
One Lawyer, One Day, 194 Felony Cases - ALee
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/31/us/public-defender-case-loads.html
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jMyles
There's no question that the "justice" system is just completely broken. The
only reason we even comply with it at all is not a sense that it is creating
peace and order in society, but simply that the people who administer it are
hellishly violent to people who try not to comply (or, in some cases, even
people who are just merely critical, as evinced by, for example, retaliatory
actions taking by police departments in response to facebook posts).

Nevertheless, articles like this are good for putting things into focus. The
graphic showing the assessment that "Mr. Talaska needed to do the work of five
full-time lawyers to serve all of his clients" is convincing and powerful.

But at the end of the day, the question is this: what are we going to do in
order to replace this system? Can we effectively build an alternate system
(perhaps based on restorative justice) in parallel, and then hope for a clean
drop-in replacement? Is there precedent for such a thing in history?

A runaway justice system seems like such a difficult thing to fix, but I think
it's becoming clearer and clearer that it's a top priority for the health and
direction of the United States, if they are to survive at all.

~~~
tyingq
Not practical for many reasons, but: Ban plea bargains and automatically
exonerate anyone that sits more than 30 days awaiting trial. The system would
probably adjust to fit crimes worth going after.

Maybe there's some less drastic version of this that forces the state hand.

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gleenn
Can you expand on why plea bargains are bad?

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xfitm3
"Guilty pleas have replaced trials for a very simple reason: individuals who
choose to exercise their Sixth Amendment right to trial face exponentially
higher sentences if they invoke the right to trial and lose. Faced with this
choice, individuals almost uniformly surrender the right to trial rather than
insist on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, defense lawyers spend most of their
time negotiating guilty pleas rather than ensuring that police and the
government respect the boundaries of the law including the proof beyond a
reasonable doubt standard, and judges dedicate their time to administering
plea allocutions rather than evaluating the constitutional and legal aspects
of the government’s case and police conduct. Equally important, the public
rarely exercises the oversight function envisioned by the Framers and inherent
in jury service."

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2018/07/31/are-
inno...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2018/07/31/are-innocent-
people-pleading-guilty-a-new-report-says-yes/#717d12ff5193)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/plea-
ba...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/plea-bargaining-
courts-prosecutors/524112/)

~~~
jdietrich
To give a tangible example, Aaron Swartz was offered a plea bargain for six
months in federal prison, on charges that carry a maximum sentence of 35 years
imprisonment.

In simple game theoretic terms, it's usually optimal to take the plea bargain
even if you're innocent, you've got good representation and your case is
strong. A certainty of a short sentence is preferable to the possibility of
your life being ruined.

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burtonator
Someone needs to make the argument that if the defense attorney does not have
the same budget per case as the prosecutor that it's essentially like not
having an attorney.

The government wants it both ways.

Corporations are people and money = speech.

However, if you're poor, and have no money to defend yourself, it doesn't
matter because the government essentially gives you a few dollars.

They're giving you a FRACTION of a lawyer.

I don't want a court appointed attorney. If I can't afford a lawyer the courts
should give me a budget to hire my own lawyer.

~~~
Latteland
I agree that when there is no time to do anything for the case, that this
should be a strong aspect of a challenge to a conviction. I don't know about
the same budget though, what about OJ Simpson's huge defense team vs the
state.

Those people basically have no defense, and I think if there is no budget for
adequate defense, then you cannot prosecute them. I need to find out how my
own large city fares in this scenario of public defender time.

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burtonator
True.. the reverse is true too. If a defendant wants to spend more than the
state the defendant should be required to make the difference vs they are
spending.

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AnthonyMouse
Then the state has the incentive to fund the prosecutor's office to 0% because
they can make defendants pay for it as soon as they want to defend themselves
at all, and prosecutors get the incentive to create massive administrative
burdens because every dollar a defendant spends dealing with their
obstructionism is another dollar they get from the defendant.

You also screw over the poor because now their defense costs are doubled (on
top of the obstructionism) when they couldn't afford them to begin with.

And if a defendant spends $50,000 to successfully prove that it was someone
else, now they have to pay $50,000 to the prosecutor's office for falsely
accusing them. Unless the prosecutor only gets the money if they win, in which
case we get a whole new set of problematic incentives on the other side (make
up evidence to win major cases or your office goes bankrupt), and we're back
to the original problem where the rich get away with everything by outspending
the government and then don't have to pay because they got away with it.

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tyingq
As a US citizen, it's honestly embarrassing. The high volume also means
prosecutors get to use plea deals as extortion, even when they have no chance
of actually prosecuting. Then there's also the awful state of our
bail/jail/prison system.

It seems like the demographics are changing enough that we could actually
start changing our punishment (vs rehabilitation) centric justice system.

We're now close to 1% of the adult population in prison, and 2% on probation.
I wonder what the percentage of _" was ever in prison, or had an immediate
family member in prison"_ is.

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pjc50
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-
canada-46471444](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46471444) :

> Nearly half of all US adults have had an immediate family member
> incarcerated at some point in their lives, according to a new study.

> African American adults were 50% more likely than white Americans to have
> had a family member jailed

> 54% of jailed parents were the breadwinners of their families.

~~~
tyingq
Wow. Higher than I would have guessed. I wonder why reform doesn't resonate as
an election issue.

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pjc50
"Tough on crime" just resonates much more. Also, felons are disqualified from
voting; then there's the usual set of gerrymandering, voter suppression,
misleading news, etc. problems of the system as a whole.

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bookofjoe
"A Naked Singularity," Sergio De La Pava's debut novel — a fictionalized
account of his life as a public defender in Manhattan (self-published in 2008)
that went on to win the PEN Prize for Debut Fiction in 2013 after being
commercially re-published in 2012 — is superb. From Wikipedia: "He works as a
public defender in Manhattan, where he handles 70 to 80 cases at a time." See:
[http://quarterlyconversation.com/a-naked-singularity-by-
serg...](http://quarterlyconversation.com/a-naked-singularity-by-sergio-de-la-
pava)

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edoo
In some places if they run out of public defenders they hire a private
attorney to act as one and they get paid a straight fee per case, no matter if
the defendant pleads guilty on day one or it takes years. There is no better
way to incentivize a public defender to push for a plea bargain.

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nyolfen
louisiana might be the worst place in the country to encounter the justice
system. fun fact: it’s prohibited to seek damages if you’re exonerated after
you’ve been imprisoned by them

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mrleiter
As a law student (in a civil law jurisdiction) aspiring to become a criminal
attorney, this is sickening. It's a machine that is crushing individuals who
stand almost no chance. It's wrong in so many places, I don't even know where
to begin with.

Whether it's the well known plea deal business that renders courts and trial
by jury useless plea by plea; or the money public defenders earn; or the way
prisons work in the US (by focusing on punishment and locking up, rather than
resocialising) and so on and so forth.

Everybody deserves a fair trial. I think in the US it's even in the Bill of
Rights or its amendments. You maybe fucked up in live at one point and very
often it's due to circumstances that are out of your hands. But you still are
a human and you still deserve to be treated with respect.

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mmmBacon
My god, I feel for these people. When you read stuff like this, you have to
wonder why anyone is a public defender and grateful that people sign up. It
seems soul crushing even for the most idealistic of people. The caseload
results in situations beyond your control that can punish you. I also have to
wonder if one of the reasons why we have so many people in jail is because we
have hugely overworked public defenders.

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phissk
Keep educating anyone who might ever serve on a jury about jury nullification
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification)
and make then feel ok about using it aggressively.

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devoply
Never ever be caught up in the criminal justice system without your own lawyer
that you have paid for, period. In fact they should sell some cheap insurance
for this purpose.

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minkzilla
Great advice for people who are rich. Meaningless a large chunk of the
population.

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donmcronald
That's the worst (mobile) site layout I've seen in a long time.

