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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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If you steal something and you are caught, the law doesn't say "it's enough that we took back what you have stolen and also everybody knows you're a thief".

This is actually often the case. Shoplifting is a hassle to prosecute unless it involves high-value items or becomes enough of a nuisance for the store. My shoplifting clients (almost always drug addicts) have gotten caught perhaps a dozen times for each prosecution they face. I've personally seen security guards forcefully take back the items and then let the person go because it wasn't worth calling the cops over it. Same with many other low-level crimes like trespassing or whatnot. Unless the business or the local authority is willing to eat the costs of enforcement (and certain places are if they're rich enough) a lot of petty crime will go unpunished.

(Side note: a lot of places explicitly prohibit their security from placing hands on thieves for lawsuits reasons, but not from the thieves, but rather from their workers getting injured).

But 95% of criminal convictions don't even see the trial - why nobody tries to at least get some guilty pleas on perjury?

It's just unusually hard to prove. Specific intent crimes are hard, proving materiality is hard, and combine that with all the other rules of evidence hurdles and it's rarely worth it. If there's clear evidence of perjury, they likely also committed other more serious crimes, so why bother? One recent prominent exception involved the police officer who arrested Sandra Bland, probably because it was a high profile case and the only thing they could really nail him on. The link cites an article that found between 1966 to 1970 there were only 335 criminal perjury cases total.

I think unless she proves she was struck by a bout of very convenient amnesia, it is pretty clear she knew the messages in fact existed. I mean, if somebody actually wanted to do it.

Miller's case is a slam dunk example of perjury, she would have no defense. The only remaining question is whether the prosecutors will bother.