cabanafrau
DIS Legend
- Joined
- May 10, 2006
- Messages
- 15,715
And yet people are wrongfully convicted quite frequently. Prosecutors care more about conviction than actual justice. I am not in any way saying Diddy isn't guilty. This is more of a general statement, rather than towards this specific instance. In big public cases like this, I think prosecutors are more careful to make sure they have their ducks in a row. But on a smaller scale, the game is most often to arrest someone, charge them with the highest possible charge they "might" be able to get them on, get a bond so high that they can't get out, and hold them long enough they eventually plea to a lower charge, just to get it over with. Then the prosecutor can say they got a conviction, without every having to go to trial and prove their case. And before you say "why would anyone ever plead guilty to something they didn't do??" consider this. Most people charged with crimes (80% of defendants) have to rely on a public defender. In my state, each PD is averaging over 240 cases a year. Most PD's are taking 3x more cases than they should be able to handle. Not to mention, they have limited funding for expert testimony. Do you know how much a DNA expert costs?? So you have a defendant charged with murder for example. His bond is set at 100K cash only. Most people don't have that, and honestly, that is a very low bond for murder. It's usually closer to 500K. So they sit in jail for a couple of years, because they can't afford to bond out. They have lost their jobs, probably their homes. Their families are dealing with this hardship and the not knowing. The prosecution only turns over the portions of the discovery that are favorable to them until the last possible cut off before trial, because that is the game. They don't want you to have time to dispute it. So your PD, who doesn't know you from Adam, has no reason to actually believe that you are innocent, is like "Man, they are saying your phone pinged near the scene at this time, your car was 2 blocks away, and someone matching your description was seen leaving the area. An eye witness picked you out of a line up." A jail house snitch trying to cut a deal for himself tells them you admitted to it while you were his cellmate. They make it sound like circumstantial evidence puts you there. Then your atty says "They are offering you Manslaughter, 10 years. I think that's a pretty good deal vs 25-life for murder" You'd get the 2 years you've been in jail already credited to your sentence. And you'd probably only have to serve 7 of the 10 to be eligible for parole. Which means in 5 years, you could be out. Or, you can continue to fight it, sit in jail another year or 2, and end up convicted of 1 or 2D murder, and serve 15-20 years or more. If by chance you are found guilty, even if later the prosecutor comes back and says "my bad, we got the wrong guy" you may still never see the light of day, because the AG's office will fight tooth and nail to uphold the conviction even when the charging prosecutor is trying to get it over turned. There have been 3 cases just like this here in my state in the last 2 months. I worked in DOC for 18 years, so for the longest time I was like "They might not be guilty of this, but I'm sure they are guilty of something" But then I saw people who spent 10-15 years of their life fighting and only finally got their conviction overturned because a private attorney took his case pro bono. I watched someone I know go thru something like this (not a murder or sex offense tho), and say firsthand how the game was played, and how much it costs to pay a private atty. There is a reason attorneys preach never to speak to the police without an attorney even if you are innocent. Also, there are no protections or ways to hold a prosecutor accountable for doing unethical things. Because even if you can prove they did something wrong, they have immunity.
So yes, Diddy has plenty of money to defend himself and hire good attorneys to fight for him and his civil rights. But the average person does not.
For the record I did not comment on Diddy's guilt either. I responded to comments about the jeopardy he was in according to how the system works.
I've worked in the court system myself since 2006, so I have more than a passing familiarity with the workings of a prosecutor's office, public defenders, etc. I've seen enough to question many of the assertions you've made, because I know them either not to be correct or to simply be a misleading recitation of statistics.
My experience has definitely not revealed cases being prosecuted routinely as some kind of game, far from it.
Yes, most people do wind up relying on a public defender. That's not the disadvantage you've characterized it as. Prosecutor or public defender, both are funded from the same ultimate root source -- taxpayers, so that's a level playing field. Public defenders have a lighter case load than prosecutors do, something not even considered in your statistic. An overlooked component of the notion that PDs are often seriously outgunned by prosecutors is that the burden of prosecution lays only on one side. The prosecutor has to carry the case across the finish line and prove every element of the crime(s) asserted. Defense carries none of that responsibility.
Just as people who cannot afford legal counsel are provided court-appointed counsel as part of due process they are also afforded the ability to retain experts to investigate and performing necessary testing and testify as to their professional opinions -- also at public expense. There is no difference in the caliber or professional qualifications of experts available to defendants than those available to the prosecution. Matter of fact, many times prosecution is stuck with competent, yet seriously overworked and distinctly bureaucratic experts from government agencies, such as state crime labs, etc. While the defense has the ability to reach out to one of many guns for hire who work on the private side of the fence because of bigger paychecks, which they frequently earn based on reputations borne out of carefully cultivated presentations and personae designed to dazzle jurors, get results at all costs, facts/schmacts, because the wins build reputations and beget bigger paydays. I've literally seen more than one of these con artists appear on documentaries on Netflix and elsewhere, selling their snake oil. One of them participated in a series that went viral a few years back, stirring up all kinds of public outcry about how a certain defendant was convicted based on highly questionable evidence. I watched the same expert in person in a case here. He testified about the same type of evidence as he did in the TV series. It was factual. It also was not germane to the crime and the evidence the prosecution presented, did not discredit the facts the prosecution presented, and was only brought to bog the jurors down with very technical details in the hope create doubt where there was none. It was sickening. The case here was in the murder of a child. This "expert" goes around the country collecting what qualifies as "extraordinary fees" under the legal classification the judge had to approve for the defense to get the funds approved to retain him. That idea was nowhere to be found in the TV show. I wonder if the audience would have been insisting the convicted defendant be released or get a new trial if they were enlightened about the full picture of the expert's data and opinions? I bet that show wouldn't have been all everybody was talking about for weeks and generated nearly the ratings if that was made known so publicly.
There are protections in place such as Brady and other case law, along with court rules regarding discovery and exculpatory evidence. It's ludicrous to suggest that it's the routine practice of prosecutors to deliberately obfuscate discovery simply for cases to go forward and convict just because. Defense attorneys routinely make motions to quash over much less and are granted relief by the judge.
Who benefits by railroading defendants and making sure they're incarcerated for offenses they didn't commit? Prosecutors live in society with everyone else. Sooner or later even the dimmest bulb is likely to have an aha moment and realize they and those they love are safer if those who actually committed armed robbery, murder, carjacking, home invasion, rape, etc. are the ones incarcerated for those crimes instead of just bullying through any random warm body they can convict or coerce into pleading. Even the nitwits are going to realize odds are higher their pockets will be more likely to be picked, their car is more likely to be stolen and anything they possess of value is at greater risk of being taken from them if they simply prosecute a string of random individuals for these crimes instead of proceeding where evidence strongly indicates the person responsible according to legal standards.
The broad brushstroke you characterize the entire process with simply doesn't hold up to a factual or logical analysis in my experience. The amount of complicit parties in perpetuating such a systemic scheme of deliberately malicious prosecution would have to stretch into numbers that defy all credibility and any stretch of imagination. Police, prosecutors, judges, investigators and experts -- and all the support staff of all of those for starters would all have to be complicit for the scheme you've outlined to hold up. Nobody's lips are going to be loose and spill the beans?
No, it is not a good idea to speak to the police without an attorney if you are a potential subject of investigation. I'd never do it and I would never recommend anyone else do so. That doesn't mean every law enforcement officer is corrupt. It means due process is invaluable and I'd never give up a single right.
Prosecutors do not have carte blanche immunity with no restraints. Like most in public office they have incredibly broad protections, but they are not absolute and beyond all reach.
The system is far from perfect. There are bad actors involved at various times. Mistakes are made. Injustices are done. Overall it does attempt to uphold the ideals it's supposed to stand for.