motivated to give a fuck. After all, maybe the guy really is a pedo, and the evidence isn’t that good….lock him up just to be safe.

Add on all the other problems with our legal system that we see here at this website and others on a routine basis and the conclusion is obvious…our legal system is seriously fucked. Best bet avoid it at all costs. Never call the cops, never trust the cops, never trust a prosecutor, have nothing to do with them…even if they are your neighbor. Treat them all as pariahs….which any sane person should do, IMO.

All cops are bad cops. All prosecutors are bad prosecutors. Why? Because the ostensibly “good ones” always protect the bad ones. Always.

If I had my druthers, the state would have the first option to bring charges; if it could demonstrate that it was actively working on a case, it should have broad but not unlimited latitude to delay proceedings until it was ready.

Once a case was going to trial, all prosecutors would be required to participate in the same trial. The state would be first to question each witness, but other prosecutors would be allowed to ask questions they felt the state was neglecting to ask. After the state called its witnesses, other prosecutors would be allowed to call their own.

During the defense’s presentation of its case, the state prosecutor would get the first opportunity to cross-examine each witness, but other prosecutors would be allowed to question them about issues they felt the state prosecutor missed.

Finally, I think there should be a procedure by which a formal allegation could be filed that agents of the state conspired to feign “jeopardy”. If on two consecutive trials, juries found beyond a reasonable doubt that the prosecutor had deliberately “thrown” the case against a government agent, the agent could be ruled never to have actually been in jeopardy, and thus not protected by the double-jeopardy rule. The use of two jury trials would be to protect defendants from malicious imposition of legal expenses, since in most cases where prosecutors act even remotely reasonably, it would be hard to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant was never in jeopardy even if the defendant ignored the charges. Requiring that the case get that far before the defendant would have any obligation to put up a defense would provide substantial protection in any case where the prosecutor’s conduct was not patently outrageous.

On the other hand, in a case where a prosecutor neglects to present evidence (e.g. a map) to show that the address where a cop murdered someone was within the county’s jurisdiction, and where the cop gets the charges against him thrown out on such a basis, the notion that the cop was ever really “in jeopardy” starts to seem rather dubious.

I think your point about cronyism is a good one. Also, I would be much more comfortable in principle with a privilege of prosecution inherent in the citizenry (akin to the citizen’s arrest), rather than one vested in the victim of the crime because they are the victim.

But I do think there are still practical concerns:

1. How do you handle double jeopardy? It would be feasible to have a crony prosecute you ineptly in order immunize yourself. But eliminating double jeopardy would be extremely dangerous

2. I don’t think the jury’s ability to sanction everyone would provide sufficient protection against frivolous prosecutions. A jury would be hesitant to sanction a prosecuting citizen they felt was trying to do good, even misguidedly. This might be mitigated if the citizen were able to initiate prosecution, but the actual prosecution would require they hire an attorney whose duty is akin to the prosecutor’s quasi-judicial responsibility to prosecute only those they reasonably believe to be guilty. But, given that this observed far too often in the breach, it would likely be insufficient.

3. If anything, private prosecution would be more susceptible to the kind of moral panic this post discusses. Prosecutors may not be as good as they should be at resisting its pull, but increasing the pool of potential prosecutors could only increase the likelihood of a witch-hunt prosecution

As for your last paragraph…is all the money going to law enforcement? I know that mandatory minimums give federal prosecutors a way to drive up conviction numbers without having to prove anything. I’m not sure it has to do with the need to save money. In fact, the number of convictions is (probably) directly related to the amount of money that federal district receives.

Not one media person gave a whit about a public defender that kept evidence of innocence from his client and then told the client that he was going to lose at trial. Not one media person gave a damn that both the prosecutor and the defense attorney knew for a fact that I had not committed the crime I pleaded guilty to. (My alleged acts did not violate the statute I pleaded guilty to violating.) No one in the media was concerned about a judge that twisted the law to uphold a conviction that she knew was bogus, nor that both the appeals court and the Supreme Court rubber stamped that judge’s ruling.

And, forget the blogosphere. It’s just as subject to moral panics and herd mentality as anywhere else.
I got kicked out of talk-politics on livejournal *solely* because of my conviction. (So they said, though I suspect they were using that as an excuse to get rid of a political viewpoint they disliked.) And then off livejournal itself, again *solely* because of my conviction. (I was told that they don’t allow convicted sex offenders to remain on the site. You will look in vain for such a restriction in their Terms of Service.) Neither time was I asked about anything….

While all of the observations in the article may be true, they utterly fail to identify the root cause of the problem. One need look no further than the tiny fraction of government spending related to criminal justice and that the criminal justice system is woefully underfunded to understand that the public does not have justice as a priority. The mainstream media did not cause this, it merely reflects it. You can try all you like to change the media but so long as the public doesn’t care about justice, neither will the media.