On Tuesday, August 5, 2003, at 05:31 PM, Duncan Frissell wrote:
On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Eric Cordian wrote:
An anarchist has been sentenced to a year in jail for having links to explosives information on his Web site. AmeriKKKa is further fucking the First Amendment by restricting whom he may associate with in the future, and what views he may espouse.
You can't protect people from cowardice. Jim Bell plead the first time. Michael Milkin plead. Bill Gates plead. Various Arabs plead recently. If you plead you can't be acquitted unless you can convince a judge to let you withdraw your plea tough. Courage.
Prosecutors and cops are allowed to lie to you about their intent. Know the law.
http://technoptimist.blogspot.com/ 2003_08_03_technoptimist_archive.html#106012921668886203
Sadly, pleading is often the only viable choice. When the cops are liars, when the judges are ignoring the Constitution, when the appeals courts are too busy to hear appeals for many years (unless the appeal is an emergency appeal to halt the recall of Gray Davis, that is), and when sentencing guidelines are fully out of whack with economics and even with that nebulous concept of "justice," pleading is often the best of a bad deal. This is all possible because the plea bargaining system has gotten out of control. The accused face a plea deal of M months and N dollars if they plead, or 10M months and 20N dollars if they go to trial and lose, which is pretty likely when cops lie, when judges ignore the Constitution, and when juries are made up of people who are uncontroversial enough so as to have no opinions to disqualify them. (I was last picked for a jury 30 years ago this summer, back when I registered as a Republican. In the 30 years since, when I have been registered as a Libertarian, I have never been selected for a jury. Meanwhile, some of my know-nothing neighbors tell me about serving every few years on juries.) In a couple of criminal cases I have first-hand knowledge of, the plea deals were made so persuasive and the sentencing guidelines so harsh (had it gone to trial and the accused found guilty) that to not plea would have been irresponsible. You may not like this, and you may have cheered on the fights by the noble fighters who decided not to plea, but the system is stacked in favor of pleas. This is our injustice system. --Tim May, Corralitos, California Quote of the Month: "It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes; perhaps there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks." --Cathy Young, "Reason Magazine," both enemies of liberty.