
New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed - rbcgerard
http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/courts/article_d76e9496-c995-11e7-bd8b-4bb8d14cacbf.html?utm_content=buffera1a9c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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flightrisk
There's an inmate in LA County jail who has been there 9 years awaiting trial
on attempted murder. He is completely and totally institutionalized. A very
nice guy but intimidating.

Cops can arrest you for any reason, and if you can't make bail, then they
place you in jails with convicted violent felons, some on murder trials.

In LA jails, you have to be racist. Depending on your pod and program, you
have special requirements.

You often have to fight, especially if you are black or Hispanic. If there's a
brawl inside the pod, you have to fight other races or you will be beaten by
your own.

I sat in a tiny room for 11 hours with 50 inmates, half of which had face
tattoos and were gang members. A room where inmates had been beaten to death
and the others just cover up the cameras.

Multiple times I wasn't called to court, they were "dry runs". Mental torture
and real risk required just for due process.

These types of systems only create more criminals.

The deputies act like psychopaths, taunting and roughing up inmates. But not
as bad since now the FBI has cameras watching them.

The person who interceded in my misdemeanor case and put me in jail was the
former head of California Homeland Security.

His lawyer, also a former federal prosecutor, was in every court appearance
lobbying the prosecutor. He also represented the Chief of Police, the City
Council and the Sheriff.

Their boss is a secretive billionaire whose former lawyer became the new
Supreme Court Justice this year after he lobbied He is a very powerful person
who hires former federal officials as political mercenaries.

This all happened because they wanted to protect a wealthy sex predator. In
2-weeks, the Homeland official is actually testifying for the sex predator for
his civil trial. He is presumably testifying against my credibility.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Sincere question -- how do we spot things like this?

Let's pretend for a moment that I'm a relatively competent programmer with
small amounts of disposable income to spend on hobbies, such as running
algorithms over government datasets. (Okay, that's a weird one -- but I think
it's good to apply my craft towards politics.) I know a lot about making
computers scan through large sets of data looking for patterns, and some about
making websites and whatnot.

I normally don't think technology does much for political problems, but this
one legitimately sounds like we should be applying fraud-detection style
algorithms to the names that appear in court records, looking for
abnormalities. (Heck, we should probably look for all kinds of irregularities,
not just in the pattern of names.)

Identifying the problem doesn't magically solve it, but it sounds like being
able to assemble subtle cases out of thousands of documents across hundreds of
jurisdictions actually _would_ provide utility towards addressing this.

It doesn't stop the corruption directly, but it shines a pretty bright light
on it. And it allows groups looking to tackle it head on to focus their
efforts on litigating, instead of document finding or figuring out who the
culprits are.

~~~
sillysaurus3
The main problem is that most people in American society don't care what
happens to prisoners. Don't be surprised if you employ these techniques only
to discover nobody lifts a finger.

That said, this would be a project I'd be interested in contributing to. If
you set it up, shoot me an email.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
I'll be honest: I suspect that this is actually quite common and I have
absolutely no idea how to fix it.

But I suspect that much like homelessness, step 0 is gathering an accurate,
systemic level picture so we can even understand _what_ we're trying to fix.
Targeted treatments and good intentions aren't working -- we need a system
level mechanism.

Ed:

I replied to a cached copy; leaving in case anyone raises the same point.

~~~
pas
Local elections. Local police puts local folks into local jails. County jail
is run by local people.

So the question becomes, what is the gamut of these jails? Are there
facilities that are run well, on time, safely, etc..? What separates them from
these hellholes? What's the context? What's the difference between those
counties?

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gok
There are many cases of defendants' right to a speedy trial being trampled.
I'm not completely convinced this is a particularly great example of that.

He was arrested while on parole, which is why he didn't get out on bail. Many
of the delays came from his side. If it had gone to trial, the prosecution
would have only had to prove he was guilty by a preponderance of the evidence.
So the long time in detention could have just been a strategy.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Many of the delays came from his side. If it had gone to trial, the
> prosecution would have only had to prove he was guilty by a preponderance of
> the evidence

No, that would be true if it was just revoking parole on the prior charge
(it's kind of odd that that _didn 't_ happen, but it's possible that the
original sentence ended to soon after the arrest to bother), but this was a
new criminal charge which would have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

~~~
gok
You’re right

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gozur88
While I agree it's unconstitutional to park someone in jail for eight years
without bail or a trial, this particular guy is probably ecstatic at how it
all worked out:

>As a parolee with a previous drug charge to his name, Smith was looking at a
sentence of 20 years to life if convicted as a habitual offender, according to
one of his lawyers.

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derefr
Previous drug _charge_? Does that mean that he wasn't convicted the first
time, either? The only thing "habitual" there, then, would be the police's
desire to arrest him.

~~~
solotronics
it's pretty standard in the US for the district attourney to offer a plea
bargian of parole in exchange for pleading guilty. This results in high win
rate for the attourney and they look at it as most of these parolees end up
making a mistake during parole and going in for longer sentances.

~~~
dragonwriter
Unless some jurisdiction uses “parole” to include what “probation” usually
means, that's incorrect, and even if that's true in some jurisdiction it's not
in Louisiana, where (as is generally the case) you can be sentenced to
_probation_ , or released from a prison sentence on _parole_.

So, as a parolee, he had previously been sentenced to prison and released
under supervision.

~~~
ams6110
If you're out on parole. you're effectively on probation though.

~~~
dragonwriter
Yes, but you don't get parole as a plea bargain, as suggested in GP.

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phil248
I would hope that these days no rational individual could support jail time
for _any_ non-violent drug crime, with the possible exception of cross-border
smuggling, which treads on some different areas of the law.

~~~
retailbuyout
Hmm, I’m not so sure we should allow people to sell fentanyl pops or cocaine
to kids without going to prison. Not arguing against your point broadly, but
that’s exactly the type of response that would sink an effort to remove
imprisonment for non violent drug crimes.

As I see it, we need both a propaganda campaign pointing out how nuts the drug
laws are in addition to some recognizable way of incrementally easing the laws
and adjusting to it. That’s the rational thing an individual would do anyway;
i am more aware than ever you need to parcel these things into 2 year steps
for american power transfers between parties.

To the person who downvoted me, this is distinctly less useful than
contributing the conversation in a meaningul manner.

~~~
djsumdog
One of the big problems in America is simply not effectively treating drug use
and addiction. Putting people in jail doesn't stop drug use.

You're talking about big distributors, not individual users. Portugal has
probably had the best response to drug use, evaluation each case individually
and helping people quit drugs when it interferes with their lives.

~~~
icebraining
Portugal still jails non-violent drug dealers, defined only by the amount
you're carrying.

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leesalminen
The concept of bail negatively affects the poor. Washington DC has a new
system where they got rid of the bail system.

They have 2 options: RoR (release on your own recognizance) and hold until
trial.

Although not perfect, this is much better than a bail system.

~~~
jopsen
> The concept of bail negatively affects the poor.

I thought that was intentional :) afaik bail isn't used much outside the US,
Canada and UK.

The US for-profit bail industry is the usual case of Americans taking a bad
idea to the extreme in the search of a little profit.

~~~
an_account
It makes sense as a deposit to make sure you show up to trial. But in
practice, with bail bonds, it’s a fee. The financial amounts are rarely in
line with what it would take to get someone to show up trial.

~~~
chrisper
If bails were relative to income, then this would maybe not be such a huge
problem.

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selimthegrim
I live in New Orleans. The judge, Flemings-Davillier, is well known as a tool
of the district attorney, Canizzaro, who employs dirty tactics like fake
subpoenas.

For more on Orleans Parish justice, google "Give me a lawyer dog"

~~~
tcarn
Oh man that was a crazy case...

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skbohra123
Sadly, this is common in India. In India there are people in jail for decades,
without even a trial[1].

There are just 15 judges per million people in India as compared to around 110
judges per million in US.

\----

[1] [http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/38-years-in-jail-
without...](http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/38-years-in-jail-without-
trial/story-mKpSuk0mtGjuii6dDQ3DsK.html)

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nickthemagicman
The court system claims it doesn't have enough money while over half the
criminals/defendants are in for drugs.

Theres a very simple solution here.

~~~
bdamm
Am I to assume you mean to legalize drugs?

~~~
praet
I'm pretty confident he's not suggesting a rapid death-penalty for drug-
offenders

~~~
nezzle
Hey it works for Singapore, Indonesia, and probably the Philippines.

I think people are easier to control, but less productive when they have
drugs. So it's really a question of what your nation is optimizing for at the
time.

Of course having a sub-class of previously convicted minor offenders, who as a
result struggle with work/life, can also be fairly effective. It's not exactly
slavery - that was mostly their ancestors.

[https://ramio1983.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/image1df.jpg](https://ramio1983.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/image1df.jpg)

~~~
woah
People in the US have a lot of drugs and are also very productive. Your
assertion makes no sense. I don't know much about Indonesia, but Singapore is
an authoritarian state, and Duerte is trying to turn the Phillipines into a
dictatorship. Tyrants like drug laws, and especially death penalty for drugs
because it gives them an easy way to keep their thugs in practice, remind the
populace that they are ready to kill, and gives them an easy way to
assassinate troublemakers.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Thanks. This is 100% accurate. I think OP was either a troll or we have
Duterte on HN.

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coldtea
If the relevant prosecutor goes to jail for 1-2 years, they'll learn not to do
that the next time.

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dsfyu404ed
It's pretty obvious what happened here. Everyone involved basically assumed he
was or would be found guilty and didn't see an issue with him sitting in a
cell for "just a few more months"

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clord
The government should pay back-salary to anyone with a case dismissed in this
manner. This would cause queue back-pressure that would focus the system on
high-value targets at the front of the queue.

~~~
loeg
You're arguing that higher income poeple should get speedier trials than lower
income people?

~~~
taneq
If jury duty is anything to go on, they'd pay minimum wage regardless of the
suspect's income.

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int_19h
If you have so many people in jail awaiting trial that judges have multi-year
backlogs to try cases, that says a lot about the justice system... but more
importantly, what does it say about the laws themselves?

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Feniks
Stop being poor. That's the only solution.

Because you can go back in time 30 years and find articles like this or fast
forward 30 years and find articles like this. Its not going to change.

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petre
This is outright extorsion for bail money.

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Elv13
I think we have to be careful given the article only looks at one side. While
in this case it took an absurd turn and is a clear case of "lock this dude
behind bars: we don't like him", it is not always that simple.

I would give as an example the patent trolls. They abuse of the court and fill
motions after motions (or dismiss early) for the sole purpose of making their
case expansive to defend against. A knowledgeable inmate or greedy public
defendant could use the same tactics and delay the case only for the deadline
to pass. If it can turn a life sentence into a 24 months one, then
procrastination and delays are the quickest way out of jail.

That being said, for recurrent inmates, the failure of the system is
definitely in the rehab process. In some US states, it seems like the legal
system exists only to sustain itself, its elected officials and the industries
(lawyers, penitentiary, investigators, forensic) that runs it. This case is
apparently a blatant example of bureaucracy indifference. If the fact were
shown in their face, they would blame the weather or the defendant own motions
to have his rights taken into account. I am not a socialist, far from it.
However when it comes to absurdities such as this, it is a clear sign that a
proper social net is necessary to avoid a slippery slopes where the
incarcerated population will grow and grow and grow. So do the expanses
associated with it. Better solve the problem instead of the consequences.

