Xhieron @ xhieron @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

That the evidence of guilt is extraordinary here is immaterial, because the law can't distinguish between the evidence in this case and a wrongful conviction. You can say, "Well we only use this punishment when we're super duper sure about it", but the standard for any criminal conviction is already beyond reasonable doubt. There's already supposed to be no question for all convictions, yet we still have people in prison today for crimes they didn't commit.

That's a surprise. In most US schools they'll cut STEM and language and have rolling blackouts before they cut sports.

It's a bad idea. The reason it's a bad idea is the same reason that the death penalty is a bad idea: the US penal system frequently gets it wrong.

As a young teenager: Do not start working until you have to. Once you start, you'll never stop.

Thanks to this post I now identify as a lost bat. I consider it a marked improvement.

Yeah, that's inciting insurrection/rebellion. If this guy didn't already have people monitoring him 24/7, he sure as shit does now. And well he should.

Well, there it is: if you're an Iranian-American, you should get an Iranian passport if you can. By extension, that's probably good advice for anyone who can get multiple passports (and kind of always has been).

We (lawyers) are actually already ethically obligated to serve up bad lawyers for discipline. It's Rule 8.3, colloquially known as the duty to rat out your colleagues.

I really wish we could dispense the myth of "good lawyers" in this context. That's not to say that there aren't such things as good and bad lawyers--there are--but "wealthy clients get away with stuff because they can afford better lawyers" doesn't really tell the story. Even if you have okay lawyers who fuck up a lot, if you have all the money in the world (or they think you do), you can get them to just keep working to try to fix it and throw new shit at the wall until something sticks. Normal people eventually run out of money.

The "every right available to the defense" list is an exhaustible list. If your client is Donald Trump and your goal is to stall, well, many or even most defense lawyers are going to know everything that goes on that list. It doesn't matter whether they charge $100 or $1000 an hour, and it doesn't matter whether they're fresh out of law school or have been practicing 30 years. A public defender can stall a case if he wants to.

Donald Trump and other rich litigants aren't buying "better lawyers". Those lawyers don't know more or have unique, novel trial strategies that work magic on the courts. And you can watch a trial to see that: There isn't a huge qualitative difference between the case that OJ's very expensive defense counsel put on and the case that Marcia Clark (a public servant) put on. Why? Because both sides spent a fortune. They didn't get better lawyers. They just got more of their lawyers' time. Simpson spent maybe $6 million on his lawyers, and the taxpayers of California spent $9 million on theirs. Johnnie Cochran was an extremely effective trial lawyer, but I don't think anyone would say any of Trump's lawyers is a once-in-a-generation talent.

The only reason you don't want a public defender is that the public defender is overworked. He has hundreds or thousands of clients and simply can't devote time to you. The public defenders in my jurisdiction are absolutely the smartest, best experienced criminal lawyers in town. Why? Because they've worked hundreds of criminal trials! But those guys don't have a thousand hours to look up case law in order to exhaust the list of rights for a defendant who needs to put off getting convicted until after November. Even Alina Habba can figure out the whole list if you throw an arbitrarily large pile of cash at her and let her put a room full of junior associates on it for a month.

It's not better lawyers. It's just more lawyer time.

And bribes. It's also bribes.

I say all this because I think a lot of people think that more expensive lawyer = better lawyer, and that's just not true. For many, many cases, hiring a cheaper lawyer can get you much further if it means your money buys more of your lawyer's time. That's the difference between being able to keep your lawyer if you have to appeal and not being able to appeal at all. It's the difference between going to trial and taking a less favorable settlement, and it's the difference between being able to pay for more hearings (say, for example, if you need to jam up the proceedings with frivolous motions) and going straight to the merits.

I don't generally do criminal work, but many, many more of the sad or frustrating "this is the end of the line" talks I've had with clients have had to do with the clients' financial situations than with the actual merits of their cases. At some point it's often just not cost effective for most people to pursue further litigation, and it doesn't matter who the lawyer is. If you're a member of the 1%, however--well, then you never have to worry about that. Just keep litigating forever, and it doesn't matter whether your lawyer is Clarence Darrow or Rudy fucking Giuliani.

That's a chicken and egg problem, though, isn't it: Netanyahu's government wants Hamas because the conflict keeps Bibi out of prison, and Hamas wants to remain relevant. All the same, the Israeli and Palestinian people are the ones who suffer due to both regimes being in power, and Hamas doesn't shed its guilt just because Israel doesn't want a reasonable Palestinian government. Neither side wants to blink because they have multi-generational hatred for the other side, and that means popular support for further violence probably isn't going anywhere. You back down! No, you back down!

The result is that neither side is going to take real steps to deescalate, because both sides benefit from the conflict. That the Palestinians are suffering more, by orders of magnitude, doesn't make either side's position any less entrenched: Bibi wants to stay in power (and free), and Hamas wants to remain relevant and in power, and they're more justified now than ever. Both regimes need to be replaced.

Thanks, President Biden!

Thank you for this. That was a fantastic survey of some non-materialistic perspectives on consciousness. I have no idea what future research might reveal, but it's refreshing to see that there are people who are both very interested in the questions and also committed to the scientific method.

You are correct. I haven't seen the two separated in years, so I tend to use NDA as a blanket term. Editing for clarity.

True for the OP too. There's definitely an element on some of the Lemmy communities that seems to exist only or at least primarily to push negative Biden prop (or barring that, anti-US prop in general). I checked Reddit recently for the first time in months (kind of like going to Walmart--avoid it like the plague, but sometimes you just can't), and I was genuinely astonished at how little anti-Biden content was present by comparison.

I'm voting for Joe in November, and you should too. Joe's administration killed non-competes, flipped the procedure for airline canceled and delayed flight refunds (i.e., pro-consumer), and pushed back the exempt employee loophole--and that's just the news from this week. He's an awesome president without even considering that the other side is composed entirely of criminals, Russian assets, and fascists.

Somebody needs to shop in some shark fins. This is too unrelatable.

It is known.

What she actually said (from the article):

“We rely in South Dakota on the fact that I am pro-life and we have a law that says there is an exception for the life of the mother, and I just don’t believe that a tragedy should perpetuate another tragedy.”

If Trump wins and she's his running mate, it's statistically more likely than not that she'll be president.

Workers of the world unite. Sit in. Strike. Seize the means of production.

Eventually enough will be enough, and that will be a terrible day.

No war but the class war.

I can't ever think about Coke marketing anymore without being reminded of the most evil thing I've ever seen committed to film.

https://screenmusings.org/movie/blu-ray/Slumdog-Millionaire/images/Slumdog-Millionaire-0272.jpg

Oh FFS. I just read Sotomayor's statement, and the Vox article is just a flat out lie (and apparently nobody else in the comments bothered to fact check it). You're doing God's work, Buelldozer.