Seems like there should be an optional trial end, in addition to conviction or acquittal, for "prosecution shouldn't have brought this case", where the accused would get some kind of compensation. I don't know the details of this case, but I remember hearing about it many years ago. I can't imagine the expense and stress of such a trial, dragging on for so long, and then at the end it's just "Okay, guess you're not guilty."
Sometimes it seems like prosecutors brought a reasonable case given the evidence and tried it fairly. In this case, I believe acquittal is the right call. Other times it seems like a case that shouldn't have been brought and you should be compensated for that and/or the prosecutor should be punished.
No need to make it optional. If the state can't convict on all counts, you should get full compensation for all expenses, including your legal bills, any time spent in prison, lost income, etc. In a case like this it would be millions of dollars, maybe tens of millions. Of course, this case probably wouldn't have happened in the first place if that was the way prosecutions worked...
Most criminal cases are open-and-shut deals where the defendant is clearly guilty, so this wouldn't change much on average. But it would ensure that 1) prosecutors only prosecute what they can actually prove, 2) innocent peoples' lives aren't destroyed.
This is one of those things that sounds good in theory, but is terrible in practice.
It would incentivize prosecution to avoid court at all costs. Which means de facto immunity for wealthy people who can easily afford to go to court. And it will probably make law enforcement even worse about railroading people who can't afford any legal representation.
> It would incentivize prosecution to avoid court at all costs.
Their job is to prosecute. Their only option is to pick cases that can be won. Which isn't hard, as the average person who is charged with some criminal act is not only guilty, but clearly guilty.
> Which means de facto immunity for wealthy people who can easily afford to go to court.
Money can't make a guilty man innocent. If you've actually done something wrong and there is evidence against you, the prosecution should have no qualms about prosecuting. In rare cases bad luck might lead to a payout due to a botched case or other unusual circumstance. But governments have enough money to self-insure for rare cases like that. It probably wouldn't even be a once-in-a-career event for the average prosecutor.
> And it will probably make law enforcement even worse about railroading people who can't afford any legal representation.
Rather the opposite: since full compensation is guaranteed if you win, it would be much easier to get a lawyer to work on contingency if you can convince them you are innocent. Right now that is very hard because even if you win, it's quite difficult to get the state to pay your legal bills so lawyers have no incentive to help you.
> as the average person who is charged with some criminal act is not only guilty, but clearly guilty.
I don’t even know why we have all this stuff like lawyers judges, prosecutors, hierarchy of courts, appeals. It could all be automated with kiosk at the police station.
We have all that stuff because if we didn't, it's likely that prosecutors would start abusing their power a lot more, and then the average person charged would not be guilty.
Possibly, but the legal system does not deal with guilty or innocent. The legal system deals with probabilities (e.g. probable cause among others), deals with attempts to display intent, deals with interpretations of human language, deals with emotional arguments, and many other things that are not deterministic. Money most certainly can influence those aspects.
Funny. OP sounds like someone who has experience with the justice system to me. Most everyone else isn't so painfully aware of the personal collateral damage the justice system causes.
How many botched prosecutions are there? Most have a 90%+ conviction rate because normal people can't stand up to professional interrogation. Even innocent people can incriminate themselves to the point where it isn't worth the risk of trial, so they plead to a lesser offense.
Spend thousands going to court and possible spending 5 years in jail vs. plead out for probation. The fact that going to court and winning might see you get legal fees plus a bit of money back doesn't change the calculus -- the worst case outcome is still prison.
It certainly changes the calculus: it's much easier to get a lawyer willing to work on contingency if there is a financial reward for winning. In civil cases it's quite common for lawyers to work on contingency because so many civil cases are obviously winnable, and have an immediate payout.
Of course, in practice what really would happen is it would be far less common for prosecutors to prosecute people when there isn't a solid case against them. If what I'm suggesting was how criminal cases worked, I doubt that Backpage would have been charged at all.
Note that I also think that plea deals should be much less common, or even totally banned.
We have a very high bar for guilt in criminal trials. This is because we would rather have many guilty people go free than send an innocent person to prison (there are still mistakes, of course). Given this situation, it wouldn’t make sense to assume anyone who is not convicted on even one count is actually innocent.
> We have a very high bar for guilt in criminal trials.
If we do, then my suggestion should be easy to implement and will only impact a tiny minority of cases.
Of course, in this case it's pretty clear that the prosecution made up a bunch of charges that they knew they'd lose on to try to drain the resources of the people they were charging, as well as punish them pre-emptively. The prosecution also clearly broke the rules in other ways, eg by getting a mistrial when they kept on bringing up sex trafficking, a crime the Backpage founders simply weren't charged with.
There are plenty of actual criminals in the world that need to be prosecuted. This case is clearly a politically motivated exception.
Sounds like a false dichotomy between "cases that will always result in guilty verdicts" and "cases that the prosecution knew they'd lose but brought anyway to drain resources". You don't seem to recognize that there are many, many cases that could go either way, based on how judges rule about evidentiary matters, what the composition of the jury is, etc.
As someone who was a lawyer for years, and who has served on a jury, I have seen the ways that things can evolve in unexpected ways. IMO the vast majority of cases could go either way, depending on how rulings and jury composition turn out. Any system that doles out taxpayer money whenever the prosecution doesn't run the table is utterly naive. It would result in less prosecution, more criminals going free, and more victimization by people we didn't lock up.
Yeah, cause then prosecutors would actually have to look for exculpatory evidence before charging instead of just sitting on their asses and relying on juries assuming guilt (because why else would someone be on trial?)
> This is because we would rather have many guilty people go free than send an innocent person to prison
No we wouldn't.
Or we wouldn't utilize the plea deal in 93% of criminal cases. And we use it with little-to-no oversight. Unless what a prosecutor offers is so -utterly egregiously inappropriate- that it causes a judge to double take, they can pretty much do as they like.
Which is why we use it more than 60x more per capita than any other country on earth, in those countries that even allow it (it's not even officially sanctioned in the UK, though it has happened - fun fact, nearly 40% of the cases appealed as a "miscarriage of justice" in the UK involved plea deals).
> A government spokesperson said: “Ensuring defendants plead guilty at the earliest possible opportunity means victims and witnesses do not have to relive their potentially traumatic experiences in court."
What? Not one word of innocence or presumption. Just "plead guilty early, we know you did it".
Even in countries that do use plea deals more often, there's strict oversight into what the deals entail and understanding of outcome.
Here, there's no incentive to rock the boat. Prosecutors push plea deals HEAVILY, innocence be damned, threatening the costs and risks of a trial (and the US over-charges people heavily) with a quick plea (that ever so conveniently allows our elected prosecutors to point to high conviction rates every re-election).
> it wouldn’t make sense to assume anyone who is not convicted on even one count is actually innocent
Oof. Not only is it "possible" you're not actually innocent, your attitude is "it doesn't even make sense to assume that". Screw it, why do we need a justice system? You were arrested, let's just take you straight to prison.
> Oof. Not only is it "possible" you're not actually innocent, your attitude is "it doesn't even make sense to assume that". Screw it, why do we need a justice system? You were arrested, let's just take you straight to prison.
Of course it's possible. But if someone is charged with 5 crimes and convicted of 4, why should we reimburse their legal fees? That is what GP proposed, and it would be nuts. If the prosecution struck out and went 0 for 5, that might make sense. But requiring them to run the table makes no sense.
I'll admit that your phrasing threw me. I thought you were saying that "let's be real, just because you were not convicted of a crime doesn't mean you didn't do it".
But yes, while not meeting the legal bar, you can as a private individual draw your own inferences - sometimes - about someone being convicted of 80% of charges... however, note still my comment on prosecution heavily over-charging people to improve conviction rates, either directly, or by contributing to fear/stress (cost of defense, consequences, risk) to bludgeon someone into a plea deal regardless of factual guilt.
These are criminal cases we are talking about. Cases that destroy lives when the prosecutors get it wrong. They damn well should be certain and they shouldn't be overcharging just to drain resources, as is clearly happening in this case.
If prosecutors aren't certain they can win on all 5 counts, bring 4. Or 3. Or even 1.
Most crimes should have pretty serious consequences. So convicting on one well-proven count should be enough.
To add to what other people said: we're talking about criminal trials, here "on average" isn't enough. Criminal procedure requires such a high standard of certainty(proving without a reasonable doubt, unanimity of jurors) because unlike civil trials it actually sends people to jail. So being right "on average" isn't enough because we can't afford to punish innocent people, we would rather not punish a guilty person than wrongfully punish an innocent one.
In the trial where somebody is accused of first degree murder and they are instead convicted of second degree murder, the murderer deserves all that compensation? You haven't thought this out well.
In Norway we have two different "not guilty" outcomes:
- "frifunnet på grunn av bevisets stilling" (~"acquitted because of the situation with the evidence" my best translation at 00:02 in the night) which I think in practice means it wasn't proven that the person did it and so (s)he is acquitted.
- "henlagt som intet straffbart forhold" (~"acquitted as no punishable offense" my best translation at 00:04 in the night) which I think means the investigation not only failed to prove guilt but also proved that a person was not guilty.
I tried to find better translations but wasn't able to. Feel free to fill in.
> Under Scots law, a criminal trial may end in one of three verdicts, one of conviction ("guilty") and two of acquittal ("not proven" and "not guilty").
How is that better? "Insufficient evidence" verdict is basically slander. It shouldn’t exist. You’re supposed to be presumed not guilty unless proven otherwise. What recourse do you have if you end up with such a verdict? Should you then have to prove your own innocence? That’s exactly what we tried to avoid in the first place.
Sometimes it seems like prosecutors brought a reasonable case given the evidence and tried it fairly. In this case, I believe acquittal is the right call. Other times it seems like a case that shouldn't have been brought and you should be compensated for that and/or the prosecutor should be punished.