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Notes -
The Proud Boy sentences being quite severe is on my mind today. 22 years for Tarrio who was not there on Jan 6. He does have text saying it was them who did it. A few others got in the high teens sentences who were there.
I will admit I respect the Proud Boys and agree with a lot of their statements. I do believe the 2020 election was stolen. The lack of a secret ballot thru mass mail-in voting violates every principle of Democracy. Without violating the secret ballot Trump would have easily won in my opinion. The Proud Boys official position from memory was a desire for a new election following Democratic principles. Seems fair to me. So I feel they are directionally correct even if they took things too far.
The right won’t get equal treatment in the court. It seems like the key courts are in cities that are going to have unsympathetic juries and judges. If you flip these courts to rural areas then my guess antifa types are getting 20 years and Proud Boys 2 years. In rural areas they would have judges very sympathetic that the election wasn’t proper and their anger was justified in the same way BLM protestors get courts sympathetic that America is a racists nation.
I think the left is making a mistake with these massive sentences. If they gave them a couple years I would feel it was fair as they went too far. But now I want them pardoned. If Trump pardons them as he should then it’s a slap in the face of the court decision. Delegitimizes the court to have the court decide these are really bad people deserving long sentences for overturning Democracy but then have the next guy release them. It feels very third worldish to me. With other lawfare attempts it seems as though any future POTUS should do mass pardons. I’m not sure how balance of powers can survive this.
The punishment for Proud Boys seems to have some connection to the debates and Biden declaring them “white supremacists” and Trump telling them to “stand by and stand down” (which felt coded). It made it important these guys got long sentences to confirm that they are the bad guys because then a court confirmed what they told you. Same thing with Floyd officers and long sentences which confirmed that they were bad murderous cops. A jury convicted therefore we know it’s true.
It’s another example of punishment for exercising your right to a jury trial.
I agree with Garrett Jones books “10% Less Democracy” and America would be better with less activision and less voting. But America looks more and more like a third word spoils system. Win you get the spoils, lose you go to jail. Which makes elections far more important.
Links aren’t important just sometimes people asks for articles.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1172530436/proud-boys-jan-6-sedition-trial-verdict
https://apnews.com/article/enrique-tarrio-capitol-riot-seditious-conspiracy-sentencing-da60222b3e1e54902db2bbbb219dc3fb#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20(AP)%20—%20Former%20Proud,for%20the%20U.S.%20Capitol%20attack.
https://www.amazon.com/10-Less-Democracy-Should-Elites/dp/1503603571
https://reason.com/2023/09/06/with-22-year-sentence-ex-proud-boys-leader-enrique-tarrio-pays-hefty-trial-penalty/
Edit: Focus on the punishments and any results from the severity. I used a certain frame to put it in their view. We don’t need to discuss election legitimacy again.
Update: They released the offered plea deals. Basically 35-50% of sentences given out. All basically received double max sentence of plea deal. One of them is saying it violates his constitutional right to a jury trial and will appeal on those grounds. Which I believe is directionally correct but the whole system efficiency collapses without this work around. A much broader issue which would be nice to find a better solution.
https://twitter.com/rparloff/status/1699751415076266140?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
Not quite. The plea deal specifically says that the Government can seek an upward departure (and the defendant can seek a downward departure).
More importantly, a comparison of the deal with the sentence is meaningless without assessing the strength of the case. Suppose the probability of conviction was 50%. If so, the offer of 50% of what they got is exactly the expected sentence, so there is no "trial penalty" at all. If the probability of conviction was higher, then the offer was great deal. If the probability was lower, then the opposite is true.
I don’t think that is what our constitution means like your playing a dice game. And take the expected value. The punishment is for the crime you are guilty of. Guilt or innocence is from a guilty plea or a jury conviction.
Right, which is why under the plea deal some charges were to be dropped, and some enhancements not argued at sentencing. The guilty plea would yield a different conviction than would a jury verdict.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that the plea deal reflects the "true" level of guilt, and that hence any punishment greater than the offer is unjust. But you have no basis for that assumption.
No I am not operating under that assumption. We have a constitution. It says you have a right to a jury trial. For other rights the government doesn’t get to coerce or charge you for them. There is no pay $100 for the right to free speech.
If these guys committed a very bad crime then they should be punished for those crimes. I’m not sure the government has a constitutional right to decide to negotiate on charges.
This is ability becomes much more of an issue with overcharging and all sorts of enhancements. These things have given the government the ability to use them as leverage to prevent jury trials. You just need to create statutes with big penalties to scare people into accepting whatever deal you offer. Which then takes away your ability to get a jury trial.
And yes of course jury trials aren’t practical. The founders didn’t imagine 4 month trials for a lot of the things. They likely saw smaller communities with simpler cases and a handful of witnesses.
But make no mistake the way our system works now has largely eliminated the right to a jury trial.
Again, if you are framing the longer sentence as a "charge" for having a jury trial, then you are assuming that the sentence in the plea deal was the "correct" sentence.
I am not making that assumption. I never said the plea deal was the right sentence. Perhaps the plea deal should have offered the years of the guilty verdict. But as a right the government can negotiate around what they think is the right deal.
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