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qingcharles 4 hours ago [-]
One other point about Cook County in particular. Not only is it regularly listed as the biggest single-site jail in the country, but it usually has the longest-serving detainees who have yet to reach trial.
Augustin Toscano has so far spent 14 years in pretrial detention without conviction and no sign of trial in the near future. He is not an outlier. There are dozens near or over a decade inside CCJ.
Terr_ 6 days ago [-]
> It’s typically more than a month after an arrest before your first meeting with a client. [...] This is why the bond system is a form of blackmail.
The ACLU has a nice FAQ on the evils of "cash bail" here [0].
> [Public Defenders] try to establish trust by being part psychologist, part medic, part cleric.
Now I kind of want to see a TTRPG based on legal practice.
> As a way around the constitutional requirement that they get warrants to search houses, the police were claiming that they were simply walking down the hallway when they looked in the window of our client’s apartment and saw him weighing and packaging cocaine in plain view. They also claimed that he was doing this with his apartment door open, so they hadn’t needed a forced entry.
> [...] We went to the [Chicago Housing Authority] management offices, where they had records of giving Deuce citations for repeatedly covering up windows. We also talked to the maintenance man who had been assigned to repair Deuce’s door after his arrest. The maintenance crew had taken pictures that clearly showed damage to the doorjamb, backing up Deuce’s claim that the door had been kicked in.
It's infuriating that this kind of "are the police total liars" testing is so necessary in the first place.
> [Case where young man violently attacked by gang and chased into his grandmother's house uses a legally-owned gun to scare them away from the door] I begged for the mercy of a misdemeanor instead of a felony. The state flatly refused. [...] As clearly sympathetic as the judge was [...] prosecutors got their pound of flesh in the form of another young Black man with a felony conviction that will follow him for the rest of his life.
> As fate would have it, almost immediately after that case [...] Tank Johnson, who played for the Bears, caught a UUW of his own. [...] Since judges have no authority to control charges being filed or withdrawn, there was nothing to be done from the bench when a deal was reached for a reduction of Johnson’s charge from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Quite a contrast, and it's a kind of screwy thing that I bet most people instinctively expect should no be happening.
I'm currently dealing with a small claims debt collection case (so, admittedly, way less serious and devastating than a criminal trial for a felony). The debt collector and their attorney habitually engage in "sewer service", and in my case, never actually served me. They say they did, at an address I and no one I know has lived at for years, to someone that they say is me (the "me" that's half-a-foot taller and 30 pounds lighter). Completely different county from where I currently live and work, too.
State laws say that the case should be dismissed, and that the debt collector can refile and actually serve me. Not a single attorney I've talked to (if they'll talk to me at all) has said that a judge will actually do that, though. Screw what the law says; evidently, they have the leeway - and generally do rule - to simply say that showing up to defend against the case cures the service issues.
It's all been a bit of a revelation. I call bullshit on judges who say that their hands are tied by the law. What's actually happened is that quasi-legal judicial norms have developed over time, and what they're afraid to go against are those. It is, of course, pure happenstance that they feel obligated to throw the book at criminal defendants pleading sympathy (because otherwise they'd be getting in the way of the careers of fellow legal professionals, the prosecutors) while ignoring civil defendants begging for their constitutional right to due process be affirmed (because otherwise they'd be getting in the way of the livelihood of fellow legal professionals, the debt collectors).
qingcharles 5 hours ago [-]
A friend of a friend asked me to look at a debt collection case a year or so ago. I pulled all the records, in-person only (Cook County, their records system is fucked for both civil and criminal). Immediately I see the service wasn't right (somewhere the defendant didn't live). The attorney who filed the case (and 900 others in the same courthouse) was a ghost. Google returns zero results for their name. Their listed address on their filings was basically a closet in a suburb. Their bar records show they have practiced for 30 years without leaving a single mark online. When I got hold of them on the phone and they realized I was onto them they said they would only communicate by fax and no other method. Thank the lord for free online fax gateways. Sent fax. Three days later, case dismissed.
recursivecaveat 5 hours ago [-]
While looking into "sewer service" I found an extremely foul supreme court case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotkiske_v._Klemm Knowingly serve somebody at the wrong address, acquire default judgement, statute of limitations expires before they even become aware of it.
NoMoreNicksLeft 9 hours ago [-]
>The ACLU has a nice FAQ on the evils of "cash bail" here [0].
There's nothing evil about it in principle. Securing someone's presence at trial requires that they lose something if they fail to show. When judges set bail so high that people cannot afford it out of pocket, they are at fault. Not the concept of cash bail. If bail were set at amounts people could afford, they do not lose the money... it is returned when they show for trial regardless of the verdict.
Our constitution actually has an amendment, in the Bill of Rights no less, forbidding excessive bail. Has no one ever heard of it?
The judges do this shit for many reasons. For one, when someone should not be remanded on bail because they are a danger to society, judges will often set the bail at eleventy zillion dollars, knowing that they won't be able to post bail. But in doing so, they slowly erode psychological norms among their colleagues as to what is excessive. The presence of a bail bond industry, and the lobbying of bail bondsmen only makes it worse. Most of the people you know actually believe that all bail money is forfeited because of bail bonding.
The only solution needed is means-testing bail amounts.
qingcharles 5 hours ago [-]
Illinois required means-tested bail even before they scrapped cash bail, by statute. Not a single judge complied with the legal requirements. It was totally arbitrary. Because the judges could not be trusted the decision was stripped from them entirely.
And yes, the 8th Amend. forbids excessive bail too.
Nobody cared enough.
Also, even if a defendant was adequately means-tested it doesn't mean they can access their wealth from within jail. Really hard to get your Charles Schwab 2FA codes inside a cell.
gottorf 6 hours ago [-]
> For one, when someone should not be remanded on bail because they are a danger to society, judges will often set the bail at eleventy zillion dollars, knowing that they won't be able to post bail
Why can't they just deny bail in such cases? Is it local laws that forbid them from doing so? In which case, it seems that the ability to set a ridiculously high bail is a net benefit to society.
qingcharles 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah, a lot of places required a bail amount of something. The joke is on the judge, though. When I checked in 2022 in Cook County there were 92 homicide cases out on bail, each having paid an average of around $150K cash.
There were also hundreds of minor shoplifting and other petty cases with bail set at $250 or less who had been locked in the jail for months since they could not afford to bond out.
whack 9 hours ago [-]
> As a way around the constitutional requirement that they get warrants to search houses, the police were claiming that they were simply walking down the hallway when they looked in the window of our client’s apartment and saw him weighing and packaging cocaine in plain view. They also claimed that he was doing this with his apartment door open, so they hadn’t needed a forced entry.
> Our client didn’t deny he was packaging cocaine at his kitchen table, but he insisted that he was not doing it brazenly in the open; that not only had he covered his windows with taped-up sheets and garbage bags, but he had closed and locked his door, as you might expect for someone engaged in illegal activities. We went to the CHA management offices, where they had records of giving Deuce citations for repeatedly covering up windows. We also talked to the maintenance man who had been assigned to repair Deuce’s door after his arrest. The maintenance crew had taken pictures that clearly showed damage to the doorjamb, backing up Deuce’s claim that the door had been kicked in.
> We proved that the search and arrest were done in violation of the Constitution, and so the evidence collected during the arrest could not be used at trial. The charges had to be dropped.
TLDR: our client was guilty as sin. He admitted it. He was caught red-handed. He still got off scot-free.
Not arguing against any of the above. But this example hilariously contradicts the claim that "the system is stacked against the accused"
ooterness 8 hours ago [-]
Everybody gets the same constitutional rights, and for good reason.
If the cops can violate those rights at will, lie through their teeth to cover it up, and get away with it, then nobody has any rights.
phlummox 2 hours ago [-]
> But this example hilariously contradicts the claim that "the system is stacked against the accused"
How does it contradict that? It sounds like you're saying "The system is, in fact, stacked in favour of the accused", but I'm not seeing that here.
In principle, the system _should_ be stacked in favour of the accused - it's a high bar to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a crime occurred, using only legally obtained evidence. But the examples from the article seem to suggest that in most cases, police and prosecutors have it much easier than that.
dullcrisp 9 hours ago [-]
Because the police violated the constitution by breaking down his door without a warrant, and were apparently doing so as a matter of practice?
qingcharles 4 hours ago [-]
The reason the USA has an unusual system of letting the guilty criminal walk free due to police misconduct is that there was no other punishment that worked to reign in the behavior.
In a perfect system the police would be punished, either civilly or criminally, for their wrongdoing, but a prosecutor will almost never bring a case against a cop who has brought them juicy evidence. It would be career suicide. So here we are.
watwut 1 hours ago [-]
It does not seem to work to reign bad cops behavior. What it somehow achieved instead is that it is impossible to punish cops unless they are super duper blatant.
diego_moita 13 hours ago [-]
2 proverbs from southern Brazil:
"The job of a judge is to arrest the poor, free the rich and carve some sweet nepotism for his/her relatives".
"From a judge's head, a politician's mouth and a baby's but you should always expect the same thing".
jb1991 12 hours ago [-]
Here in Mexico I definitely know a few people who feel similarly.
Augustin Toscano has so far spent 14 years in pretrial detention without conviction and no sign of trial in the near future. He is not an outlier. There are dozens near or over a decade inside CCJ.
The ACLU has a nice FAQ on the evils of "cash bail" here [0].
> [Public Defenders] try to establish trust by being part psychologist, part medic, part cleric.
Now I kind of want to see a TTRPG based on legal practice.
> As a way around the constitutional requirement that they get warrants to search houses, the police were claiming that they were simply walking down the hallway when they looked in the window of our client’s apartment and saw him weighing and packaging cocaine in plain view. They also claimed that he was doing this with his apartment door open, so they hadn’t needed a forced entry.
> [...] We went to the [Chicago Housing Authority] management offices, where they had records of giving Deuce citations for repeatedly covering up windows. We also talked to the maintenance man who had been assigned to repair Deuce’s door after his arrest. The maintenance crew had taken pictures that clearly showed damage to the doorjamb, backing up Deuce’s claim that the door had been kicked in.
It's infuriating that this kind of "are the police total liars" testing is so necessary in the first place.
> [Case where young man violently attacked by gang and chased into his grandmother's house uses a legally-owned gun to scare them away from the door] I begged for the mercy of a misdemeanor instead of a felony. The state flatly refused. [...] As clearly sympathetic as the judge was [...] prosecutors got their pound of flesh in the form of another young Black man with a felony conviction that will follow him for the rest of his life.
> As fate would have it, almost immediately after that case [...] Tank Johnson, who played for the Bears, caught a UUW of his own. [...] Since judges have no authority to control charges being filed or withdrawn, there was nothing to be done from the bench when a deal was reached for a reduction of Johnson’s charge from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Quite a contrast, and it's a kind of screwy thing that I bet most people instinctively expect should no be happening.
[0] https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/bail-reform
State laws say that the case should be dismissed, and that the debt collector can refile and actually serve me. Not a single attorney I've talked to (if they'll talk to me at all) has said that a judge will actually do that, though. Screw what the law says; evidently, they have the leeway - and generally do rule - to simply say that showing up to defend against the case cures the service issues.
It's all been a bit of a revelation. I call bullshit on judges who say that their hands are tied by the law. What's actually happened is that quasi-legal judicial norms have developed over time, and what they're afraid to go against are those. It is, of course, pure happenstance that they feel obligated to throw the book at criminal defendants pleading sympathy (because otherwise they'd be getting in the way of the careers of fellow legal professionals, the prosecutors) while ignoring civil defendants begging for their constitutional right to due process be affirmed (because otherwise they'd be getting in the way of the livelihood of fellow legal professionals, the debt collectors).
There's nothing evil about it in principle. Securing someone's presence at trial requires that they lose something if they fail to show. When judges set bail so high that people cannot afford it out of pocket, they are at fault. Not the concept of cash bail. If bail were set at amounts people could afford, they do not lose the money... it is returned when they show for trial regardless of the verdict.
Our constitution actually has an amendment, in the Bill of Rights no less, forbidding excessive bail. Has no one ever heard of it?
The judges do this shit for many reasons. For one, when someone should not be remanded on bail because they are a danger to society, judges will often set the bail at eleventy zillion dollars, knowing that they won't be able to post bail. But in doing so, they slowly erode psychological norms among their colleagues as to what is excessive. The presence of a bail bond industry, and the lobbying of bail bondsmen only makes it worse. Most of the people you know actually believe that all bail money is forfeited because of bail bonding.
The only solution needed is means-testing bail amounts.
And yes, the 8th Amend. forbids excessive bail too.
Nobody cared enough.
Also, even if a defendant was adequately means-tested it doesn't mean they can access their wealth from within jail. Really hard to get your Charles Schwab 2FA codes inside a cell.
Why can't they just deny bail in such cases? Is it local laws that forbid them from doing so? In which case, it seems that the ability to set a ridiculously high bail is a net benefit to society.
There were also hundreds of minor shoplifting and other petty cases with bail set at $250 or less who had been locked in the jail for months since they could not afford to bond out.
> Our client didn’t deny he was packaging cocaine at his kitchen table, but he insisted that he was not doing it brazenly in the open; that not only had he covered his windows with taped-up sheets and garbage bags, but he had closed and locked his door, as you might expect for someone engaged in illegal activities. We went to the CHA management offices, where they had records of giving Deuce citations for repeatedly covering up windows. We also talked to the maintenance man who had been assigned to repair Deuce’s door after his arrest. The maintenance crew had taken pictures that clearly showed damage to the doorjamb, backing up Deuce’s claim that the door had been kicked in.
> We proved that the search and arrest were done in violation of the Constitution, and so the evidence collected during the arrest could not be used at trial. The charges had to be dropped.
TLDR: our client was guilty as sin. He admitted it. He was caught red-handed. He still got off scot-free.
Not arguing against any of the above. But this example hilariously contradicts the claim that "the system is stacked against the accused"
If the cops can violate those rights at will, lie through their teeth to cover it up, and get away with it, then nobody has any rights.
How does it contradict that? It sounds like you're saying "The system is, in fact, stacked in favour of the accused", but I'm not seeing that here.
In principle, the system _should_ be stacked in favour of the accused - it's a high bar to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a crime occurred, using only legally obtained evidence. But the examples from the article seem to suggest that in most cases, police and prosecutors have it much easier than that.
In a perfect system the police would be punished, either civilly or criminally, for their wrongdoing, but a prosecutor will almost never bring a case against a cop who has brought them juicy evidence. It would be career suicide. So here we are.
"The job of a judge is to arrest the poor, free the rich and carve some sweet nepotism for his/her relatives".
"From a judge's head, a politician's mouth and a baby's but you should always expect the same thing".