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PaperclipPerfector  27d ago (text post)   26117 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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Delinquents need to be beaten, murderers and rapists need to be hanged, and it all needs to happen as swiftly as possible so as to impress the right connection in the mind of the criminal between the illegal act and the punishment.

Hence the right to a SPEEDY trial.

The reason the average trial takes so long to commence is defendant delay. If you shoot a clerk at 7/11 and get picked up that day. You'll be charged by tomorrow, in bond court the day after, indicted and arraigned within 30 days, and the prosecution will be ready for trial in 60. But your public defender (because lets be honest you dont have and cant keep a real job) wont be. And you will flirt with a private attorney half a dozen times. And they will lose the discovery the state already gave them and demand the same video surveillance 10x before trying to get you to plea, and you will flirt with said plea for 3 years before demanding a trial that you will lose. But now it will be a big pain for everyone because the murder detective retired to Florida and all the 7/11 employees who used to maintain that video system now work for wal mart on the other side of the state.

If the perp gets picked up the same day, why can't he be tried the same day? It sounds like an optimization problem. Maybe you need a drawn-out trial for something like homicide, but for shoplifting you could have a streamlined sentencing center:

  • the cop takes the perp, the victim, any witnesses and any evidence to the sentencing center
  • there the cop, the victim and the witnesses give their testimonies to a cop-LLM and leave (1h)
  • an on-duty ADA and an on-duty public defender review the testimonies and the evidence and come up with a plea bargain (30m)
  • the public defender meets with the perp and offers him the bargain (30m)
  • if the perp pleads guilty, an on-duty judge stamps it and the perp goes to jail
  • if the perp doesn't accept the deal, they all move into the next courtroom
  • there the DA presents the evidence and the testimonies to the on-duty jury (1h)
  • the public defender tries to present the same evidence in a different way (30m)
  • the jury deliberates minutes and gives a verdict: guilty, not guilty, full-scale trial required (15m)
  • the on-duty judge sentences the perp if found guilty (15m)

It's still a lot of time wasted on the jury trial (just 4 cases per jury each day), but hopefully most crimes will be done at the first step, which takes only 2 hours per crime.

By the time they guy is arrested and booked our officer and store clerk are probably on hour 10 of their shift. You want them to hang out for another 2 for some sort of preliminary hearing, then another 3 for a jury trial (where are these jurors coming from, and who is doing voir dire by the way?).

No, they just submit their testimonies and leave. The recorded versions are used during the quicktrial.

The jury comes from the same place all other jurors come from, voter rolls? As for voir dire, do you mean juror selection? Whichever assistant attorney and public defender are the first to arrive in the morning can do this.

Do you want speedy trials or not? Because the alternative is Cousin Wang and his merry gang disincentivizing theft on their turf by breaking bones.

I would think no defense counsel would agree to basically any of your plan.

Why should anyone ask them? I'm talking about a judicial reform, is it a federal legislative matter or a state legislative matter?

Its a constitutional law matter

I knew the US constitution was dummy thick, but does it really contain every minute detail about trials by jury?

More comments

You've denied the perp the right to a lawyer, instead turning his case over to someone who gets his paychecks from the same place the prosecutor (and the judge and the jailers) get them.

Who do public defenders get their paychecks from right now?

Same place; the system is a farce.

Even a public defender trying his middle in the system described (finances aside) would not agree to the system proposed. On call PDs dont currently exist. Their job is, on average, super easy, but from time to time they can actually do good and get an innocent person acquitted, and that takes a lot of time. Maybe some woman's wife is dead and he hated her, but establishing the alibi takes months. This is uncommon, but exists.

Still miles better than an NKVD trojka.

I'm pretty sure they use a Makarov, not a Trojka.

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