Maybe one day.

Sorry that's the only answer I have.

D2 can demand more but I dont have his knowledge or competence so it's all, I can say.

Not knowing specifics like whether or not someone should get parole is very annoying given my strong view on the needfor parole being possible. People want easy answers nor hard ones.

Opposing and not being bothered by the nonsense of the bullies always annoyed them in the playground as well.

Spelling for some reason.

Being an arse

Being amused by trolls rather than annoyed by them seems to really get to them.

Plus many other talents.

Jealous?

On a tangential topic about the criminal justice system, what do people think about the plea deal system in the US? I have always had a problem with it in that from a minmax model the "correct" decision could be for an innocent man to take a guilty plea and a short sentence because of the nonzero chance that a jury could make a mistake and send an innocent man away for along time. Its easy to say well, if you are innocent just go to trial and be found not guilty. But it just doesnt always work that way.

Another thing that bothers me is that it basically says that the prosecutors have more important things to do, so they are willing to offer you years off a sentence just to save them some time and effort. It just seems bizarre to me. Seems to me this system punishes innocent people and rewards the guilty ones.

I amost brought that up earlier. I once posted about it how it should be banned. The response from the usual suspects (and some unexpected ones) was amazing and quite funny

I'm still of the same view. It's coercive, and in opposition to justice. It should be banned (although not in isolation)

edited as I found the thread. Good stuff. oh the nostalga

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/4...-down-1619972/

Most people arrested are guilty. They know they are guilty and are trying to get the lightest punishment possible. And the system would likely get too backlogged if all cases went to trail. Pleading out thus helps both the defendants and the prosecutors.

In a general, gut feeling sense I would think you are correct. But do you have any sort of source for that statement that most people arrested are guilty? I think an awful lot of people are arrested and then have charges dropped or are found not guilty. I have no idea of the actual stats about how many people are found not guilty at trial. But each one who is potentially is someone that the coercion of a plea deal would have screwed over.

It isn't inevitable that you either go to trial or plead guilty if you are arrested. Sometimes people are arrested and then prosecutors decide to drop the charges.

I don't have any sources there but it seems correct.

No doubt there have been some cases where someone is innocent but the evidence looks bad and they take a plea. Legal dramas are built on this sort of stuff-- usually with the defense attorneys urging their client to plea and the defendants refusing to admit to a crime they didn't commit. It makes for good TV.

When cases do actually go to trial though, the conviction rate is very high- and I did find some numbers there-- https://www.pewresearch.org/short-re...itted-in-2022/ -- Less than 1% are acquitted at the Federal level. Perhaps in county courts the number of acquittals is a bit higher but I doubt it's by much.

Yeah, I saw that something like 95% of federal cases are settled by plea deal instead of going to trial. They say that if those people went to trial the system would grind to a halt. But I just wonder from a philosophical perspective, if the state has evidence that you are guilty of crime X, which has a minimum sentence of 15 years, meaning the state has detrmined that is the minimum appropriate punishment for anyone guilty of crime X, that the state should be able to just waive that punishment and ignore the fact that you are guilty of crime X at all. Instead,a simply to save time, they basically say "you are guilty of crime X and should serve 15 years, but make our job easier and we will pretend you only did crime Y and send you to jsil for 5 years.

That whole construct seems corrupt to me. Esp considering that whether a person is offered such a deal is dependent on individual prosecutors who may have political or personal reasons to not offer a deal. Should one person be able to get a deal for crime Y and 5 years when another person guilty of the very same offense not ne offered a deal because the prosecutor is up for reelection and wants to appear tough on crime? Or perhaps one district is backlogged in cases while another is not?

So I see how it can be advantageous in some circumstances but it seems like the whole system is based on a corrupt foundation. Maybe if there was some sort of standardization, like anyone facing trial for X will be offered a deal for Y, rather than giving individual prosecutors personal discretion. Im sure if I worked through that, it would create another set of problems as well. It just strikes me as an inherently unjust, albiet convenient process.

I don't have a ton of experience with the justice system, but I got pulled over outside of Flagstaff like 4 years ago and had an unpaid speeding ticket in New Mexico and so my car was impounded until I paid that, and between getting my car towed to Flagstaff which I had to pay for and everything else, it cost like $800.

So then like a month later I still had to go to court in Flagstaff for the speeding ticket, and I asked the prosecutor if he could cut me a break because of how expensive everything was he reduced the fine from like $200 something to $100. I had no lawyer and just asked nicely. Whoever the person was I actually paid the money to was like "I've never seen that before".

The fact that someone is found not guilty doesn't mean that they really didn't commit the crime they were charged with. It just means there was not enough evidence to convince a jury (unanimously, even) beyond a reasonable doubt. I would guess that at least half the people found not guilty in criminal trials actually committed the crime.

For all the publicity that innocent people getting convicted of crimes gets, everyone knows that there is far more of the opposite happening.

You couldn't just plead guilty and pay the fine instead of showing up in court? Seems like the travel and wasted time would have cost more than the $100 you saved.

You couldn't get a more simple question than "should serial killers and mass murderers be paroled or given lwop?" You're just a garbled weirdo.

I don't like the concept of plea deals mainly for the reasons you outlined and it implies a conveyor belt system of justice.

The possibiltiy of parole is a quite normal answer. Also the correct one imo. Nothing garbled or wierd about it.

What's a bit wierd is you not just saying that you disagree and that you think there should be no possibility of parole.

A lot of people look at increased sentences for defendants who are convicted at trial as a "trial tax", but it really depends on your perspective - you could argue that that is the "correct" sentence and you get a "plea discount" for not wasting the government's time and money on a trial.

There is nothing wrong with plea bargains per se, but as with anything, they can be misused, overused, and abused. There is nothing inherently wrong with the concept that a guilty person admits his or her guilt, saves a bunch of resources that would otherwise be expended on a trial, and gets recognition for this and for acceptance of responsibility at sentencing.

However, in the US, prosecutors often wield increased charges and/or charges that carry mandatory minimums or three strikes / career criminal eligibility as a cudgel to essentially coerce defendants into pleading to charges that do not carry those sentencing enhancements, as those enhancements can often lead to life or 20 year+ sentences. This is obviously a coercive practice, but one borne more out of draconian sentencing laws and guidelines than anything else. If prosecutors did not have the ability to blackmail defendants with possible or even mandatory excessive sentences at trial, this problem goes away on its own.

There is also a lot of interstate variation (and between the states and the federal government) as to what a given sentence means in practice. For example, there is no parole in the federal system, so you will always need to serve at least 85% of whatever the judge gives you. Some states are like that as well. Other states have parole eligibility, usually when somewhere around 50% of the sentence has been served. Some states have a reputation for having parole in name only, and almost never granting it in practice. This consideration also makes a big difference to a defendant's calculus when choosing whether to plead out or go to trial.

As to Luckbox' point, I think it's fair to say that probably 95%+ of people are factually guilty of at the very least conduct adjacent to that for which they were arrested. Quite often the defence will file a bunch of motions to suppress evidence or exclude potential witness testimony for various reasons (e.g. unlawful search & seizure), and if those are all unsuccessful, the defendant is dead to rights and will plead out. If they are successful and the prosecution knows it can't convict without the suppressed evidence, they will drop the charges, but that certainly doesn't mean or even imply that the defendant is factually innocent.

FYI - there is a process to pleading guilty, which includes allocuting in open court that you committed the crime. That alone may dissuade a factually innocent defendant from pleading guilty, depending on the severity and nature of the crime in question. Also, if the judge is not convinced that you are pleading guilty or the right reasons, and that the plea is made voluntarily and knowingly (and soberly - the judge will always ask if you're drunk or high or on meds or otherwise impaired), the court can and sometimes does refuse to accept the plea.

For more severe crimes and sentences, another factor which may dissuade an innocent defendant from taking a guilty plea is that it carries automatic loss of all direct appellate rights (I think collateral appeals such as habeas corpus remain available, not 100% sure). This isn't really a consideration for sentences under 5 years or so, since appeals usually take that long anyway.

I could not have in this instance, not sure why not.

But you didn't answer. I'll try again and I only need a yes or no answer.
Should serial killers and mass murderers be given parole , yes or no?
If you continue to persist with your garbled incoherent nonsense then you're trolling at best or an obtuse weirdo. Neither explanation says much for you. So again parole or not? Yes or no?

Y'all hear about the two brothers, 14 and 15, arguing over who got more Christmas gifts, and the 14-year-old pulls out his .40 and threatens to shoot the 15-year-old?

The uncle separates the two and brings the 14-year-old out in the driveway to cool him off. His older sister, who is holding her 10-month-old infant, tells him that it's Christmas and yada yada, and then he threatens to shoot her and her baby.

He then shoots her. Then the 15-year-old comes out with his .45 and shoots his brother. Apparently these two carried guns around like they do their cellphones.

Probation, right?

I got a speeding ticket once in North Carolina. You had to appear in court to pay your fine. Or, you could have a local lawyer show up and do it for you. The cop just happened to have a list of local lawyers that did this sort of thing. My impression of how it played out was - Fine $100. I paid lawyer $150 to cover his fee and the fine. Lawyer convinces the judge (who he probably golfs with) to lower the fine to $50. Lawyer pockets the rest.

Not sure I'd give probation to whoever's responsible for them having guns.

The sheriff says they got them from breaking into cars. The 14-year-old has an arrest record from when he was 12, and two of the charges at 12 were breaking into cars and possession of a firearm. Now he's facing murder. Whom would you like to hold accountable?

Your earlier post makes it sound like it was known they had guns on a regular basis rather than it being a shock.

Being children doesn't absolve them of all responsibility but there has likely been a very serious failure by adults.

It wasn't a shock. Kid got busted with a firearm by police at 12.

So charge the mom with murder?