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Notes -
https://abc7news.com/post/people-charged-felonies-san-francisco-could-released-due-lack-public-defenders/18054704/
There's a lot going on in this article. The San Francisco public defender's office is claiming that individuals must be released from incarceration if the office does not receive more funding to secure additional manpower. They also claim that this is due to frivolous cases being brought up by the DA, saying that their caseload has incr by 60% since 2021.
The DA claims that it is a cynical attempt to hold the city for ransom to secure more funding for the Public Defender's office.
It's interesting to me that the Public Defender's office chose 2021 as its metric, as I believe that represented the low-water mark of law enforcement activity in the US over the last decade.
Does anyone in the area have more context on this? It appears to be a very specific kind of infighting that seems very alien to me.
There is a recent precedent for this kind of thing: Appellate court affirms ruling, releasing defendants from Oregon jails who aren't promptly assigned a public defender
I have zero idea what staffing in the SF PDO is like, but a lack of defense attorneys is a problem in many places (despite all the leftist/woke people attending law schools, the percentage of graduates willing to do defense work seems to be dropping).
I don't think it's paradoxical - the more woke someone is the less they follow the old norms of "give everyone a fair chance and make sure the system doesn't abuse its power over people" and are more likely to be unwilling to defend really bad people. Sure, most of the work a defense attorney might face will involve protecting the rights of someone who's just a victim of circumstances, like Decarlos Brown. But sometimes you might be called to defend someone who you cannot in good conscience, like someone homophobic or racist. It's better to be able to pick clients and then take on a few pro bono cases to feel better about it.
I worry that we will start to see the same shift in Medicine.
Are we talking about the same person? Or does my sarcasm detector need new batteries? From WP:
Is the woke left actually arguing that he is innocent?
My take from ymeskhout is that most clients of public defenders are guilty as sin, but the job of their counsel is to make sure that they get their due process (and pragmatically, negotiate a plea deal). And to be sure, I agree that that they are a key component of the legal system.
Basically, I think that any defense attorney who lives under the assumption that all of her clients are innocent and that any of them getting convicted is a miscarriage of justice will have a very miserable life.
07mk gave the response I would have but also I didn't mean "innocent" when I said "victim of circumstances." Brown is clearly not in the drivers seat of his life, even if he's (allegedly) guilty as sin of cold blooded murder.
Just so that there is no misunderstanding, do you believe that Brown not being "in the drivers seat of his life" should absolve him of responsibility?
Absolutely not.
Ok, but then what should be done? Who should be held responsible for the killing of Iryna Zarutska?
What does it mean for Decarlos Brown to be a "victim of circumstance"?
Would you support charging whoever it was who decided to release Brown after the 14th time he'd been arrested with reckless endangerment and negligent homicide?
I said, "Absolutely not," in response to the question of "Should [this] absolve him of responsibility?" It absolutely does not absolve him of responsibility.
However, it does seem like there were a lot of failures from other people that lead to this happening to Brown. The insane asylums closed down before he was even born. He was allowed to walk free from jail many times when it was clear that something like this was inevitable. He was born with mental illness, which can't be his fault, strictly speaking.
I would definitely support some kind of law that held people accountable for going under sentencing guidelines if there is a reoffence. Don't know if it would be jail time, but victims should certainly be able to sue judges for this.
I think I am realizing that "Victim of Circumstance" doesn't mean what I thought it did. I saw it used in all kinds of situations where the "victim" was obviously vicious and committing severe moral faults, so I assumed the definition required that. But it seems that people think "victim" must mean "innocent."
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