StrangeSox

no, not really. you don't get the core concept.

There's also this recent story as well: Disparities in School Discipline Move Students of Color Toward Prison New Data Show Youth of Color Disproportionately Suspended and Expelled From School

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 6, 2013 -> 04:50 PM) To further the point, I am sure if I took insider trading convictions, it would reflect a much higher percentage for white males than anything else. You need to look at what rate crimes are investigated and prosecuted at, not just who happens to be convicted. You'd also need to look at relative sentencing (crack vs. powder cocaine being the most obvious one), parole rates, etc.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 6, 2013 -> 04:50 PM) So you really truly believe that the police, prosecutors, and juries are just a bunch of racists? Come on. No, that's not how systemic racism/prejudice works. It doesn't require a bunch of consciously and intentionally racist people. A system that produces such drastic racially disparate results is, pretty much by definition, systemically racist.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 6, 2013 -> 04:47 PM) That is one subsection. I'm curious what the raw numbers actually look like. That's a significant chunk of our criminal justice system these days. We could look to the spectacular failure of stop-and-frisk in NYC, too. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archiv...ew-york/275501/

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 6, 2013 -> 04:40 PM) Eh, to a degree I suppose. But again, if we're talking about death penalty cases or really severe felonies the representation is going to be more than adequate. You're not working on 150 felony trials every month. I think the real problem is a public defender with 100 small drug offenses and he talks people into taking deals and getting a record versus potentially fighting the charge, all in order to clear his docket/make his monthly report look good. That kind of stuff certainly needs to be cleaned up and probably is a disadvantage over those who have access to private lawyers. But hey, don't do the crime and it's not a problem. Facts not in evidence, counselor. This is actually one of the key sources of the problem, as public defenders work to get plea deals because they don't have the time and resources to actually fight the case. Maybe on the aggregate that's the best route, but it's going to result in a lot of innocent people taking pleas in order to avoid potentially harsh sentences for a crime they didn't commit. There's no objective way to deny that our public defenders are seriously overburdened when compared to what they're up against. The NYT had a piece on this as well last week: You're right that death penalty cases and severe felonies can draw in better representation, but that doesn't always happen. There was just a Kafkaesque ruling that found that delays in a trial caused by underfunded public defenders offices aren't a violation of your right to a speedy trial because maybe the defense filings over inadequate representation caused the delay!

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 6, 2013 -> 04:33 PM) What evidence? That article (at least in terms of the access to the system portion) is based on a survey of people's beliefs, not the system itself or the ACTUAL access to the system. The quoted sentence is ambiguous to me whether it measures public perception and availability and affordability or if it measures public perception of availability and affordability. Either way you went straight to "I bet it's just lazy American mentality!" mode to dismiss it. Isn't public perception of the judicial system important in its legitimacy? Isn't it important in whether it actually provides justice to those who deserve it? edit: Further down, this is clarified: So it doesn't just rely on an opinion poll.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 6, 2013 -> 04:35 PM) All more likely to be blamed on other societal factors, not the way our justice system operates. Our justice system "just happens" to disproportionately prosecute, convict, incarcerate and kill minorities.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 6, 2013 -> 04:32 PM) I say bollocks to that. I know two public defenders very well and both are incredibly smart and take a lot of pride in what they do. I also worked with a couple others during my internship at a states attorney's office during my last year of college. Are they the best of the best? No. But they're entirely capable. It's not like they throw out unseasoned 1st year law students to try a triple homicide death penalty case. It's not whether they're good, capable people. It has to do with resources and caseloads. The caseloads for most public defenders are incredibly high. Much higher than the prosecutors. When they've got 150 felonies on their plate, it's not likely that each and every individual is getting representation on par with the state's resources.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 6, 2013 -> 04:06 PM) Ha. This makes me laugh: The entire system is set up to make it incredibly easy to file a legitimate case. Attorneys bank roll the entire process, on a gamble essentially that they'll win for you, and you don't have to pay for hardly anything. Not to mention we have to be at or near the top of the list for the number of cases filed. Since the data is based on a survey, i'm guessing that is typical American "I want what I want and I want it now and for free!" mentality. You do a lot of guessing and supposing that just happens to confirm your pre-conceived ideas and dismisses contradictory evidence.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 6, 2013 -> 04:12 PM) What you don't realize is how completely different this is from the public defender system that the poor wind up having to rely on. That part he pulled out was referring to our civil litigation system I think. No right to an attorney there.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 6, 2013 -> 04:00 PM) I was referring to our justice system in that you're provided (generally) more rights and guarantees and fair trials. But I agree we imprison far too many people for BS crimes (drugs, specifically). And the race component I think is overblown. The justice system plays its role independent of that. Go to the courthouse at 26th and Cal and you have black officers arresting black men who are convicted by black juries. I don't care what you think is overblown. The disparity in conviction rates, especially for capital crimes, is abundantly clear. Poorer people accused of a crime, many of whom are black, are going to be relying on our woefully underfunded and overburdened public defenders. Take a look at the company you want to keep with the barbaric death penalty. I see no reason why those people, as horrible as they may be, should be put to death by the state. It says that violent retribution is ok, that it's morally acceptable.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 6, 2013 -> 03:39 PM) I'm in agreement that speeding up the death penalty (in most cases) is a pretty dumb policy, but I see no reason why we should rid ourselves of the death penalty completely based on the fact that a small number of people have been exonerated. If that's the argument we should also get rid of long term prison sentences. Our system is not perfect by any means, but it's the best in the world. And we should be diligent in making it as efficient and accurate as possible. I don't think we should throw up our hands and automatically assume that every verdict was a result of corruption or bad evidence. No, not by a long shot. Our criminal system is pretty unfair and unequal (see: conviction rates by class, color, especially death sentences) and we imprison far, far too many people in overcrowded prisons with crap conditions that breed our high recidivism rates. The list of countries with capital punishment isn't exactly a list of "best countries in the world," by the way. Most of the world has abolished this barbaric form of 'justice' that doesn't actually serve any wider purpose (it's effects as a deterrent are non-existent). http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article...e_of_law_index/ at least we're not Italy, though!

Probably should just abolish the barbaric death penalty and remove all doubt about the state killing innocent people in the name of justice!

That's where Scalia's "'actually' innocent" line comes from. Who cares what the facts are or what new evidence is found? As long as the proper procedures were followed during the original trial, we should execute.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ May 6, 2013 -> 01:07 PM) Yeah, unless the court isn't interested in the DNA test: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/0...execution-date/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/02/2...n-on-death-row/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2009/06/1...644/scotus-dna/ http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/...row-inmate.html Yeah that was pretty ridiculous. edit: que Scalia "actually innocent" quote

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ May 5, 2013 -> 09:43 PM) Damn. My condolences Tex. Hopefully he rots in prison.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 6, 2013 -> 10:54 AM) Has anyone done a study on the timing of those exoneration (or any on a national level)? I mean, I know that in the 90's and 00's DNA testing got WAY better, so over the last 2 decades you've seen older convictions overturned. Does that still happen with people convicted from, say, 2000 onward? Not DNA-related, but someone who was innocent by all reasonable accounts but was executed anyway. Cameron Todd Willingham The CP5 fall into this as well, as none of their DNA was on the crime scene, nor was any of the victim's on them, but they were still convicted. DNA testing is much older than 2000, and plenty of capital cases rely on questionable witness testimony and circumstantial evidence, not on DNA.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ May 6, 2013 -> 10:47 AM) I don't think I could either, but I'm 25 and you're older than that, so we don't exactly have impressionable minds anymore, we are in a position where we generally understand our rights, what's expected of us, and what's going on around us. We aren't 16-20 anymore. If I was under the impression that all I had to do was confess to something and I could be done with something like that, I probably would do so after 30 hours of testimony. Plenty of people older than 20 have given false confessions in the past. There's very strong psychology at play in these situations that comes with the whole authority/power structure you're drag into during interviews and interrogations. Plus you'd have to consider that if you are actually innocent, you might have the instinct to try to help the police in catching the actual criminal. That's happened plenty of times, where somebody willingly tells the police all sorts of information in an interview, gets some facts wrong (because hey, we're all human), and then the cops and prosecutors relentlessly pursue them as the criminal because of those simple mistakes. I think I've linked to this Frontline episode in the past: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/th...interrogations/ Time had an article earlier this year: http://ideas.time.com/2013/02/11/why-innoc...se-confessions/ West of Memphis was another recent documentary that covered a prominent false-confession case:

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 6, 2013 -> 10:43 AM) I guess I can never imagine myself confessing to a crime I didn't commit, regardless of how long I've been questioned or what "promises" a cop provides. If torture was involved, maybe, but simple questioning? No way. Everybody thinks that, but few have actually gone through it. The comments on the Ta-Nehisi article I linked go into it a bit: That belief that you'd never personally falsely confess is what makes confessions so damn powerful, even though we have numerous examples of coerced forced confessions. Police are free to lie to you endlessly to try to get more information, and they will. You're in a very, very stressful situation and probably not thinking clearly. You're being shouted at and threatened and psychologically abused for hours. Most people are not fully aware of their rights or how to exercise them, and may be afraid to do so in. Now throw being only 14 years old into the mix. This case should be a lesson to everyone about what can happen, how criminal justice can go so appallingly wrong that we coerce five false confessions from five kids, prosecutors see no problems with them, judges allow them and a jury buys them and issues harsh sentences despite there being no evidence actually linking these kids to the crimes, evidence contradicting the state's theory and numerous inconsistencies. It should also tell us something about the disparity in funding between public defenders' offices and prosecutors' offices.

Florida passes a law to speed up executions:

I can't imagine warehouse employees like that are exempt (which has its own history of being broadened to cover more and more workers).

Ta-Nehisi has a piece up on the movement to get one of the prosecutors removed from her position at Columbia Law Social Power and the Central Park Five Should a prosecutor responsible for locking up five innocent boys be training future lawyers at Columbia?

When Your Boss Steals Your Wages: The Invisible Epidemic That’s Sweeping America

NV was also back to the classic Western setting of the original games