This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
"the worst first amendment case I've ever seen" just had a good ending! You can read his summary (CEO of FIRE who lead the case) or mine.
A while back, a retired police officer Larry Bushart posted a political meme on Facebook mocking conservatives over the concept of not caring about kids who get shot in schools while cancelling people for not caring about Charlie Kirk's death.
In response, Perry County officials where he lived had him arrested and held in jail for 37 days, setting his bond at 2 million dollars. He lost his job from this disruption and missed his granddaughter's birth and his wedding anniversary.
This arrest was obvious bullshit, another case where corrupt abusive officials utilize the legal system itself as punishment. No one would have seriously expected this case to go through, but the process itself is often meant as the attack.
It ends with good news though, as part of the settlement Bushart is getting almost a million dollars. Bad news, like most abuse by officials it gets paid for by the taxpayers and nothing is likely to happen to the corrupt scumbags who were in charge.
But this is a great lesson at least. In the US, you can just be a random guy, upset the most powerful government organizations and draw their ire, and win against them. America is a country where David can take down Goliath, whether it be your local officials or federal ones. Bushart refused to accept the abuse, he stood up to the bullies, and he won.
No, this shows that you can do this against government organizations that have a right-wing bias. It does not show that you can do this against government organizations in general.
It also depends on how big the institution you're fighting is and how much practice they've had doing it. If it had been the FBI instead of the county, they would have questioned him, they would have found or manufactured a felony, he would be jailed, and there would be nothing he could do.
There's been plenty of legal wins against left wing abuse. Here's a recent one involving free speech from a conservative. Her damages were obviously much lower (not flying a flag on a flagpole vs being put in jail for over a month) so she only got about 30k but yes, when government leaders illegally step on your rights you can sue and you can win/force them to settle.
Now it might take a while, especially if you aren't willing to settle after all the court system is slow and backlogged. But that's not because of unfairness, it's just a general court issue. Often the real problem that tends to happen with court is idiots. Idiots who don't realize that actually nothing illegally happened, your rights were not stepped on, and they're just stupid. The law is complex and criminals are stupid, it's why "you have to tell me if you're a cop right?" continues to be a thing. No they don't, and the court will not take you selling drugs to an undercover one as entrapment.
Now hold up, if they conducted a legal search and found a felony and proved it in court then of course he could end up jailed for it.
If they manufactured one, then he would argue for his innocence and try to provide counter evidence it isn't real. Given that isn't many cases even alleging that the FBI or other groups manufactured evidence, especially excluding anything like an obvious schizophrenic representing themselves in court filings saying it, I don't think there's much reason to believe it's actually happened often.
I'm not talking about manufacturing evidence. Three felonies a day is a thing. And it's not hard to manufacture one by creating a situation where someone lies to the FBI, or where the FBI can claim such and there's no way to disprove it.
Like most popular conceptions of incredibly complex things, that is not true. Hell a lot of the examples he gave were not even felonies ever charged to anyone
Those that were are situations most people will never face to begin with. Like it's really absurd to count something like a lawyer failing to properly turn over a laptop filled with child porn would be used as evidence in a trial (and instead destroying it improperly, thus facing destruction of evidence/obstruction of justice charges) as the sort of situation facing "the average American"
It was a fancy title to get readers for his book about overcriminalization, which might be an issue (I agree it is in some areas!) but average people aren't doing three felonies a day.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, they would have. They would have come with an electronics search warrant based on the probable cause that he was using a computer to transmit interstate terrorist threats. They would have found an unencrypted hard drive with a terabyte of a particular type of obscene photo which the FBI is allowed to posses but which average people possessing is a serious felony in the United States. They would have dropped the threats charges and proceeded with the incidental charges. They did this to several J6ers.
If there was enough good cause to believe in a threat to get a search warrant, then there's no issue. Even in Bushart's case, the problem wasn't that they investigated him to begin with since there is decent enough cause with the meme he posted for that. The issue is that good faith officials would have accepted that this was a quote of the president and not a threat to shoot up local schools, instead of proceeding ahead with throwing him in jail.
Yes the FBI is allowed to have the data of child porn in the specific context of using it to identify other child porn. Very interesting way to word it.
Yep, that's how the law works. Things found in a legally authorized search are generally permissible evidence. This applies even if the circumstances initially permitting the search change later, like it turns out a witness had lied to the police or something. They don't have to have a valid warrant, as long as the officials executing it reasonably acted on good faith https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/probable_cause?
It requires the officials themselves to have acted in bad faith or overreached in the limits of the legal search.
That sounds like an odious context, because it doesn't really need to be identified now does it? Unless you're enforcing the extremely severe law on people who accidentally see a 17 year old on some mainstream website. Which is probably the main use case for that.
Anyway AFAIK, they're also allowed to broadly posses it, receive it, distribute it, and even cause the production of it. I have read that they entrap people by sending it to them when asked, and the by asking for photos of family members that they then use to identify the people they entrap. This implies possession by the FBI, knowing reception by the FBI, knowing distribution by the FBI, and encouraging production by the FBI. It almost looks a pedophilic enterprise operating under the thin cover of pedo hunting. The only difference is the badge. Imagine if one of those street hunter people did this. They would be arrested! Personally I think their methods should be reigned in, because makes me sick to see an FBI agent when I know he is quite likely to be someone who trades it on the darknet all day for „justice” or „the greater good” or whatever. I'm glad entrapment is illegal in my country because it must select for some disgusting people to sign up for law enforcement duties.
Yes, yes. It's all legal. That's how your law works. It's wrong, but it's how you made it work. Except for the part where the evidence might be planted. But that's impossible to prove, and defendants are forbidden from alleging it in court. Which means they are not allowed to really defend themselves. Which means it would be very easy for the government to get away with it, when you understand how it all works.
Yep the difference between law enforcement acting in an official capacity to catch criminals is different than a vigilante. The same way you can't be a "street hunter" for drugs and just do it to sell drugs to people.
The justice and greater good of catching pedophiles actively seeking out child abuse material.
Entrapment is an incredibly misunderstood legal doctrine, it is not entrapment that you get caught doing a crime you were already doing. Entrapment is not allowed in the US either.
Yes, they use the same tactics for drugs as well. Which should be illegal.
You can have that without entrapment. Many countries do, including my own.
Americans have redefined it to make it okay in their country. The common sense definition is any act which is meant to entice someone to commit a crime is entrapment. United States law enforcement at all levels commits many such acts of entrapment. If the entrapped person was already doing the crime, then they need to be prosecuted for those acts, not acts that they were pushed to do by law enforcement. If law enforcement can't find evidence, then too bad, that's the point of privacy rights. 99% of the time they can't find evidence because the act is actually not harmful, which is why victims are not lining up to testify about how they have been damaged.
What country are you in? It seems more reasonable that you, like most citizens, misunderstand your local laws than that your country never uses undercover cops at all.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You're saying that the FBI framed several J6ers by "sprinkle some child pornography on him" ? source? would love to read up on this.
This is just what has been reported in the media.
Do people who were framed for CP usually submit a guilty plea? The only thing he’s contesting is that the search was illegal.
The other guy linked was Andrew Jackson, who apparently skipped the image step and got life in prison for actually molesting a kid.
FYI, you got your presidents mixed up. The offender was Andrew Johnson, not Andrew Jackson.
Damn it! Now I’ve libeled a President, too.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Probably, because they aren't allowed to argue framing as a defense and the United States federal court system is well known for beating people, figuratively, into guilty pleas through intimidation via threatening cruelly long sentences if they don't plea and are found guilty. So, imagine, you are told by the judge you can't allege the government framed you in your trial. You can stage a half-defense at your trial, but if the jury doesn't buy it, since it is not the true defense, you will go to jail for 5 to 10 extra years. They plea out at this point.
And that is a federal matter how? Because the kid will at some point cross state lines in interstate commerce? How is that relevant to J6? It seems suspicious. People lie and slander each other all the time, what if the allegations were produced by the J6 investigation and are not true?
I'm going to reply here to keep the conversations we have together concentrated.
I don't doubt that instances of this happens. But for this particular case you cited, I see that Daniel Tocci plead guilty to child pornography. Let's say he was intimidated and framed into pleading a guilty plea on "sprinkle some child porn on him", well, this is the perfect administration and the perfect FBI director with a great conservative media system who would love to hear this story and spread it as far and as wide as possible. His defense attorney also doesn't seem like the type to let his client make such a plea seeing as they're fighting on procedural ground for evidence dismissal. If the injustice to Daniel Tocci is real, Trump is right there in the correct spot to help him.
I would love to have a different example where you can point to J6er defendant intimidation/framed.
More options
Context Copy link
I’m talking about this guy. Not a federal charge.
More options
Context Copy link
Do you have a citation on this being a real thing that happens? I know there are arguments that a judge can say that the defense can't make to the jury, but my understanding is that those are more things like "you should nullify" or "the judge has ruled this search legal, but actually it was illegal" (though you can still argue about what the evidence from that search means).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Daniel Tocci plead guilty to possession of child pornography. Doesn't seem like the police sprinkled it on his computer.
In the United States federal system, guilty pleas are procedurally manufactured through defendant intimidation. Read my other comment on this https://www.themotte.org/post/3758/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/445398?context=8#context
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You know, I’m quite open to the possibility that the FBI is planting such material in order to get at politically disfavored people whom they cannot otherwise touch. It’s definitely doable, it would only require a few bad actors, and it would be almost impossible for the victim to defend against. But the case you linked doesn’t seem at all relevant. The defendant’s complaint is that the evidence was accidentally found during an unrelated search, not that the evidence was planted. He also doesn’t seem to be a particular ringleader, so it seems unlikely that the FBI would single him out (there haven’t been a slew of similar cases to my knowledge). Plus, there were some 1,500 January 6 defendants who were pardoned by Trump. It doesn’t seem statistically unlikely that one of those 1,500 would be into CP, especially given that some sources estimate that 1–5% of the male population are pedophiles.
So Americans will send a man to jail for 10 years because their government wrongly searched him and alleges to have found obscene photos on a private hard drive. Sounds like some uncivilized Russian monkey business to me. This is despite the initial cause for search being illegitimate enough that they could not hold him on the actual charges they were investigating. This boils down to blindly trusting a government that has already demonstrated openly, through the initial search, that they are just engaging in mere political persecution, and not the „justice” they they so hubristically don themselves in through their self-namings such as Department of „Justice,” „justice” system, supreme court „justice.” What does the United States know of justice? Is it the state that Plato envisioned when he thought of justice, or is it a democratic tyranny? Anyway, as for your statistics, maybe the special agent in charge of this specific persecution was a corrupt Democrat pedophile who was well positioned and motivated to frame this specific person for this specific crime. In the whole FBI you would expect at least one such person when it comes to a persecution as big as the J6 round-up, even if the FBI generally was not very corrupt. But we don't know because it is illegal in the United States to investigate federal agents or to question their trustworthiness at trial. I have read that judges gag the defense from presenting arguments that „place the government on trial” by alleging that evidence is forged, agents are corrupt, the prosecution is motivated, etc. Which does not seem like it is keeping up a real right to defense to me.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
+$835,000 and having a good excuse to skip his wedding anniversary? Bro needs to stop hogging all the luck.
There is an interesting question here on whether he should just get his damages plus a nice reward or they should get outsized rewards because it’s difficult to challenge every small abuse so outsize rewards are good to discourage abuse
That’s…not exactly a new consideration for awarding damages. Or deterrent justice in general.
More options
Context Copy link
Judges can do all kinds of stuff right? Could a judge require the government to try to develop a time machine to bring him back to the missed events? What about investment in longevity tech to give him the lifespan back?
Obviously I'm less interested in the actual case here than I am in being whimsical, but I do wonder.
Hell yeah it should! Also under consideration: “microstamping” ammo regardless if it is technologically possible or not, and of course, sentencing the police chief to be his butler.
More options
Context Copy link
Sounds like a job for a sci-fi short story.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This seems to be one of the cases where 'moar dakka' might be applicable. Just scale the punitive damages to the point where Perry county's law enforcement will face unemployment simply because Perry county will be too bankrupt to afford any law enforcement. Less than a million is just a slap on the wrist.
The thing which is confusing me is that in civilized countries, there is generally a narrow limit on how long police can hold you in some cell before a judge has to a-ok it. So the blame for the first two days would lie with the sheriff, and the blame for the other 35 days would lie with a judge who was willing to sign off on him staying in prison. We have judges overlooking the decisions of police because we know very well that cops can not be trusted on whom should be in prison (at least when they are not making a sworn statement which could land themselves in prison). Nor do I buy that whoever rubber-stamped that was so overworked that they could not spend five minutes reading to the case file -- how many people does Perry county hold on a 2M$ bail because they are supposedly an imminent threat to public safety, and how many of these are former cops?
I get that there are good reasons to prohibit suing judges for their legal decisions, but my preferable outcome would be for the judge to decide to change their name and move to Alaska in the hope of no longer being The Official Whose Decision Bankrupted Perry County.
I have also very little sympathy for the taxpayer here. At the end of the day, the buck stops with them -- they elected the sheriff, possibly the judge, or other officials who employed the perpetrators. As a German, let me tell you that "we made a bad decision in the voting booth and now a few years later our county is bankrupt" is far from the worst of what bad electoral decisions can cost an electorate.
OK. What about the taxpayers who didn't vote for any of these people? What about their children? What about Larry Bushart himself? Are these people also no longer entitled to equal protection under the law? And yes, the 14th amendment has been held to apply to failure to police abuses against certain groups -- this is in fact the plainest reading of the text, even if others are much more popular -- see Thurman v. City of Torrington.
And even if it weren't unconstitutional to deny a county law enforcement, it would still be a bad idea. Not only is collective punishment odious, it's less effective than the obvious, correct move: directly punishing the officials that abused their authority.
There's a principle in tort law: that liability should fall on the least-cost avoider, the party that could most cheaply have prevented the harm. How were voters to have prevented this? They could question candidates under polygraph, pose them dozens of hypotheticals, do an incredibly invasive investigation of their entire lives... and still not be 100% certain they won't act inappropriately. And then, when they do, they just bashfully shrug and move somewhere that isn't bankrupt; that is a slap on the wrist.
Meanwhile, the individuals in question could easily be 100% certain of their good behavior by just deciding not to misbehave.
More options
Context Copy link
The county isn't paying these settlements out of the treasury; they have insurance for that. I don't know the exact dynamics between the carriers and the government regarding how much caution they can make them exercise, but if they keep engaging in similar behavior rates will go up. These settlements are rare though even in the worst municipalities, so I don't see it being that much of an issue.
Personally, I think those insurances are clearly immoral, just like offering insurance to companies for fines due to health and safety violations.
I think this is something which could also be solved by moar dakka. Simply award damages (or impose fines, in the case of companies) which are twice the maximum coverage limit of their insurance.
If the county has unlimited insurance, then the first order of business would be to punish their insurance company. This is not particularly hard, the judges will not require Knuth's arrow notation or anything, simple high school math skills will suffice. Big reinsurance companies like Munich Re or Swiss Re have assets worth a few hundreds of billion dollars, a judge could write down a number in 30 seconds which would reliably bankrupt them.
This is such an odd perspective on insurance and damages that I'm sort of at a loss for words
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The judge's job is not to second-guess the police. He or she is not examining how detailed and unbiased their investigation was, only how legally sound it is. "Deputy Jones observed the picture violating statute 12345 on the Facebook page belonging to the suspect and recorded the image of the page using Windows Snipping Tool (Exhibit A). Deputy Smith drove to the 321 Tree Lane, which is the registered address of the suspect. There Deputy Smith introduced himself to the suspect and asked him to confirm that he posted Exhibit A himself. When the suspect confirmed, Deputy Smith arrested him. Body cam footage is Exhibit B."
Yes, in this specific case the judge could've looked at Exhibit A and told the sheriff the case was bogus, but in a more general case the sheriff could have put "We have to march on DC and lynch our political enemies NOW" as Exhibit A and it's not the job of the American judge to independently verify every piece of evidence.
Surely it's their job to check whether the arrest has merit, which includes checking the evidence at least somewhat?
What if the case is entirely fabricated and exhibit A is just a picture of a cute cat? Should the judge rubberstamp that?
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, if the sheriff is actively lying to the judge and fabricating evidence it's not reasonable to blame the judge, but I still expect them to look at the details of the exhibits, not just check that they exist.
Agreed. In that case, we would have another remedy: the officer deposits his affidavit under penalty of perjury, and the defense will shortly learn of what facts he has claimed. If he had just claimed "the accused posted on Facebook that he would destroy America for ISIS", and it later turns out that this was a fabrication, that is one particularly vile count of forswearing, the kind which has been punished harshly since the times of Mosaic law.
And yes, the job of the judge is very much to form a preliminary legal interpretation of the facts attested by the officer. If he just follows the officers interpretation of the law ("posting that, he threatened to shoot up a school"), there would be no reason for judicial oversight at all. In civilized countries, there will generally be a hearing of some sorts. Typically, police custody is limited to 24 or 48 hours, and if the cops want to keep you longer, they need you to drag you in front of a judge and convince them that you merit imprisonment. So the person in custody would have the chance to make their case that they merely posted a commonly used meme picture.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'd just like to see more personal consequences for abuse of power. If someone hits you on accident with their car and you end up in the hospital, you can sue them (and their insurance) for damages. If someone hits you on purpose then that happens + they can go to jail.
Now I get that proving a judge or prosecutor was acting with explicit foul intent will be difficult and maybe nothing would happen in this case, but I also wouldn't be surprised that if you subpoenad their communications you might find something rather usable considering how brazen this was!
I get the logic here, the issue is that because politicians and cops and etc don't really view it as their money (like even in this settlement would the Perry County police budget or prosecutors officer or whatever actually be lowered by the amount in response or would it just get diverted from something else? Likely the latter), something like this ain't really viewed too much as their punishment. The only thing that they might suffer is that they might lose office, and maybe they'll have to divert some funds away from another government program. Most likely something they don't even like with the excuse of triaging. Or of course a classic, just have the city borrow more money and make future citizens pay for it all. Oh whoops, looks like we had to divert money from that infrastructure project in order to pay for the corrupt cop, guess we'll do more bonds.
It's actually extremely lindy to have public officials abusing their positions face harsh personal consequences(often things we're not going to do today, like execution by torture or family enslavement).
Now, in our system, this rule would inevitably be abused by individuals who either have too much time on their hands or are dedicated to some variety of minor crime crankery to harass officials that are Just Doing Their Jobs, and we probably don't want to start punishing people making complaints about public servants. The solution would have to look more like internal affairs than like lawsuits. And Internal Affairs would inevitably also be biased.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This was a clear violation of established civil rights and the victim deserves restitution.
But $835,000 is a lot of money. That is more money than I have made in my entire life. Even in the "good" endings, I shudder to look directly at the massive roulette wheel that is American tort litigation. A back-of-the-envelope calculation for what I think would be a fair settlement (all figures approximate):
Lost wages: $10,000
Physical discomfort: $100,000
Emotional distress: $15,000
Missing life events: $10,000
Legal fees: $50,000
This comes to a total of $185,000. I cannot imagine a fudge factor big enough to make up the extra $650,000. That's pure profit in my book. This isn't even particularly large for a civil rights settlement. Insane that we just accept this.
There is a concept called punitive damages. WP:
Sometimes a defendant is liable for damages but did not commit an act of evil. If you crash a car into another car because a marten had chewed on some cables or conducts, resulting in your car behaving unexpectedly, that is just bad luck, and justice would be satisfied if you paid for the repair costs of the other car. If you damaged another car because you were participating in an illegal street race, that would be different, especially if you are rich enough that the repair bill would not hurt you.
If any other gang had kidnapped and held this guy for more than a month, they would be looking at long prison sentences, which would be sufficient to prevent a repetition at least in the short term and hopefully generally through setting the correct incentives. Cops enjoy wide-ranging immunities, so it is not feasible to prove malicious conduct to the point where we can just sentence them to lengthy prison sentences to set incentives.
Sometimes, the justice system will hold an innocent man in prison and he will be lucky if he gets an apology with his freedom. This can happen as a result of honest mistakes. "Given a professional investigation, we concluded at that time that you were very likely the killer, so we locked you up. Later evidence came in which exonerated you, but we could not have reasonably gotten that evidence any earlier. Sorry, shit happens." Good luck getting anything from the state in such cases. Societies reasonably does not want cops to not arrest killers out of fear they will need to pay compensation for arresting the wrong guy later.
But what happened to that guy should not have happened, ever. The police did not act in good faith, nor did the judge. There is no tradeoff for providing a huge negative incentive.
Per WP, Perry county has a population of about 9k, so the damages awarded would come to about 100$ per capita, which is hopefully enough that it will be felt by the electorate and push their gradient descent into electing less terrible officials, and generally provide a healthy incentive not to violate 1A rights.
(As an European, I think it is very silly to let a population of less than 10k have its own branch of the justice system. In Germany, an instance of an Amtsgericht (our lowest court, which would sign off on prison for being a danger to others) represents 130k people on average.)
And that it happened reveals a deep rot in the United States system. It is too easy for low-lifes to arrest, charge, and imprison good people. Part of that is that standards need to be raised for cops and it should be possible to earn rights against cops through demonstration of good character. Cops are really for harassing the bottom 10% of society, whereas a cop should be shaking in fear when addressing someone from the top 10% of society if they don't have a warrant of some kind in hand from a court run by those same people. Charges are too easy: most laws should be abolished. Leaving murder, assault, stealing, and similar laws. They exploited a shitty law to arrest this guy which criminalized speech without demonstration of harm being done. That's like a JS api in your browser that lets websites run shell commands on your system. The cops are the website and they super duper pinky promise to only run good commands. The design is so flawed that the consequences are obvious. Imprisonment: the United States is too punitive and the sentences are unjust in most cases. Emphasize criminal record in sentencing and make it almost impossible to imprison someone with a clean record who didn't commit a violent crime for more than one year. There are too many ways to go to prison for over a decade in the United States by harming nobody and having a clean criminal record. That's ripe for exploitation: imprisonment is normalized. And the excuse for this is mostly that Americans need to do something with the underclass. But none of this effectively deals with the underclass as could the system I describe which is not exploitable in the same way.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
According to the linked tweet, he lost his job, not merely wages, so you'd have to compensate for future wages lost and possibly reputational damage?
More options
Context Copy link
I agree, these settlements are absurd. The other thing that I recall is Alex Jones supposedly paying out $1.4 billion with court ordering to liquidate everything he owns be it InfoWars or his personal assets. Mind you there were 15 plaintiffs representing 10 victims and he had to pay from $28.8 million to $120 million. Now I am not defending Jones and his character here, but it seems excessive to me especially because of course Jones is not a billionaire and has only fraction of that money, but at the same time he cannot declare bankrupcy. So he will have to pay damages for the rest of his life. He basically became something like indentured servant to those people.
I am not sure if this is a normal practice in USA especially for verbal crime. But even for some other crime - is it normal for a criminal to be sued for billions thus becoming basically indentured servant for his victim? Surely raping or crippling somebody is much worse than ranting on internet, I guess the damages should be in trillions. It seems insane to me how arbitrary this is, but I guess this is what we get from jury system which is basically a theater where regular people can use state power for their own power trips.
Who knows. Maybe if you were on that jury you would have come out to the same conclusion.
Likely not because he's not a median juror. A median juror however thinks Alex Jones is a le bad rich guy and that the cops in the OP's case we Just Doing Their Job. Because the median juror is a 100 IQ worker with cop brothers and cousins and zero filthy rich 120+ IQ internet entertainer family members.
I think "100 IQ worker with cop brothers and cousins" would also get filtered out (unless the defense is a joke at jury selection).
Depends on the state. In my state, as long as they can repeat "but I can be fair and impartial," trial judges put them on juries and the appellate courts have no issue with it.
More options
Context Copy link
Good luck filtering most of the population.
Being too close to a cop will get you filtered out of a jury. Juries are mostly teachers and retirees.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The issue that led to the Jones awards being so high was his refusal to participate in the process in good faith. He ignored the suit rather than defend it and got a default judgment against him, and when the case went to trial for damages he played games with regard to discovery. If the jury thinks you aren't taking things seriously and are trying to hide assets, they're going to punish you for it, and there's nothing you can do about it, because the time to do something about it was before you got soaked.
Assuming everything you said is accurate (which Jones denies but he is an interested party) 1.4b is still orders of magnitude too large.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That was a special case. Jones failed to comply with the judge's orders regarding discovery, so he was punished with a default judgment—i. e., he was not permitted to make arguments reducing the damages claimed by the plaintiffs. (At least I think that's what happened. IIRC, some people on this website think that the judge's orders were not reasonable, or Jones did make good-faith efforts to comply with them but the judge unreasonably interpreted those efforts as bad-faith, or something like that.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Punitive damages for public sector organizations should be paid for by the organization and go to a generalized scaled tax rebate depending on jurisdiction. So ever tax payer in the municipality gets a few dollars in tax rebates and the department pays.
More options
Context Copy link
Punitive damages can push that way up, since they aren't linked to anything suffered by the victim. They can't have the perpetrator getting away with a small slap on the wrist, so they bumped it up a lot. The money had to go somewhere, so it went to the victim.
He was lucky that the perpetrators acted egregiously when they harmed him (because the total compensation he received outweighs his total harms), but I can't think of a better way to do it.
More options
Context Copy link
It is simultaneously not enough money and the wrong people are paying out. The people, cops/judges/staff etc should be personally liable for the money and/or jailtime. I am saying this despite finding the wronged party personally dislikable.
That's easy to say in a case like this, but would abolishing qualified immunity in the US not just result in unlimited lawfare against any government officials enforcing anything with a political dimension, which would presumably lead to said government officials becoming reluctant to do so? Expect impunity for [whatever group pisses you off the most] first, and subsequent further incineration of the commons.
Really, my sense often is that the US would stand to benefit from having its entire legal system burnt down and rebuilt from scratch. So many of your problems, including healthcare costs and inability to build infrastructure, ultimately can be traced back to the possibility of being dragged to court and having to spend the GDP of a minor country on lawyers (because if you don't and the other side does then you lose and are on the hook anyway).
Fixed it for you. Garden variety apolitical cranks and ODCs know how to hire lawyers.
More options
Context Copy link
The problem is not the idea of qualified immunity, the problem is 1) the standard for how close the previous case has to be to the current one to be "clearly established", and 2) the fact that you can throw a case out for not being clearly established without establishing it for the next case.
More options
Context Copy link
If so, mission accomplished.
Well, just to be clear, the primary example I was thinking of were various minorities that beat the curve in terms of criminal proclivities. Surely there is no shortage of Blue NGOs that would be happy to make an example out of the occasional randomly selected police for giving traffic ticket to a black person. Is disincentivising that a mission you want to see accomplished too?
If
The ticket is legitimate
The NGOs suing can themselves be sued for frivolity
The cop has nothing to fear. Although I can imagine a lawsuit for a frivolous lawsuit for a frivolous lawsuit…getting out of hand.
I believe that generally, the law should, only and be heavily incentivized to, be applied in obvious cases. In ambiguity, the justice system does nothing, except ensures the defendant has a way to prevent or at least record future infractions.
For example:
If someone runs over the speed limit, they get fined. If someone is wrongly fined and has their own evidence, they appeal, and get repaid with extra. If someone is wrongly fined but has no evidence, better luck next time: they can start recording their speed, so if they’re caught again they’ll have evidence to reverse both cases.
If someone has a legitimate claim, they sue. If someone is clearly illegitimately sued, they counter-sue. If someone is illegitimately sued but can’t prove obviousness, both parties waste their time.
Rulings can be appealed a fixed number of times, possibly zero. The appeals themselves will waste everyone’s time, unless the defendant can prove (beyond reasonable doubt) that the prior ruling was clearly wrong (not just ambiguous), or the plaintiff can prove the defendant’s new argument is frivolous (or clearly the same as their old argument).
My basic reasoning is: the more the law is enforced by letter, the more it can be sidestepped (broken in spirit). The more it’s enforced by spirit, the more susceptible it is to corruption, and corruption in the law is more dangerous than corruption in other institutions. If the law is only enforced in obvious cases, both issues are reduced: the letter is too unambiguous to sidestep, corrupting the spirit would be too obvious. Meanwhile, other institutions with softer enforcement can counter non-obvious infractions, either by making them obvious to the law, or using ambiguity to their advantage. The law (by itself) doesn’t prevent crime, so at least some of these other institutions are necessary anyways.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I forget how weakly-qualified immunity is justified.
I understand why state officials should have more ability to use violence than citizens, including ability to make reasonable mistakes (i.e. immunity). But there should be a limit for egregious (either intentional or unacceptably incompetent) mistakes. Why is the limit so high?
We have too much petty crime, yet qualified immunity seems to boost it, by shielding cops from punishment for not handling it. I also have the impression that there are many regions where most people don’t respect their cops. In these ways, reducing qualified immunity would increase enforcement, and (by making cops more respected by locals) improve job conditions and morale.
You wouldn’t be able to staff police in those areas.
More options
Context Copy link
I think that failure to enforce laws and qualified immunity for violating rights are entirely separate issues.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"We have lawyers like other countries have rats."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
On the other hand, would you like the police to be able to violate your rights anytime they feel like it, knowing that the only consequence the municipality will face is a measly sub-$200,000 fine? (They, of course, won’t face any consequences themselves regardless.)
If you don’t make the consequences at least moderately painful, the government won’t have any reason to care if it runs roughshod over people’s rights.
Other countries have not this disproportionate payout and still are lawful.
Other countries mostly do not elect their sheriffs and judges.
In Germany, both police and judges are civil servants employed by the state following a standard career path. While there are certainly reports about Nazi chat groups among cops and there is the odd scandal of justice once every few decades, I would say that compared to the US both institutions are relatively fine here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I really hope this doesn't turn into a trend. Arresting people for social media posts is Yookay Behavior (am I saying it right?)
Should probably be Behaviour.
Bang on.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link