
Video of Valley Mogul Kicking His Girlfriend 117 Times Could Send Him to Jail - nreece
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/08/video-of-silicon-valley-mogul-kicking-his-girlfriend-117-times-could-send-him-to-jail.html
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JKSingh12
I've known the guy, his entire career is based on lies and deception. Some
years ago he started a restaurant called Planet Bollywood in Milpitas (ripoff
of Planet Hollywood). It obviously failed and he faced lawsuits for trademark
infringement. He burned the entire place down and collected the insurance
money. Very old story, but nothing about the guy has changed.

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puranjay
AdTech in its early years was filled with scumbags

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xupybd
"And it seemed certain that 31-year-old Chahal was one Silicon Valley start-up
star for whom IPO would now stand for Initial Prison Offering." Really? A pun
when the topic is that serious. I'm all for dark humour, but domestic violence
and puns shouldn't mix.

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mbreedlove
Yeah, I thought it seemed a little out of place .

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tempestn
And it was repeated numerous times throughout. Really detracted from the
overall article.

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jakobegger
I don't get why US judges often throw out evidence because it was not acquired
according to correct procedure. I understand that confessions made under
pressure are worthless, since people confess anything when threatened or
tortured. But factual evidence like a video recording? What difference does it
make how it was acquired?

The correct action in a case like this should be to use the evidence, and
discipline the officer who violated regulations.

When a court disregards obvious evidence, and pretends that it doesn't know
things it really does; and when that happens to help a well situated criminal
with expensive attorneys; then the obvious result is that the public loses
trust in the government. The abstract ideal of "justice" must guide how the
law is applied. If courts rule only according to the law as it is written,
rather than on the spirit behind it, when courts fail to bring justice to
criminals; then we will end up with lynch mobs and vigilantes.

Who can blame a redneck in the woods stocking up on guns when you read an
article like that? You can't trust a government that lets a wife beater run
free because of a formality. When the system doesn't protect you, you need to
protect yourself. Right?

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tempestn
While I agree that it's painful seeing evidence thrown out for procedural
reasons, there is certainly logic behind it, as it provides a check on the
power of the police. It may well be the lesser evil (as intended). Simply
disciplining an officer who doesn't follow procedure may not be sufficient
incentive to prevent people's rights from being ignored. That's especially
true if officers cover for one another so it's not even possible to determine
who is responsible. Unless the punishment is extremely harsh (which would
unfairly penalize legitimate mistakes), it may often not be effective anyway,
as many well-meaning officers could accept punishment in order to put (who
they believe is) the bad guy away. The problem is, when you start going in
that direction, innocent people's rights will be infringed as well. You
already see cases all the time where innocent people go to jail due to police
bending or breaking the rules. I have to think that allowing all factual
evidence regardless of source would make that worse.

That said, it's obviously not a just result in an individual case like this.
It would be nice to be able to have justice in these situations without losing
the overall disincentive. I'm not sure that it's possible, but would love to
be wrong.

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coldtea
> _While I agree that it 's painful seeing evidence thrown out for procedural
> reasons, there is certainly logic behind it, as it provides a check on the
> power of the police. It may well be the lesser evil (as intended). Simply
> disciplining an officer who doesn't follow procedure may not be sufficient
> incentive to prevent people's rights from being ignored._

Then escalate that punishment as needed, still without throwing out evidence?
E.g. fire the officer outright, don't just "discipline" him, and impose a
penalty to his whole department.

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1123581321
Evidence is processed correctly almost every time. This suggests that
inadmissibility is already an effective penalty.

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coldtea
We weren't discussing whether inadmissibility is an effective penalty or not
though.

What we where discussing was if inadmissibility is good for serving justice
(as opposed to serving as a guard against illegally obtaining evidence, and if
so, whether we can abolish inadmissibility and use other, equally capable
guards against illegally obtaining evidence).

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auggierose
What's really frightening is how major bribes are done quite casually and as
if there is nothing much to it.

That's something you would not want to occur in your democracy.

How do you effectively fight this sort of behaviour? I think what would be
necessary is a system where all money is handled electronically and
transparently, such that bribes would be immediately visible to everyone.

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anentropic
I guess then they wouldn't use money

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auggierose
Good point, I was thinking about that too. What kind of system would be mostly
immune to bribery and corruption?

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th894983
This was already discussed on HN. I found really troubling how the whole thing
just evaporated. Shit-storm around Brendan Eich who did much less, started
around the same time, and lasted for months.

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angrow
Another commenter claims Chahal has secured the services of a PR firm which
specializes in taking down stories like this, to keep then from spreading.
Maybe it works sometimes.

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smcl
OK sorry for going off-topic on a topic as serious as this, but I've got a
question about something that's been bugging me for ages.

There's 8 sentences in a row that start with "Never mind that..." \- is there
a name for this style of writing (repeating yourself, presumably for dramatic
effect)? It really irritates me, but I can never describe it to anyone and I
don't know how to google for it.

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chatmasta
When used with care, it's called an "anaphora." At least, that's what we
called it in my Latin classes.

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coldtea
It might have been called that way in the latin classes, but the term is
Ancient Greek for "reference" (as in: "in reference of" i.e. "speaking about",
etc).

In rhetoric, it is about what you said -- beginning several statements with
the same sentence/opening, addressing the same issue with different arguments
for rhetorical effect.

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girvo
> In a brilliant move, the district attorney’s office asked the judge if the
> video from the first case could be admitted to establish that the second
> assault was essentially a repeat offense. The judge ruled that it could.

My initial reaction is that this is an interesting ruling, but then my
knowledge of these sorts of rulings is decidedly spotty? I'm going to assume
it's not the only thing that has been put forward to the judge: the 911 call
definitely helped, and frankly I have little sympathy for the accused, but
otherwise I find the idea of a video of past behaviour being used as evidence
for current behaviour (on it's own) sort of... odd?

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k-mcgrady
Is it maybe used to establish character? For example you he could have
character witnesses testifying he's a good guy saying this behaviour is out of
character and the other side could show the past video to prove it's not?

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camillomiller
Rich man does illegal things that involve damaging another person and gets
away with it because he's rich and has connections and could pay the victim a
hefty sum.

Nothing to see here, people, move on.

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the_other
Did his estate pay you to say that?

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thinkcomp
His civil litigation history is here, including some of the lawsuits mentioned
in the article.

[http://www.plainsite.org/profiles/chahal-
gurbaksh/](http://www.plainsite.org/profiles/chahal-gurbaksh/)

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codeduck
'could' should be 'will'

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tempestn
As the article explains, that's not yet a certainty:

> Then again, the judge could conceivably allow Chahal once more to avoid
> incarceration, depending on what the probation report recommends.

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ttam
Heh, it seems like he published a book back in 2009
[https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Learned-Rewards-
Entrepreneurshi...](https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Learned-Rewards-
Entrepreneurship-Millions/dp/0230618952)

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scotty79
Does the legal process in USA have discovering the truth as one of its stated
goals?

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dragonwriter
> Does the legal process in USA have discovering the truth as one of its
> stated goals?

It doesn't have "stated goals" at all, but its probably most accurate to view
its goals as determining appropriate consequences under the law, with
"discovering truth" as not a goal, but of some value instrumentally to the
actual goal.

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max38383
This is nothing new. You can't actually even find much information about the
whole thing online because he's paid off and sued to ensure that nothing
damaging was online and tried to replace it with positive PR.

This article will be gone soon too. Buying off another girlfriend, judge, and
a few media sites is still chump change... and it seem VCs seem to jive with
that kind of skill set that he has.

He may have a career in politics come to think of it.

