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So it looks like WNBA’s Brittney Griner’s 9-Year Prison Sentence Upheld In Russian Appeal Court.
One thing I find interesting about the whole ordeal is the similarities between her case and the Jan6 detainees, in both an hostile government dishes disproportionate punishment to a member of an opposing tribe.
While I feel for Ms. Griner I can't help, but chuckle at the parallels and remind myself that in the real world there aren't good guys, just your guys and theirs.
Jan. 6 detainees say a D.C. jail is so awful that they'd like a transfer to Guantanamo
Your jab about American rioters is pretty irrelevant and poisons the conversation.
Anyway, now I wonder how a foreigner doing what she had done while trying to the enter the USA would be treated. As far as I understand she had a canister with cannabis oil for her vape in her luggage. What sort of punishment would said foreigner be looking at?
I'm of the opinion that she is more like a political prisioner than anything else.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Important to know how a non-famous person from say, Mexico would be treated in this situation. I simply don't know.
yeah. One interesting tidbit about it that I heard is that the US Government tried to do an exchange of prisioners for her but their offer was reportedly ignored.
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Which is why I'm drawing parallels to Russia. As you say "If you come at the king, you best win" because your human rights are at the sufferance of the people in power.
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Glossing over the performative nature of this gesture, you'd think the travails of the Jan. 6 rioters would engender a degree of sympathy for criminal justice reformers. Instead, the reaction seems to be outrage that Upstanding Citizens like themselves should be subject to the same conditions as common criminals.
Well, yes, indeed I believe that upstanding citizens shouldn’t suffer the same condition as criminals, who should experience bad conditions in order to deter them from doing crime. Not sure what your point is, that I should lobby for improved conditions in jails so that political prisoners of my side have better time there? No, I’d rather the other side stop taking political prisoners.
That they are, despite their self conception, common criminals, not some weird edge case. That if you think they don't deserve the treatment they're receiving, your problem is with how we deal with criminal suspects in general. That their attitude is fundamentally rooted in a belief that they are not supposed to be subject to the criminal justice system.
Surely they're at the very least uncommon criminals. After all, it's not every day that the Capitol gets stormed.
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I find your suggestion that they get the same treatment as common criminals to be rather ludicrous, and I do not believe that you are making it in a good faith.
The criminal justice system did not treat the George Floyd rioters in the same manner, that is, by attempting to catch every single last one of them and keeping them in pretrial detention for months or years. Instead, George Floyd rioters were allowed to run mostly scot-free, and only a handful of the absolute worst ones faced any consequences at all. In the "100 days of Portland", for example, the handful of rioters that did end up getting arrested, was immediately released and often rearrested next night, rinse and repeat.
In fact, I wouldn't have minded much how the Jan 6th rioters are treated if BLM rioters were treated the same (in fact I suggested that we do exactly that at the time, the Jan 6th treatment is another good example along the Waco one I brought up that stopping riots is definitely doable when proper methods are used). The problem here is that you are asking me to play along the rules of the game, while your side of the "criminal justice reform" argument is rigging the game to punish my side and benefit theirs. I reject that.
I think you vastly overestimate how well criminals and suspected criminals are treated.
The vast majority of people present at the Jan 6 riot were not arrested or charged with anything. Justifiably, since all they did was mill around outside. (Many participated in attacks on the USCP, but not in a way where they could be credibly identified).
The 2020 protests led to ~13.6k arrests by early June (FBI). Much like Jan 6, most people weren't arresting and many were slapped with minor charges (e.g. violating curfew), but many were subject to more serious charges.
This is a common claim here, but allow me to offer an alternative thesis: right-wingers are really bad at protesting. They don't get that protests - the interesting, effective ones, that are more than just rallies - are as much about the police response as they are about the protests themselves. That means walking the line of riotous behavior, because fundamentally you're trying to garner sympathy by provoking a police overreaction. Too riotous and you alienate potentially sympathetic members of the public, too docile and you just get ignored. The point is to be able to gesture to the riot cop kicking the shit out of you and say "come and see the violence inherent in the system".
Where this becomes a problem for would-be right wing protestors is a) many view anything more disorderly than a Flyers' victory celebration as a riot, so the nuance of this is lost on them b) they don't do much protesting themselves. So they never develop the metis that left wing activist communities do about how to walk the line, how to self-police people who make a little too much trouble, how not to get arrested (e.g. don't film yourself doing crime and post it to social media with a public statement admitting you're doing the crime). They don't even understand that walking the line is something you're supposed to do. Nor do they have the social infrastructure set up to assist when their people do get arrested.
The result is that for the most part, right wing protests are cringe and a bit pathetic, and when it does get rowdy they blunder across the line and get in a lot of trouble. This seems unfair to them because they don't perceive the distinction between their cargo-cult protest tactics and what more experienced left wing activists do. The game isn't rigged, they're just new to it.
You've mistaken cause and effect. It's not that the right wing is bad at protests, is that they're not allowed to be good at them. They do not get the favorable press coverage necessary to sway the public, because the press hates them and presents their protests with scorn. It had nothing to do with their own tactics.
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It's very noticeable that there's a massive double standard in how this stuff gets treated depending on the political affiliations of the rioters or protestors.
When this topic comes up, I always think about the freedom convoy in Canada and the disproportionate fury directed towards it. Media reports about them were overwhelmingly negative to the point of even attempting to associate them with Nazis and confederates. GoFundMe shut down their donation page and seized their funding, and eventually the protest was deemed to be a public order emergency and the Emergencies Act was invoked to clear the blockade despite a lack of evidence that the Ottawa protests posed a salient threat to Canadian security. Trudeau's opinion was that "Illegal blockades and occupations are not peaceful protests", despite the fact that he supported protesting farmers in India who were doing the very same thing with the rationale “Canada will always stand up for the right to peaceful protest".
Meanwhile, BLM and Antifa (as part of a repeated pattern of behaviour) have committed arson, looted, rioted, assaulted people, tried to create their own "autonomous zones", etc. Yet these protests are considered to be "mostly peaceful", and the media has generally been very lenient on them and have attempted to justify their behaviour. But when a trucker convoy engages in a blockade in order to protest against government interference in what should be a private decision, that's a disruptive, threatening, fear-inducing, anti-government insurgency and everything possible should be done to get rid of them.
(@wlxd as well)
It's a little jarring how I see pretty much the exact same comment made by the other side on left-leaning social media. I see commenters on the left furious about how the January 6th protesters were handled with kid gloves, including being allowed to go home instead of being arrested immediately while the BLM protesters were tear gassed and roughed up by the police and kettled and arrested.
I really don't think this is evidence of leniency at all. Firstly, people were arrested on Jan 6th. I've seen a bunch of complaining about how the number arrested was less than the BLM riots, but I'd like to note that police were overwhelmed. "Since the police at the scene were violently attacked and outnumbered, they had a limited number of officers who could make arrests. 'Approximately 140 police officers were assaulted Jan. 6 at the Capitol, including about 80 U.S. Capitol Police and about 60 from the Metropolitan Police Department,' according to the Department of Justice."
It's necessary to remember that Jan 6th was a one time event, too, whereas BLM rioted for a much longer period and it's reasonable that officers would know better what to expect for the latter which would make them more capable of handling the riots and making arrests on the spot, so the two cannot be directly compared in that way. Still, hundreds of arrests were made in the aftermath of Jan 6th. "More than 855 defendants tied to the attack have been arrested in 'nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia.'"
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/07/25/fact-check-false-claim-no-arrests-were-made-capitol-jan-6/10077303002/
If this is the basis for the argument that the left is being politically discriminated against, I have to say I think it's very weak. There are plenty of factors that can influence police response that have nothing to do with sentiment.
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Any accusation of political hypocrisy should engender at least a ten second attempt to see if there's a parallel but opposite hypocrisy. I don't exactly see the criminal justice reform advocates lining up to release the Jan 6 crowd without cash bail or whatever.
I did, when I wrote about one guy's case a while back:
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Given that persecution for tribal political reasons has nothing to do with "justice", I don't see how this is connected to criminal justice reform. One can be simultaneously for harsh punishment for somebody who is convicted of murder or rape, and against harsh punishment for people whose crime is "walked around government building when the government didn't like it, while thinking of things government disapproves". If both of these are treated similarly - or, as this is actually the case, the terrorists gain more sympathy than the Jan6 protesters, as witnessed by many popular figures rushing to defense of Gitmo terrorists, and the same figures rushing to cancel any lawyer that dares to lend a hand to anybody connected to Jan6 - then it is understandable how one would be outraged by such situation.
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Dis you mean "Justice reform" in this part?
By all accounts they are being tortured. Or at least that is what is alleged to be happening.
Any more than your median federal inmate?
Well between the beatings and the lose of one eye, I would think so. But I don't know if the inmate population in the USA is partly blind and regularly gets skull fractures. So YMMV on that front.
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Extraordinary claims need some sort of evidence to back that up - e.g. statements from their lawyers, and so on.
Where do you think the allegations come from?:
One of Samsel's Lawyer Statement
Video of one of his Lawyer
Politico reporting on it Interestingly the page was nuked sometime after april.
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Well, yes? People engaged in political protests don't expect to be treated like carjackers, because they haven't been in a century in the US. The Capitol building is not an illegitimate place to protect (contrast the kid gloves treatment of SCOTUS protestors at their homes), it is, in fact, the MOST legitimate place to protest. Its a political building where politics is done.
That you can be held without bail for wandering in, without them even proving that you knew it was illegal to be there (for most people the barricades had been long abandoned by the incompetent, Pelosi directed, Capitol Police), is Eugene Debbs shit.
Can you point out anyone who was "held without bail just for wandering in"? About 1000 have been prosecuted so far, but the vast majority (~70%) were released without bail. The vast majority of the remaining defendants had bail imposed. I did a quick google search but couldn't come up with an updated number of how many defendants are still held in jail (either with no bail or with unrealistic bail). There was a DC Appeals Court decision a while back that instructed magistrates to release people unless the government can demonstrate a specific threat. This means that anyone who is "held without bail for wandering in" as you claim they are would be contrary to this court's order. The subset of defendants should be small enough that you should be able to point out someone who fits the concerns you've just described. Can you?
From the notoriously right-wing New York Times: "For several months, a few dozen men being held without bail in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have loudly and repeatedly complained about conditions at the District of Columbia jail."
I don't know how that's responsive to my question. You'll notice that I never claimed that none of the J6 defendants were held without bail. I explicitly acknowledged them when I wrote about "defendants are still held in jail (either with no bail or with unrealistic bail)". I even linked to an article explicitly staying "Yes, several people are being held without bail in the D.C. Jail"! What I was asking for was about the people who are "held without bail just for wandering in" as @anti_dan claimed they are. Do these people actually exist?
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If they were subject to the same conditions as common criminals, they'd have been released without bail and then had the charges quietly dropped.
If this is how common criminals are treated, how does the US end up with one of the highest incarceration rates in the world?
I assuming you're asking in good faith. If not, please pardon the overlong answer.
The United States is nearly unique among countries of the world in that it has both a high rate of violent crime and also the state capacity to investigate and prosecute crime. In the 1980s and 1990s, a "tough on crime" stance prevailed as the political consensus, epitomized by tough mandatory sentencing and "three strikes" laws. During this period, the prison population swelled and violent crime rates plummeted.
Things have changed since then. A new consensus formed, especially in blue states, that prior sentencing laws were too strict. Many localities elected district attorneys and judges who took an extremely lenient stance on crime. This was also exacerbated by the Covid epidemic when jailing criminals was seen as unsafe to their health. The per capita prison population peaked in 2008, and the murder rate reached a low in 2014.
Today, in many cities such as San Francisco and Seattle, criminals are routinely released on no bail even when they have several prior convictions on their record. In some cases, they immediately commit serious crimes upon release. While the most serious offenses are still prosecuted, most arrests never lead to charges or prosecution.
I don't deny that incarceration rates have significantly dropped in recent years (esp pandemic-related), but that doesn't support claiming that common criminals get "released without bail and then have charges quietly dropped". If that's how "common criminals" are being treated, is the implication that the 2 million or so people currently behind bars are by definition uncommon?
They can be considered legacy criminals. The new kind get the kid glove treatment, unless otherwise ideologically indicated
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That is precisely what's happening in many jurisdictions in the country. The 2 million people in prison are there from other jurisdictions or from long ago. A high percentage of common criminals are very much having charges quietly dropped in places like Seattle and San Francisco.
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No, they are common criminals who were jailed under older, less lenient policies, because the incarceration rate lags policy changes that affect the flow of incarceration. And despite that lag the rate has decreased several times faster than it increased even during the most murderous years of American history.
Come on man. The whole "it's not happening" thing gets really old. I get it if you support prison abolition or whatever, but why not just be forthright about it?
Right, you tried to hand-wave away the 400,000 or so people in pretrial detention by claiming they are there for murder. It would be helpful if you were more precise with your claims, and maybe if you brought forth actual evidence.
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As someone involved in criminal defense you're aware the US incarceration rate has already plummeted due to such policies, and the advocates say they will not stop until it drops to zero.
So I'm curious why you asked the question, really.
You made a claim about "common criminals". Are you implying that the 2 million people currently behind bars are by definition "uncommon"?
The incarceration rate in state and local prisons has dropped to its lowest level since 1990 despite serious crimes such as murder increasing by 30-40%+ in the last few years. Are you suggesting that common criminals are still being jailed at the same rates, or do you acknowledge the enormous policy changes that have caused this?
bailey: "common criminals get released without bail and then have their charges quietly dropped"
motte: "the incarceration rate has gone down in recent years"
In fairness your original comment was rather ambiguous, but had you just claimed the latter I wouldn't have taken any issue.
The flow of new criminals into incarceration has slowed dramatically despite skyrocketing crime rates due to criminals now being released without bail even after multiple offenses
If crime was plummeting you could claim that the burden of proof was on me to prove the incarceration drop wasn't simply due to everyone becoming more law-abiding. But the "crime isn't going up, you're just imagining things" tactic failed back in 2021, and everyone responsible already swept it under the rug.
Actually, that's something I'd love to ask our local forum historians about, because I distinctly remember those claims being made even after the 2020 murder rate stats came out.
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Because we have an unusually high rate of uncommonly violent criminals. Please don't make me do the whole Norwegian Prisoners argument.
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Do you think this accurately reflects the state of criminal prosecution in the United States, and if so, how do you account for the hundreds of thousands of people in pre-trial detention?
There's an awful lot of multiple felons in on murder charges who even "abolitionists" can't get released without bail. It's not complicated.
You think there are 400,000 people in pre-trial detention for homicide?
For one thing, because the median time to release from state prison is only 1.3 years and trials take far too long, you would always expect a significant proportion of people to be in pretrial detention even with very high bail rates. And those who have their charges dropped don't even enter the statistics (until they're rearrested enough times to finally be held without bail).
Here's an interesting case study from NYC, where pretrial detention rates halved after the new law let most suspects free without bail. By 2021 their detention rates had reached the old level due to increased crime rates and rollbacks to the bail law requiring detainment of people who committed felonies while still out on probation. The comptroller stresses that bad people are trying to draw a connection between leniency and all the new crime, but that he will acknowledge No Evidence for this. He finishes his report with a demand to defund the police and prosecutors, which will definitely solve the problem this time.
So yes, my take would be that both criminal suspects and convicts were suddenly treated very leniently. Then the crime rate exploded and COVID happened, and now we're back to having a high number of people in pretrial detention--and even higher proportional to the number of convicts due to how many of them were released.
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Here's the Prison Policy Initiative chart of what they're in for. I dunno, "only" 16k are for murder charges, but the rest seems like pretty bad stuff on the whole.
I'm trying to find a source for how many held in pretrial detention were already in the legal system for something else before the current offense. It's only 10k for simple parole violations, but that doesn't account for "we brought this guy in for burglary and he was already on probation/out on bail for a burglary offense"
Also gotta see if I can find the same chart from 2019, see if COVID backlog changed anything.
Guys like prisonpolicy are such a research rabbit hole because you know there's useful stats they're very carefully not putting in the infographic, buried somewhere in appendix C of some BJS report.
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The Prison Policy Initiative, the group pushing the 400,000 number you're quoting, attributes it to the median bail cost for felony charges at 10,000USD which is apparently out of reach for the demographics typically charged with a felony.
Was this intended as a refutation of the 400,000 number? It seems like you're suspicious the number is real but all you've offered is pointing out that the organization has a leftist agenda.
I offered their reasoning as well which was far more than the original uncited argument. Activist organization provided numbers are generally suspect and InfluenceWatch is somewhat reasonable in terms of mapping various activist networks so it seemed a worthwhile inclusion. Infer why someone bothered to check the source of a specific numerical claim all you want.
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I don't think the cases are that similar. Griner could trivially avoid interaction with the hostile foreign government by not going to their territory and breaking their laws. I suppose one could say that the J6 rioters could have avoided interaction with the hostile domestic government by not going to its capitol, but surely there is a substantial asymmetry in the foreign and domestic nature of the examples.
I think the main thing is you can reasonably expect not to be persecuted by US government for protesting - or at least you could some time ago. I don't think there ever was time where you could reasonably expect to take drugs into Russia and be treated lightly. In fact, the same scenario played out with Israeli Naama Issachar - except that she was on a transit flight, and Israel managed to get her free in exchange for some land in Jerusalem that the Russian church wanted. The also wanted Aleksey Burkov, a cybercriminal with, apparently, very high-placed friends, released, but that didn't work out (US released him to Russia anyway soon after in 2021, not sure whether the Presidency change in between played any role in it).
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I haven't been following this case terribly closely, but is it completely clear that she did break the law? The Russian state doesn't (currently or even historically) have a particular reputation for honesty. As such, I have do wonder (without evidence) that the case may have been staged to garner a political prisoner as a potential future bargaining chip. Or that she actually did bring in the contraband, but was subjected to additional scrutiny in the hopes of finding a charge. But I'll concede that it's perfectly possible the charges are actually above board.
She admitted to the facts that are against the law (brining weed into russia). You could argue that might be under duress, but it's unlikely that she would admit to that fact in their court, kangaroo as it may be, if she didn't in fact get caught with weed on her while in Russia.
Yeah, the charges are above board. Forgot about cannabis oil for a vape pen in her luggage. An incredibly poor oversight when traveling to a country that was already on the U.S. State Department’s list of countries U.S. citizens are advised to avoid at the time of her trip.
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Going through an airport and forgetting you’ve got something that’s going to be illegal once you enter your destination country is surely orders of magnitude more common than storming a legislature with the intent of disrupting proceedings.
Yes, unfortunately. We'd be in much better shape if that was reversed imo.
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Of course there are differences too, but the similarities are striking to me. At least in the sense the the framing of the incidents is entirely dependant on who has the power and who's sources you read or watch.
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