* authorities have offered Smith a plea deal including a $1,000 fine, $1,000 in restitution and three years' probation.*
This is the goal ... They know they are at fault but admitting they made a mistake is damaging to careers.
In a lot of cases a carrot is dangled in front of people ... You can wast a lot of time (and money) fighting for your innocent, and take the risk your still going to get convicted.
Or you can take the plea deal, and it absolves us from our mistakes. And you save money because its cheaper then paying all those lawyers and court costs. And your innocent anyway, so that probations has no effect on you.
I forgot the source but the amount of prosecutions that are plea down is staggering. A lot of actual innocent people take plea's because its cheaper, then the alternative. And there have been plenty of people innocently convicted (even on shaky evidence), so most people take plea deals and they can move on with their lives.
This results in a culture where investigations are annoying. Where pressure is ramped up again and again to break people into taking plea deals. The biggest issue is, if you actually refuse to take a plea deal, then all resources are put against you to get a actual conviction, even if they know your innocent. "Why did you not just take the plea deal". Well, time to punish you for not taking it. Because repeat after me again, careers are on the line and losing cases hurt those future (potential political) careers.
Its the same why prosecutors fight tooth and nail, even if clear evidence is shows that a person was innocently convicted and spend X years in jail. It not about justice, its about protecting those careers.
The proof of innocents is heavily put on the other party, and it really hits hard on people who do not have the financial means.
I was in a jury pool for a case where the DA was attempting to prosecute petty vandalism to pressure a young adult over a minor crime ($500 worth of graffiti) because they wanted cooperation on another larger crime.
It wasn't going anywhere. When I finally got called up to voir dir I explained that I thought the real crime was sequestering 300 people for a day over $500. I suggested we collect $2 from each person in the jury pool (far less than we paid for parking that day) and cover the alleged damages and not only be done for the day, but have achieved some real measure of justice.
Lets just say the judge didn't agree and I got let out of voir dir.
My experience has been the same. I was on a grand jury, so pre-indictment and no voir dire, and there were many BS cases like this. We returned "no true bill" on all of them, which made me really proud of my randomly-selected neighbors. Cops were trying to railroad so many people over subway fare evasion, upgrading stealing $2.50 from the MTA to felony drug charges. We didn't bite. I did remark that I would just give them the $2.50 rather than ruining some high school student's life. (Seriously, just take it out of my taxes. I'm happy to work to fund public transportation.)
MTA already has a half-price program for low-income people. I agree fare jumpers don't need jail but they need some punishment. Make them clean the station and pick up trash for an hour, right then and there (I'm just spitballing). Otherwise it's unfair to law-abiding people.
I think public transport should be free. That solves the whole problem because it makes no sense to dis-incentivize the use of public transport to begin with and the fares are disproportionally hard on the lowest earners.
Absolutely not. People don’t appreciate free things psychologically. When they don’t appreciate it they trash it: vandalism, littering will all become bigger problems.
To prevent this effect, you have to have a well educated population first. That’s actually an even more difficult problem to solve.
Roads aren’t really free: you need a car or at least a bike.
Sidewalks are free, but they are usually unpleasant or inaccessible. In places where that isn’t true, they absolutely get trashed by litter; some even spit on the sidewalk.
Libraries are seemingly free, but getting a library card often requires you to provide several forms of proof of address, including evidence of paying rent or property taxes. So they aren’t truly free.
It's unfortunate, but one problem with free public transport absent other changes is that then it becomes de facto free shelter, which degrades the service for people using it as transport.
That wouldn't be an issue if we also provided shelter to the most distressed people in our society. As if we don't have the technology to build housing on the cheap. Our lack of communal will to help fellow people is a real shame.
Homelessness only partially overlaps with what British authorities euphemistically refer to as "street lifestyles". The people you see blacked out in the gutter or ranting wildly on a subway car are disproportionately likely to be homeless, but their behaviour is not the result of homelessness - many of them do in fact have a stable home and most of the rest would continue to behave in an antisocial manner even if they were adequately housed.
The problem of persistent disorderly conduct by a small minority of highly disturbed people is either an unfathomably complex psychiatric issue, or a fairly straightforward carceral issue.
you can't possibly know that, in the world we live in. Not conclusively - the amount of other factors at play and the ubiquity of those factors - crushing social stratification, pay-to-live capitalism, the overwhelming pressure on people to produce or die (meaning that learning to produce is on them to figure out, and quick, or else.) If you had an example of a society where these things were not at issue, you could more easily make a statement like "their conduct is an unfathomably complex psychiatric issue or otherwise they just need to be punished enough".
It's quite possible that these people would have turned out fine if they grew up provided a path to integrating into society that was less burdensome. It's possible you're right, too, but without controlling for confounding factors there's no way to know.
to offer free public transport to people, we now have to solve housing at a societal level. To solve housing, we have to fix zoning laws. to fix zoning laws, we have to fix NIMBY-ism which needs partisanship to be solved. To fix partisanship...
> to offer free public transport to people, we now have to solve housing at a societal level. To solve housing, we have to fix zoning laws. to fix zoning laws, we have to fix NIMBY-ism which needs partisanship to be solved. To fix partisanship...
Aren't half of these wrong?
NIMBY-ism isn't particularly partisan. Find a suburb and it's probably full of NIMBY zoning rules regardless of which party has the majority there. This is one of the things which isn't red vs. blue, it's "got mine" vs. the people who don't get a vote because they can't afford to live there because they don't get a vote.
You also don't have to "solve housing the societal level" to keep the homeless from using the subway as a bedroom. That's the better way to do that, but you can also do things like build homeless shelters that resemble (and therefore have the density of) college dorms in places where the "neighbors" are auto salvage yards, warehouses, prisons, abandoned buildings or the like and are correspondingly less likely to object to putting them there. And then anyone you catch being disruptive on the subway gets a free one-way ticket to the shelter.
They are wrong but also unrelated to the issue of free public transport and hence include trade offs which don’t directly affect public transport.
Effectively, to offer free public transport, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money in politics.
To promote solar power, you have reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
To promote anti-vaccine ideology, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
To promote a strictly equal society where every person is judged by their abilities and not ethnic history and skin color, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
There are vested interests in every debate and saying we should aim for wholesale societal change for every low hanging result is a recipe for inaction (or at least, very delayed action)
Shelter should be, but doesn't need to be housing. When people fear that public transportation becomes shelter they're not arguing houses will be built in train stations.
Having other places with a roof, some security and some public amenities should go a long way to avoid other services getting bogged down by homelessness.
homeless people are already trying to build that but the so-called "protectors of law and order" keep showing up with bulldozers for some reason, as if they actually want people to be sleeping on public transportation instead of in their own private tents. This is probably because they get paid proportionally to how many people they catch sleeping on public transportation.
Why shouldn't we have exactly the ambitions you're using as an argument against change? I support all of those proposals. The richest nation in history could do all of that easily if there was the will to do so.
If giving away free public services could be grifted to increase the bottom line of the ultra wealthy, we'd have a utopian society.
It's worse than that even. It is 'things are bad, therefore we can't begin to improve'. Weirdly enough that never goes in the other direction. The day that people realize that people without a lot of money are also people things will start to improve. And this is rather more than less likely to happen because I suspect there will be a lot more people without a lot of money soon compared to today.
It's nice to have an opinion but free public transport causes many issues and isn't great policy, it actually means transport agencies have less money to invest and take out debt on as system use increases which is a very bad position financially. The same issues actually apply to roads as well and are a reason things like congestion taxes are a good idea.
Fares typically make a negligible contribution to the overall costs of operating the system.
Public transport in the state of Queensland, Australia charges a flat fare of 50 cents. They only reason they charge anything at all is because they want the trip data for route planning purposes.
Free public transport solves many issues and is a great policy.
The notion that transit agencies need to be funded via fares is nonsense to begin with, but it looks even wackier when one looks at how roads are funded.
Free public transport takes away money that can be used to improve service for everyone. Someone on minimum wage would prefer a bus they can actually use to get to work rather than having to buy/maintain a car because the free bus only comes once an hour.
Of course it doesn't. The cost of public transport is a cost to society. It will be paid regardless of ticket fees. Hence the word 'public' in 'public transport'. The difference is that by making the users of public transport pay you give people a good reason not to use it when there are alternatives available. But those alternatives have a hard time competing with free.
It exists, and it works. And the best bit: all the money spent on the whole administration around tickets, making tickets, enforcing laws, gates and so on can be spent on improving the system.
you mean all the money saved? The unspent money are only a factor in the year following the year when the non-spend started. After that, no one will remember that they used to spend to some big figure on all the things you listed and assume that the operating budget of the transport agency has always been the lower figure.
Go have a look what percentage of the operating costs are covered by fares in your city. I wouldn't be surprised if the costs relating to fare enforcement were more than the revenue from fares.
You aren't taking into account that transport agencies can raise a lot of funding based on yearly revenue so multiplying fares out in terms of the debt that can be serviced yearly can easily reach billions which can be used for capital investment.
I can't tell what you're saying; are you saying that "yearly revenue from fares is big", even when someone says "fares aren't the major revenue source, and sometimes doesn't even exceed the cost to implement"?
The problem with free public transport is that it turns into a de facto homeless shelter. And then it isn't safe to use anymore. You let people evade fares and then those people go onto stab people like Zarutska.
That's a different problem, and it requires a solution by itself.
> You let people evade fares and then those people go onto stab people like Zarutska.
That has nothing to do with it. The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee. But it is interesting that you should right away jump from the one to the other, effectively using the poor dead girl for your agenda. Crime and homelessness are complex problems some parts of which are easy to solve and some of which are much harder.
You can't simply jump from 'someone got murdered on public transport' to 'public transport can't be free'.
I ride BART. I'm two blocks from a busy transfer station. It's great for going to a show and getting home without driving (drunk).
Arguing that modern fare gates lowered crime is a pretty terrible response to the comment to which you responded. It shows a real lack of articulation ("crime bad, crime down here, therefore I don't need to refute what you said").
The original poster said:
> The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee.
I don't see how lower crime on BART due to fewer people hopping the turnstiles refutes that at all. (Huh, I just learned turnstiles is spelled with an I and not a Y. At least your comment led to me learning something.) It just seems defeatist, which is what the people looting this country want.
You can cut crime all the way down to zero by shutting down all transport. You could decrease it to a very low minimum by setting a $100 / trip fare. But then it wouldn't be public transport anymore.
> The problem with free public transport is that it turns into a de facto homeless shelter.
Perhaps there's something broken about a society that has a significant homelessness issue. The free public transport isn't the problem, it's likely that society has a surplus of citizens that prevent economic progress and/or the deployment of solutions known to be effective against homelessness.
Or make the transportation free, then you don't have to worry about policing infractions and instead spend the low effort policing money on cleaning, security, and improvement.
There's an argument that making people pay a fare improves cleanliness and security to an extent. I don't know if there are studies about it. But it's a persuasive argument.
You kid, and it would be kinda horrible in certain ways, but I genuinely think it would increase ridership significantly.
Let's face it, classism right now manifests as:
* poor folk use terrible public transit
* med income folk drive cars
* high income/wealth folk get driven around by robots or staff
At least with the classist train you cut down on emissions and public funds spent fixing roads. And I'd argue it's a bit less unequal than the status quo in 95% of the US.
The plan is to let anyone on the subway, with no fares. It turns out that the violent, unstable people who make public spaces unwelcoming are disproportionately represented among those who cannot pay $2.50 for a fare. So they scare off regular transit riders who mode shift to something else. It's vastly more expensive and difficult to react to violence on the subway than to keep violent people out with a small fare, so it's financially and logistically impossible to actually keep it safe. Then your transit ridership tanks and people who hate funding transit can declare the whole thing a giant waste of money and any new funding dies politically because now there's no public ridership constituency left.
Nobody cares about the revenue gained from $2.50 fares. What matters is the tiny amount of resistance that offers to the small number of people who are largely responsible for making public transit unwelcoming.
> It's vastly more expensive and difficult to react to violence on the subway than to keep violent people out with a small fare
Are you making a case that a violent person, who ignores the stringent laws of society against violence, will diligently follow the laws of society requiring $2.50 prior to riding public transport?
Your argument is like saying I won't put a basic privacy lock on my gym locker because, you know, a creep wanting to sift through my things is going to do it anyway.
There is a cost benefit analysis that even serial offenders go through to pick a victim. If a transit system insists on fares, it is likely they are watching out for fare dodgers which increases the risk of getting caught even before the offender gets a chance to offend.
> There is a cost benefit analysis that even serial offenders go through to pick a victim
Are you making the case that a society unable to protect its denizens from violent offenders in broader society will be able to protect its denizens on public transport from those same violent offenders through the application of a $2.50 fare?
I’m saying that knowing that you’re being (potentially) being watched for fare evasion has a deterrent effect on wanting to commit a crime.
How many times have you heard of road rage incidents which deescalate as soon as one party realises that they are being recorded by a dashcam? People’s behavior under surveillance is different from their private behavior.
One made me call my Dad to spite my psycho mother who dragged me tothe Station thinking the cop was gonna scare me straight ratherthen the outcome of him seeing her insanity and pleading with me to stay in contact with the only responsible adult in the room who wouldnt screw me over for the rest of my natura life
Then charge them cleanly and don't artificially try to inflate charges. It is the duty of any jury to let someone off when they feel its malicious prosecution.
Police, Prosecutors, and Judges all openly use their discretion. Each of them could have quashed the charge before it got to a jury. The jury is the last line of discretion. Police, prosecutors, and judges love to call it "jury nullification" but its the same power that police, prosecutors, and judges use multiple times a day.
The only crime I see is that police arrested an innocent person on false evidence, prosecutors charged someone based on false evidence, and a judge is actually allowing this case to proceed all based on evidence that everyone knows is false.
There should be some teeth, but also we should be prepared for a small amount of "unfairness" baked into the system. If there are no controls, everyone will cheat. But if there's too many obstacles (turnstiles, checkpoints, conductors, cameras, etc) then people won't want to ride.
In the off chance this is a genuine question, this thought experiment is always resolved with "reasonable payments are only effective if many people contribute, and that is probably okay".
Consider the extremes:
- No one does anything. The cause fails. No one goes broke. Many people are modestly inconvenienced.
- One average citizen donates everything to a worthy cause. No one else donates. The cause fails and the donor is broke. Many people are modestly inconvenienced.
- Everyone donates a small fee to a worthy cause. The cause achieves its aim. Some people do not benefit, and are modestly inconvenienced.
The choice, when given these two extremes, is clearly to decide by some consensus whether the interests of many (who would otherwise be modestly inconvenienced) outweigh the interests of the few (who would be modestly financially inconvenienced).
But it assumes the cause is truly worthy, the money is handled faithfully, and the survey method is fair and accurate.
That’s a great idea, just get people to voluntarily sign up to pay for things like that for the criminals. Like you said, take the $2.50 one way several times a day, every day for one person, times however many people do that out of your income since you want to pay for it.
I am no fan of this rotten and illegitimate government or the fake and imitation justice system, but what do you think happens if every thug can just jump fare and get away with it, because if you had $1000 per month taken out of your paycheck every month, in sure you’d be singing a different tune.
Public transit is subsidized in a lot of the world. Subsidized is good. Free though.. free is a problem. A good or service that someone doesn't have to pay for becomes valueless to them, despite it still costing someone (sponsor, owner)/something (corp, gov).
Examples:
A free Christmas party, where the cost of the convention center/catered dinner/wine on the table/entertainment was about $110/pp. Those costs were all paid in advance (you might be able to exceed catering, wine is probably fine but at a different rate.. but otherwise you're stuck with the bill/contract), but when tickets were free the no-show rate ("didn't cost me anything") was about 30%. We switched to $20/ticket, and yes there were grumbles about the company being cheap, but the no-shows fell to around 8%.
There's free sections of transit in our city (not the whole system). Most of the disruption and police call-outs happen in this section.. open drug use, screaming at/threatening other passengers or making them feel unsafe, making a home, thefts & pickpockets (does a thief buy a ticket? Perhaps if they spend 6 hours a day "working" and don't need the hassle of being checked for a ticket), even violent crime (stabbings, beatings, one gun situation). An unfortunate side effect of that is we have one of the worst riderships in part because people don't feel safe on transit, and when discussions of subsidies/improvement/expansion come up ridership is basically the only KPI. ("Oh only 12% of the city uses it, let's not further invest").
Transit is very heavily subsidized by taxes. In the US, the least money losing system is BART which covers 70%+ of it's operating (but not capital) expenses through fares.
Do you think that engineering, asphalt, machinery, and labor are bankrolled by charitable goodwill? Public roads are absolutely not free; you simply haven't thought hard enough about how the public indirectly pays for it.
The buses running along the I-91 corridor in VT/NH USA centered around White River Junction VT and Hanover/Lebanon NH have been free to ride since around Covid. And those are two transit agencies. Broadly: one serves north of Hanover, the other south.
Not a country, but it's free in Belgrade, Serbia for last two years.
Due to weird goverbnment statistics and unaccounted expats officially it's 1.1M to 1.6M of people, but actually there likely well over 2M people living there.
Public transport is pretty good there and it cost their budget $300M-$400M a year.
Perhaps there are alternatives other than "small crimes go unpunished" and "people make false admissions of guilt, pressured by the ruinous cost of the justice system, 300 jurors needed for a single trial"
If we've got a Lamborghini justice system, delivering amazing performance to people with a spare $250k and doing nothing for anyone else - some would say that's not the right price/performance trade off.
Ignoring smaller crimes just because they're under $1,000 isn't the answer. things can quickly spiral. How many times do you wake up to your car scratched window broken or whatever and would be ok ?
Yes, I'm trying to say it's a false dichotomy. There are plenty of other ways you could organise a justice system, many of which would lead to more just results.
For example - a fixed price system. 8 hours wages from the two parties to the dispute buys 30 minutes with one judge and two lawyers. More than enough time to deal with a minor matter like a scratched car. Or if you prefer a continental-style inquisitorial system, you can lose the lawyers and have 90 minutes with a judge. The fees mean judges and lawyers take home 5x the average salary.
By the way, the stat you mention counts consensual arrangements as wage theft, probably the large majority of it (e.g. hiring illegal immigrants for under the minimum wage). Calling that "theft" is a rhetorical move, much like libertarians calling taxation "theft": it borrows the moral weight of stealing for something that's legally and morally quite different. If the stat had been calculated from asking workers, "does your employer owe you money that they refuse to pay?", I suspect the number would drop dramatically.
I'm saying that much of what's called "wage theft" isn't theft in any normal sense of the word. It's the equivalent of calling employees who take long bathroom breaks or slack off on the clock "wage thieves." Do employees slack off on the job? Yes. Do corporations hire contractors when labor regulations forbids them to? Yes. Is either one comparable to theft? No.
Almost never. The larger the corporation the more strictly the rules are followed. I have worked for fintech startups and have some horrifying stories that would absolutely never fly at a larger company.
Wage theft is a real crime and you don't get to rename it because your feelings are somehow hurt. Calling taxation "theft" is just vapid right wing mccarythism. Rich people paid mccarthy money to lie over and over again because at the time it was illegal to broadcast those lies on tv or radio. But a senator was immune and could lie all they wanted.
You are never going to be right about anything if you actually think what you posted makes any sense.
Sure, I was just pointing out why the stat is misleading. People unfamiliar with the study or the term would assume it refers to employers outright withholding agreed-upon pay.
If you only counted cases that meet the legal definition of the crime of "wage theft," the figure would much lower.
To be clear, you're claiming that wrongdoing by one party justifies wrongdoing by another, and your enabling of the latter because you're ideologically aligned with it?
I'd also be interested to know what the crime they were trying to get a lead on was. If it's another case of minor tagging then I can empathize more with the concerns about the prosecution, but if it's something more dire then frankly using judicial leverage strikes me as entirely appropriate.
Im saying they are wasting everybodies time and money and by spending large resources on petty crime like graffiti instead of spending that time and money on prosecuting systemic crime and theft by employers that occurs far more frequently.
If someone gets stabbed outside my house every day with no charges filed, yeah im going to say spending resources prosecuting a fist fight at a bar is a waste of resources.
But GP made it clear that the graffiti charge wasn't the target, it was intended to pressure the person involved into turning on a different criminal associate. Ignoring that reality in favor of focusing exclusively on the charge itself seems unhelpful to me.
"25 to life for jaywalking, but you'll walk free if you snitch" sounds like extortion to me.
If he's an accomplice, them charge him with that, and turn it into a classical prisoner's dilemma. Don't just make up bullshit charges, that's abuse of the justice system.
Except they're not trumping up penalties, it's just "Pay the fine for Jaywalking or snitch."
In this case the person did a little more than Jaywalking so they're on the hook for more. It's also possible to have information on a criminal act or conspiracy without being an accomplice.
I appreciate the extremely... principled morality of some here, but the law isn't an ethical framework, it's a practical one informed by ethical principles. It's also not a computer program, people are involved who make decisions based on a number of factors ranging from professional and selfless, to careerist and selfish. That's life.
A really easy way to avoid all of this is to stay out of the system, it's not as though he's in for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving child.
The interesting thing about thresholds is that antisocial behavior models itself to the threshold, whether by conscious awareness or by an evolutionary pattern.
The pair is accused of stealing around $3,200 worth of merchandise, primarily meat, seafood, and produce, from one or more Safeway locations across 14 separate incidents.
obviously if someone is a repeat offender then as they cross the threshold, chop-chop, straight to jail, charge them with the whole batch of crimes together.
it doesn't mean keep no records of crimes and don't respond at all.
Doesn’t that prove actually that the act of theft is not some calculated needs based negotiation in need of “the right threshold” to deter crime?
Like fare hopping, first half of my life i thought how unfair that i have to drone away as a tool of society and pay like a shmuck meanwhile these freeloaders have happily escaped the matrix.
second half of life i realized being unwilling or unable to pay $2.50 for public transist is an issue between that person and their life situation. If that’s what they need, I support the subsidy.
safe transit is important exactly for the people who barely have a few dollars for transit. subsidized tickets are the way to go. by enabling and allowing fare evasion for those who need it unfortunately allows those to get in who don't need to.
> let's start with the ones above $1,000 first, hm?
The criminals start with the ones below $1,000 and then progress above. If you start punishing it earlier, you won't have to deal with as many above $1,000 crimes in the first place.
If you can’t pay for your next meal $20 might as well be $2 thousand or $20 thousand. Thats why overdraft fees are exploitative.
A person doesn’t steal a sandwich from 7-11, not get caught, then suddenly realize they can drain unsuspecting grandmas’ bank accounts by implementing a long con through masquerading as a long lost nephew through Facebook.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard that some big box stores like Target and Walmart allow shoplifters to get away with petty crime but save all evidence of these crimes to one day prosecute once the total shoplifted goes above the threshold of petty crime. Sometimes, these people would be goaded into this lifestyle by people who have agreements with Loss Prevention teams. Everyone wins except the shoplifter.
I wouldn’t want to live in a place where innocent people are forced under threat of financial destruction to make false confessions for crimes they didn’t commit, but here we are.
Having society (a group of unrelated jurors) to pay for the crimes of an individual (however minor you perceive them to be) is not justice.
That's why you got kicked out.
$500 was the damages that they were caught doing. Not the total damages they caused. If every "empathetic" person volunteers to pay $2 every time someone wants graffiti on their property removed, regardless of how often graffiti keeps reappearing, then maybe the DA wouldn't feel a need to prosecute.
What? after reading your first sentence many times it’s basically saying you’re of the mind that a criminal very likely has way more crimes that we’ve just haven’t seen so they should be prosecuted heavily for the one we did see just to make sure we get our prosecution-bang for the buck?
Not sure where you got that idea. No where did I express interest in punishing the perpetrator for anything more than what they were caught. My point is that their "solution" to justice does not solve vandalism the way that it they think it does.
Do you seriously believe that this person only tagged once in their life and got caught the first time? Even they just happened to be very unlucky, do you think they would never do it again? I'm not talking about how the law should treat them. They should still receive a punishment fit for a $500 crime. The person responded claimed this was a waste of everyone's time and money, but that's missing the point. If the vandal has absolute no consequences they have no incentive to stop.
Hot take - the criminal should pay the jury if they're clearly guilty and wasting everyone's time. And the judge. And if they resisted arrest, the cost of the extra police work.
Jury duty is the single dumbest thing I have ever done in my adult life. Nobody wants to be there, and half the jurors were falling asleep. When we got to the deliberation room, everyone wanted to GTFO as quickly as possible and we just went by our feels. In the end, everyone loses. Millions of dollars wasted... on perception of justice. What a freaking joke.
It's similar to the Iowa courthouse break-in by hired pentesters. They had a contract for the work and very small people in the place where it occurred wouldn't let go. This kind of behavior is shameful and should result in jail time for bad-faith prosecutions.
Plea bargains used to be considered unethical by courts and the Bar in America pre-Civil War.
We have the Reconstructionist South to thank for normalizing turning judges into form stamping Vogons and allowing prosecutors to routinely use a form of blackmail as a normal course of prosecution.
>This is the goal ... They know they are at fault but admitting they made a mistake is damaging to careers.
Is this actually true? The way the techspot article was laid out certainly implies that prosecutors knew about all the contradicting evidence, but they offered a plea deal. However, if you read the article carefully it doesn't mention any interaction with the prosecutors or that the contradicting evidence was presented to them.
They could have sent her a letter? More importantly it's unclear what the timeline of the events were. All the contradictions could have been discovered after the plea deal was offered.
It's not that hard to imagine that the legal system is set up to protect the comfort and careers of the people who have to be in court every day, and not necessarily the 99% of people who are in there for a handful of days - total, across a lifetime - because they had a bad day or two, or were unlucky, or need help that society is as-yet unequipped to give them. It does not surprise me that the letter and spirit of the law have a tough time surviving the practical realities of being administered, day-in-and-day-out, by fallible and self-interested human beings.
That is the theme. A jury trial is inherently risky. While conceptually a good idea, you are betting the outcome (and your future) on a bunch of folks without any legal training - and who did not manage to get out of jury duty.
And so the prosecution heaps on threats of years and years of prison time, or "take this little plea bargain". They still get their "conviction."
Absolutely. I actually went to trial many years ago because a DA wouldn't back down, he thought I'd bend. I didn't. We literally had video footage of the culprit, it clearly wasn't me and clearly WAS someone else. The DA waited until the day before we were to pick a jury to drop the charges, just a few days before trial. After, the DA even said to me, "I'm a dangerous man to make an enemy of." I think I was 20, so obviously I was cocky and snapped back "So am I," and stormed off. I not live a thousand miles away from that crappy little town.
Because the DA has a win/loss ratio to maintain. If it drops too low, how is he ever going to run for governor? It's all about power using it to protect their career.
Being a DA should disqualify you from ever working in politics, especially democratic politics! Looking at your Harris! Liberals know that you forced a lot of people to stay locked up after they should have been freed because she fought a federal order as DA. Fuck whatever her fake liberal accolades were.
Seriously. And what kind of moron did the D.A. he think was that he would take a criminal conviction on his record by pleading guilty, when he had video evidence of his innocence!! Just to avoid embarrassing the D.A., a stranger to him?
When I was 19 and told the DA I'd be fighting my case and proving my innocence, I watched a vein pop out of his head. He got the better of me though, his dad was the mayor and the judge was in his pocket and they facilitated an absolutely mockery of a trial despite zero evidence, and my public defender was in on the racket and refused to allow me an appeal, and the jail refused to give me new counsel.
This same DA has a reputation for assaulting prostitutes and just got sworn in as the parish judge. I guess playing fair would have hurt his career because my understanding is to be a judge out there you have to demonstrate crookedness.
I was arrested as a minor because someone who was giving me a ride was found with 0.156 grams of cannabis residue in his booksack which was not accessible to me at any point. The other two defendants had parents and accepted pretrial. I was homeless with no parental support or money for pretrial and had to fight it. The driver went on stand and said it was his and that I never had access to it. Half a dozen cops testified wildly different stories.
But, my right to a jury trial was illegally taken from me and the judge simply said, "I think you're lying," without a shred of proof and gave me the maximum allowed 6 month jailtime and maximum fines for a misdemeanor charge given to me as a minor with no prior record. I immediately told my attorney I wanted to appeal due to a mistrial and her failure to make a valid motion to quash, and she looked at me, pointed at the judge, and furiously scolded me, saying, "Absolutely not. That is my boss and he will make my life hell if I allow you to appeal."
The other parish public defender, which they'd pulled from my case due to his desire to actually help me, was so upset that he went to the judge's quarters, screamed at him and then came to my cell to apologize profusely about me getting illegally railroaded. He was never able to fix my case.
His brother... was the DA. Now he is running to replace him as DA since his brother got sworn in as a judge. I'm going to reach out to him and try to get it removed from the system now.
Also, when I got arrested, the DA's dad, the town mayor, personally visited the home of the folks who were letting me stay in their garage so I could finish high school and tried to convince them to put me out on the street so that I would fail my classes and end back up in jail. The fucking mayor.
So many levels of fucked up to that case. Not to mention that the officer who arrested me is a known meth producer, distributor and user. I have personally witnessed her bring a smurf to the pharmacy to buy sudafed IN HER POLICE UNIT so that she could go cook meth while on duty.
And while in court for my own case for 0.156 grams of a material that was never found on my person or within reach of me, I watched a man who was friends with the judge get sentenced to a grand total of 20 days of community service after being found with two ounces of pot in his pockets and a bottle of whiskey while illegally hunting on someone else's land out of season without permits, operating a firearm while basically blackout drunk. It is literally who you know.
I'd like to see a three way verdict: guilty/not guilty/innocent.
An innocent verdict would mean the defendant had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they did not do the act and would put the state on the hook for all costs. A jury that hung between not guilty and innocent would be considered to be not guilty, no retrial. Reality works better when misdeeds carry costs for those who commit them.
They used to have this in Scorland - Guilty, Not Guilty and Not Proven, with the last two legally having the same affect (ie being aquitted) but I believe Not Proven was abolished at the start of this year.
I believe the problem was that in practice it became He Totally Did It But The Evidence Sucks So He Gets To Walk Free, and was increasingly interpreted as such. In the public's eye, everything besides a Not Guilty meant you did it.
Or if the jury acquits, they are asked whether it was reasonable for the state to prosecute the case for each of the charges. If ≥50% say no on any charge, criminal charges are automatically brought against the prosecuting attorney and judge for malicious prosecution. Conviction carries mandatory disbarment plus prison time.
"Your honor, I was innocent of that prior crime and it shouldn't be used to enhance the sentencing of this current case, nor to influence the jury's perception."
"I'm sorry, it says you weren't found guilty; it doesn't say you were innocent."
Now extrapolate this to your friends or potential employers.
"Sure, LorenPechtel wasn't proven guilty of murdering 500 orphans as accused, but he never fully proved his innocence with a detailed and corroborated minute-by-minute log of his activities for the past 5 years. So maybe he did it!"
It's innocent until proven guilty. Not guilty until proven innocent. A third category would be abused to high heaven, and the courts already engage in far too much abuse.
Except for plea bargains, where it is often "innocent until bullied into accepting a plea deal as the better option - even when you didn't do it". No need to prove anything there.
I am currently in the court system defending my innocence regarding a recent incident which I can't currently discuss, and the officer who charged me was literally bragging about how most of the charges would get "pled down"; he was openly and deliberately frontloading me with bogus extra charges hoping some would stick if I did a plea deal for the rest. He told me that if I talked back to him, he'd give me an assaulting an officer charge just because he could get away with it. The corruption is baked into the system from top to bottom.
There are sort of other options like an Alford plea where, my understanding is, the prosecution knows you didn’t do it, you plead guilty anyway and they tell you to just fuck off.
so then if you're not guilty, so not actually innocent, you're like... kinda guilty, right? you could still end up on the no-fly list, or the sex offenders list, or what have you.
Serious question.. when you do get picked up for something like that and you invoke your rights for silence. How do you get council? Do you already have a number, do you already have a relationship with a defense attorney? How do you navigate that?
This is partially fixed by making The People of the State of __________ pay for the lawyer of the defendant's choosing. It imposes real costs to the state in these cases.
There's an argument that the cost of prosecution is one reason for the proliferation of offenses and increase in sentence lengths.
Part of that is the de facto extension of a right to jury trials for misdemeanor offenses in almost every American jurisdiction. If the defendant can force a jury trial for a misdemeanor, which is in fact quite costly for prosecutors, then the response is to raise the stakes with felony charges. Legislatures are aware of this dynamic and oblige prosecutors with more offenses and more punitive maximum penalties.
Countries like the UK and France don't have jury trials for minor offenses. (They're not as common for major offenses, either, but that's a different matter.) Sentences tend to be much shorter and it's a major reason their incarceration rate is so much lower.
I'm not against jury trials. For one thing it'd be better if juries were more local. 100+ years ago in major US cities it was more common for trials to take place within or closer to each neighborhood. Juries were often composed of people from the neighborhood. The consolidation of courts and trials in mega courthouses broke this community link; people from outside a neighborhood are systematically more harsh than they would be if judging their actual neighbors. Not because of favoritism, but because it's easier for them to appreciate the repercussions of an overly punitive system (broken families, destroyed career prospects, etc).
If you want community involvement in even minor crimes, misdemeanor jury trials can still be streamlined. You could do something similar to some European countries where a few lay judges sit alongside the professional judge, or something that used to be more common in the US where a single jury hears multiple cases each day (still a thing for indictments). But such trials would still have to dispense with alot of the procedural rigor to keep things moving along at a rapid clip.
> If the defendant can force a jury trial for a misdemeanor, which is in fact quite costly for prosecutors, then the response is to raise the stakes with felony charges.
I'm not quite understanding this. What is there to be gained by raising the stakes? Doesn't it make defendants even more determined to seek justice?
Justice is unavoidably somewhat a "roll the dice" situation.
Suppose the threat is 10 years in Jail. You reckon there's a 1-in-a-million chance they can convict you since you're innocent and they have no evidence. The plea offer is $100 fine. That's a good deal, not taking it on principle is a stance I admire but it does not make good logical sense.
What the US needs is a strong incentive for prosecutors not to take cases they expect to lose. That wouldn't really fit with the rest of the US "justice" system though.
The sad thing is that speed in apprehension and prosecution has been shown to be the most important element by far for deterrence. Marginal deterrence effects of harsher sentencing for most crimes is basically nil at this point. The complexity of plea deals and the incentive they create for defense attorneys to drag things out breaks the perceived cause+effect dynamic, at least for typical criminals. The system just becomes this juggernaut where both guilty and innocent people alike feel it's utterly capricious.
At least until the recent tough-on-crime regression almost everybody agreed the system is too harsh. Even conservatives were on board with lighter sentencing. But unsurprisingly that broad public support didn't persist for long because the structural incentives of the system push it toward greater dysfunction. Without structural changes lighter sentencing alone just makes it more profitable for criminals to roll the dice. The complexity of the system evolved with the harsher sentencing, but can't change back as easily as sentencing policies, so we fall back to the old equilibrium that slowly gets worse along every dimension--fairness, cost, deterrence, etc.
IMO low level offenses like shoplifting would be better served by a quick cheap ass kicking on the spot by the police with no charges filed. You get the deterrent effect without the massive waste of resources.
Before the advent of the modern carceral approach that's not unlike what we had. You got flogged 3 times or stood in the stocks for a day. Though at least there was process--the sentence was imposed by a judge, not a cop. The benefit there was you weren't disappeared for days or months on end, completely destroying your life.
The defendant's choosing is so he doesn't get stuck with a [relatively] low paid and overworked public defender. It's so he has the same opportunity to hire the high powered winners on the state's dime and the state has to pay full price that attorney demands. If costs and taxes get too high, people should start voting for more selective prosecution candidates.
The state intends to take [part of] his life away, the state needs to pay for the process.
its sad peoples job security or toxic work culture can cause innocent people to rot in jail. humans really suck at being human.
the app providers dont want to admit fraud is running over their platform. the justice department cant admit any mistakes either.
Its a problem which will only get worse as the economy declines. And as the economy declines, more places get breached because more criminality and at the same time less money to secure things.
I cant see this getting any better which is kind of terrifying.
One more reason i can think of is that if people get super afraid of these problems, then they might even start asking for mass surveilance to help prove their innocense in these kinds of things. Which again is an incentive / reasoning for higher government not to do anything about it, because it creates opportunities where current population sentiment is taking them away...
Plea bargains should not be allowed. Rewarding someone for not going to trial is equivalent to punishing them for insisting on their ancient legal right to a fair trial. If the prosecution wants to make a deal with someone in exchange for testimony then they can request a lighter sentence after the defendant is found guilty, but they should still be required to prove guilt.
Yes, I know the legal system doesn’t have anywhere near enough resources to take every case to trial. Don’t care. Give the system more resources or prosecute fewer people or some combination of the two.
I stated above, part of a plea requires the defendant to affirm that they were not coerced into the plea, because you can't legally waive your Constitutional right to trial under coercion, you would still retain that right if coerced. But how can the Courts accept that a threat of many more years of incarceration over your head is not a threat, and you weren't coerced by that into accepting a lessor plea? Plea deals are constitutionally invalid because they coerce defendants into giving up their constitutional right to trail with the threat of the 'trial tax' (a much much longer sentence if you DO go to court and exercise your Constitutional right).
I've thought about this and I don't understand why we can have plea deals which are so radically different from the potential punishment if found guilty. Like, if the state thinks you did it and offers you a $1000 fine, how is it reasonable to potentially go to jail for 6 years if found guilty?
The state already showed that it believed that the crime was only worth a $1000 fine.
Maybe there should be a rule that whatever plea deal offered should be the maximum punishment possible if you're found guilty.
It's not the lawyers but the KPAs. If a prosecutor's promotion is judged based on the number of successful prosecutions, then there's every incentive to prosecute and zero incentive to dismiss charges.
Fixing the system requires changing the incentives. Individuals would adjust accordingly.
Edit: It won't get fixed because ultimately the metrics trickle up to Joe Public, who is notoriously tough on crime. Lawyers had to fight popular sentiment to get rid of the death penalty in most states. Even today, between death and life imprisonment, the former is preferred by the general public.
The prosecutor where I grew up had the cops mad at him too because he would only prosecute if it was a slam dunk win. He didn't want to risk not getting a conviction so many crimes had no action if they didn't have spotless evidence. So somewhat a win, but still not good that known criminals are out and about because the prosecutor didn't want to risk a not-guilty verdict.
Yeah, that seems dubious to me. Among the public here in Britain it's somewhat popular but not a majority, with far lower popularity among people who understand how the sausage is made. Here's somebody who has put quite a lot of thought into this explaining why it's a bad idea from a purely practical standpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DrsVhzbLzU
The woman defending the Death Penalty in that clip is Priti Patel, a Tory MP who was until recently in their Shadow Cabinet. You'd hope she can do better, but judging from her subsequent comments she still doesn't get it.
Now, in the UK most people with a life sentence will (after quite some time) be eligible for parole. Historically it was possible for politicians to block this, but of course the consequence is that if a particularly notorious criminal is scheduled to be paroled, politicians are under pressure to prevent that, while a criminal who didn't attract much public interest leaves on schedule - that's manifestly unfair and a European court told the Brits they can't do that, so eventually the UK's Supreme Court decided there needed to a specific rule, identify a category of people who won't be paroled, and the category they decided on was people who have been convicted of at least two separately conceived murders.
Several European countries have no life sentences. Breivik for example got 21 years, and since he's still an avowed Nazi who wants to kill more people, and will likely still be an avowed Nazi when his sentence ends, they will just hold him until he stops being a Nazi or he dies. No additional sentence needed.
[Edited: Priti left her Shadow role a few weeks ago]
What's the motivation for keeping Breivik locked up? I have trouble believing it is for his political views, the human rights courts don't tend to like that sort of thing.
Is it not just a case of "murderous lunatic remains locked in asylum after criminal sentence until cured" - which can very well be until his death?
"I want to kill people" isn't a "political view" in the sense you seem to imagine. Maybe I should have emphasised the bit where he wants to kill people more than the fact he's a Nazi? But the two are intertwined. He wants to kill people because he's a Nazi, these are not unrelated in his mind.
I'm sure in his mind it makes sense. But everybody else disagrees and considers that, as you said, the murderous lunatic can't be released.
> ultimately the metrics trickle up to Joe Public, who is notoriously tough on crime
This behaviour, by Joe Public, is a serious problem, in that it's an emotional response, not a logical one, and absolutely never based on informed debate
It will not be fixed. The lawyers have control of our legal system. They are the politicians and judges. The system is theirs; if we want to change the status quo, it will take nothing less than a bloody revolution.
Or a flood of new lawyers with a basis of Beneficence and ethics, and a knowing willingness to act against maximal short-term self interest. (Though still self profitable, just not maximally)
Politicians being trained lawyers is a good thing - they (supposedly) know the nightmare that is the legal system
To put it into a software developers context - which hopefully makes it easier to understand for some.
The law is legacy code that stretches back a few centuries (literally) that has been written by many many people with little in common, and has active users who must be consulted upon change.
> I forgot the source but the amount of prosecutions that are plea down is staggering.
I'd wager that 99% of the plea deals that occur in the world occur in the US. No other country uses it to the extent we do, and it's not even close. In many countries it's not an available option, or when it is and it's used, its use is heavily regulated and requires (meaningful) oversight by the judge on fairness, likelihood of conviction, etc.
And once you've accepted a plea deal it's not just a matter of making your plea - you also have to sign a whole raft of documents waiving a whole raft of rights, about appealing your conviction, about the right to present evidence in your defense in the future, or to witnesses, you have to sign a statement saying that even if you were to (attempt to) change your plea that it is your acknowledgment, "based on material facts" that the state is in possession of enough evidence to convict you.
It sort of makes sense, why would you bring a case to trial that is not complete? A complete case will always win. The trial is the final check if the case is complete.
Huh? This is a wild misstatement. Even your link doesn’t support this, and says that the "most likely reason" for the high rate is that prosecutors have broad discretion over whether to prosecute at all, and credits low prosecution rates and a different way of calculating the rate.
The new system has been in place for less than ten years, only covers a very limited set of crimes and is much more modeled on cooperation than coercion. The Ramseyer and Rasmusen paper reported 99.9% convictions in 1994 (49,598 of 49,643), when the law did not allow plea bargains. The rate was already above 99% long before plea deals existed.
nasty that 'statistics' are hauled out as 'proof', fuck me Japan has an unbelievable low crime rate, and some ridiculous number of criminals turn them selves in. There is something like a 90%+ rate of lost wallets just droped in a mail box and returned, and american soldiers are responsible for the bulk of violent crime in a large radius around each base.
It goes on and on, not that I think that highly of the Japanese, but due credit is theres and the US is the crime, jail, more crime and corruption leader of the planet and there is nowhere worse except where the US (cia) is running some through the worst sadistic perverts they can find and support, which makes almost all of the worst crime on the planet the direct fault of america, but
as we see in this case under discusion, america is now having trouble EXPORTING it's contradictions and is just eating the coolaid powder dry.
See also: settlement in lieu of judgment in civil cases. There is an entire industry (debt collection) built around using the courts as a cudgel to coerce people into settlements for debts that they might not have a legal obligation to pay (because of the debt collectors' poor record-keeping, running afoul of procedural issues or consumer protection laws, etc.). Particularly for smaller amounts, attorneys will not represent consumers for defense, and (no matter what anyone tells you) judges defer to fellow lawyers if the issue goes to trial and a defendant is self-represented. Perversely, it's sometimes in a person's best interests to rack up larger debts, so that their case is worthwhile for an attorney to pick up, at which point they will likely try to negotiate a settlement rather than go to trial.
And the worst part is that once you take the plea deal, you are guilty. Both in perception and by record. So once it comes out that you plead, your employers will fire you. Makes it impossibly hard to find another job as your name comes up as a criminal. What I'm really confused about: Can't they have just checked the victim's bank records? The money would be taken out of the the Cash app and back into their own account. Or, if used for other service, there would be records of where it was spent and you could see the geographic activity.
On an entirely different note. Just wow. I know a lot of people who don't "do online" finance anything. And this kind of stuff is terrifying, because they would not even know that someone else had setup an account using their PII.
This shit is why my hippie dippie state where it’s hard to prosecute people is actually a good thing. Sadly, more fenty street walker is a sign that cops aren’t as empowered to deprive random people of rights.
But everyone knee jerks into voting out the cool DA who drops victimless criminal prosecutions because they don’t like a fenty zombie screaming in the streets.
I happen to love my mostly low policed state for this exact reason. They’re almost never there to help you, and mostly just want to fuck you up!
> This is the goal ... They know they are at fault but admitting they made a mistake is damaging to careers.
I iamgine bullshit easy plea deals also get you nice numbers for a "tough of crime" image for political clout even if some of the most vile crimes get some of the lightest sentences imaginable
> Meanwhile, authorities have offered Smith a plea deal including a $1,000 fine, $1,000 in restitution and three years' probation. She has refused, saying she is innocent.
This is nuts. Is it possible US prosecutors give so few shits about justice?
If only a reverse plea deal gambit were realistic. Counter with an offer to accept $10k and an apology for malpractice in exchange for her not going after those involved. Unfortunately a decent chunk of the justice system here doesn't appear to have any real accountability for poor conduct.
Rule 3.8. Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor.
The prosecutor in a criminal case shall:
(a) refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause;
...
COMMENT
[1] A prosecutor has the responsibility of a minister of justice and not simply that of an advocate. This responsibility carries with it specific obligations to see that the defendant is accorded procedural justice and that guilt is decided upon the basis of sufficient evidence. Precisely how far the prosecutor is required to go in this direction is a matter of debate and varies in different jurisdictions. Many jurisdictions have adopted the ABA Standards of Criminal Justice Relating to the Prosecution Function, which in turn are the product of prolonged and careful deliberation by lawyers experienced in both criminal prosecution and defense. Applicable law may require other measures by the prosecutor and knowing disregard of those obligations or a systematic abuse of prosecutorial discretion could constitute a violation of Rule 8.4.
>The DA (District Attorney) is elected, so they love to cite their tough-on-crime statistics.
Its the opposite nowadays. The current meta is to advertise yourself as light on crime. So you get to the point where Philadelphia has an open-air drug market filled with fentanyl, the DA was actually impeached for dereliction of duty by the Pennsylvania house of representatives, and Philadelphians STILL re-elected him with over 75% of the vote.
Think the Philly DA situation is a bit more unique and interesting. Yeah, agree, he was one of the first progressive DA's elected in recent times, and he is in many ways light on crime. But he just got re-elected by a 75% in 2025 for a third term. That's incredible and think there is a reason for this.
Am no expert on him, but as we're all talking about here, the legal system is really messed up. Yeah, there are a lot of terrible processes and laws that get in the way of justice, and a lot of the things his office did made a lot of sense.
Probably one of the biggest was the "Elimination of Cash Bail for Low-Level Offenses." The cash bail system for minor crimes really screws poor people, who can't make bail for things like shoplifting, and have to stay in jail until their pre-trial. (it's often something like $1000, which for middle-class people is not a big deal at all). But imagine a teen who had to stay out of school for a month or even two just because they stole something for $20 and his family can't put together $1k. The teen gets behind in class and stops trying, and this becomes the start of getting further and further behind in life. And a similar situation happens with poor working-class people for a minor crime, they can't pay bail, so they are in jail and can't work. They are often fired or just get into debt because they're not drawing a salary.
I don't know about anything about open drug markets, but think overall what the Philly DA seemed sensible (and just looked briefly and it seems like the crime statistics turned out well in Philly, but that could be from a number of things).
You're not entirely wrong but I think that description of the situation is rather heavily colored by partisanship. Being lenient about a very limited subset of crime that "the system" is particularly ineffective at dealing with (to the point that it is arguably racist/classist/etc) is viewed favorably by certain (primarily urban) demographics. When you have broad support for an elected official who is exercising a great deal of discretion to not enforce the law that should trigger fundamental changes to the system as opposed to impeachment.
Don't they also hate to lose though? This seems an unlikely case for a prosecutor to win. If it were a civil case, sure, the standard is much lower there, but for a criminal case the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt".
I guess they could be gambling that she can't afford a good lawyer; many people can't.
Which is why there's a push to accept a plea deal. Innocent people can easily end up accepting a plea deal after a day in jail, and pushy investigators trying to get out a confession.
Whether you qualify for a public defender varies by state. It might be that while yes, hiring a lawyer would destroy her financially, she has the assets to afford it. In which case, depending on your local laws, the court might be fine saying she has to get her own lawyer.
Often a lawyer that doesn't want the case because the pay is lower than private work, and also if the defendant loses their case they must pay both the lawyer and the court their fees and hours.
Sometimes the public defenders actions are indistinguishable from collusion with the prosecution. The window to appeal can close before your sentence is over.
>> I guess they could be gambling that she can't afford a good lawyer; many people can't.
>Then the government provides a lawyer; you can't be without counsel even if you can't afford them.
I'd note that many (most?) state jurisdictions (the Federal judiciary has the Federal Defender's Service[0]) require a defendant to be "indigent"[1] before a lawyer is appointed, rather than requiring the defendant to hire a lawyer.
Also, in many jurisdictions, private lawyers are appointed by judges to take on the cases of "indigent" defendants. Often there's little in the way of vetting such lawyers, and the fees paid generally aren't very high -- resulting in subpar lawyers and representation.
Even in places (like NYC[2]) with a more robust public defender system, these lawyers are generally handling dozens of cases at once and don't have the resources of the prosecutor's office (investigators, budgets for forensic testing/analysis, etc.), leaving the defendants' side at a considerable disadvantage.
As such, it's not just saying "I can't afford a lawyer," and Perry Mason rushes to your rescue.
[1] Different jurisdictions have different standards for determining if a defendant is "indigent." But many of those won't appoint a lawyer unless you're flat broke. Own a home? Take out a second mortgage. Have a job? You're not indigent. Etc, etc, etc.
You need evidence from Cash App and likely other third parties like ISPs. You ideally would have an expert to testify about the limitations of the prosecution evidence.
You can get a rough idea of innocence by exoneration rates + years served. Above-link is just for that one project, which is one of the largest in this arena.
It would also be wise to assume that all exonerations only reflect a small minority of actually innocent people especially when you start factoring in 'crimes' like possession charges or debt (https://www.aclu.org/publications/pound-flesh-criminalizatio...)
A corollary of the “innocent until proven guilty” standard is that there’s just no way to compute such statistics. It’s impossible by design to distinguish between a clearly innocent person and a very suspicious person whose guilt couldn’t quite be proven without looking into the details of their case.
There’s a functional difference if you’re trying to compute “tough-on-innocence statistics”, because it means that the target for the only possible metric is much higher than zero. A healthy criminal justice system should routinely rule people innocent; if nearly everyone who’s prosecuted is found guilty, that doesn’t mean prosecutors are being really picky about filing charges, it means the system doesn’t treat innocence as an acceptable outcome.
You'd be better off assessing that via analysis of laws and policies. That would show what could be abused and to what degree, even if it's abused by the people in power now. That's really the whole point of the analysis - to create laws and policies with better protections, so we should measure what we're looking to change.
I've never understood that. There's a claim you are guilty of robbery. You get charged and go to court. You plead not guilty. The da insists and you go to trial. During trial, you manage to provide cctv showing that you were 1000 miles away. The jury says "not guilty".
Is there any reasonable way to say "we don't know, he might be guilty, we just didn't reach 'beyond reasonable doubt '"?
A jury I was on came to that exact conclusion. Some crimes require state of mind to be proven. In my case, a guy was at a bar and got kicked out. He went to his car and grabbed a gun and fired two shots. Ultimately the decision hanged on "did he fear for his life" when two bouncers rushed him in the parking lot.
He was probably guilty of the two counts of aggravated assault, but the prosecution never showed that it wasn't self defense, which is what Arizona required.
If he was able to get to his car and retrieve his gun and shoot at them, it seems very unlikely that the “two bouncers rushed him in the parking lot”. He could have just driven away. Much more likely he was angry about being kicked out and went back with his gun and then the “two bouncers rushed him”.
Not in the US. In Scotland, until this year, there was a "not proven" verdict, which was more or less what you just said.
The effect was the same as "not guilty", but there was an idea that allowing the jury to express doubt allowed them to avoid erring on the side of guilt. But it also confused people so they finally got rid of it.
Well the point of the trial is to make a binary decision, so it has to be guilty or not guilty to a certain standard of evidence.
Think of it as "should you bring an umbrella to go outside today?" – the weather forecast has a probability, but your job is to turn that probability into a decision based on your risk tolerance. You can't bring a 30% umbrella for a 30% chance of rain.
CCTV shows you were in the general area of the crime, but your shady friend says you were hanging out with him at the exact time the robbery happened, and the guy who says he saw you do the robbery is also kinda shady. I think it’d be reasonable for a juror to think you probably did it (because your friend is untrustworthy and has obvious incentives to lie) but didn’t do it beyond a reasonable doubt (because the witness just isn’t credible enough).
"Is it possible US prosecutors give so few shits about justice?"
If you are part of a system and have power in it, you believe the system is good. You believe that everyone else in that system is also good. That's why you have prosecutors and judges just believing the police automatically. Nobody wants to be in a job that ruins innocent people's lives, so everyone must be guilty or the cognitive dissonance will run you out (if the others in power don't first).
It's a legal system, not a justice system. That distinction is the point. Legal systems are not meant to be for justice. It's to protect and empower the people already in power or in a position to buy and control power.
Unfortunately the court system is such that it would collapse under the load if everyone actually exercised their right to a trial which heavily incentivizes plea deals
That is a different problem. In this case it should be clear that the prosecutors have messed up and won't admit it, maybe to save their carriers. They are going after someone innocent because it is the easy target while the real criminal is at large.
Partially. The prosecutors and DAs are motivated by conviction rates. The delays in the court system are a bludgeon to encourage that end. Just like identity theft in itself, no-one is motivated to fix the system but the ones being fucked by it, who are the least able to do so.
We like convictions because there's a hell of a lot of actual crime that is never punished. Just my circle of friends has suffered car break-ins, burglaries (no suspects), grand theft auto (never recovered the car), and devastatingly, a rape on school property. Most of these crimes weren't investigated, despite real damages, and the couple that were never saw a conviction.
In theory, if crimes exceed prosecutions, then number of convictions being closest to the number of prosecutions should indicate an effective use of resources. The real problem is that thorough investigations are rare for most crimes and it's just and industrial-scale process to show the elements of an offense were met by a preponderance of the evidence.
Sure, but it feels like you're doing something helpful. It's like self-help books, or new years resolutions. The emotional fulfillment of feeling like you've done something is vastly more popular and marketable than doing the actual work.
In recent years we have also witnessed the outcomes from DAs who refuse to prosecute -- having someone more hard nosed in office seems vastly preferable to losing the local Walgreens and still not having my burglaries prosecuted.
So then is your need for "justice" satisfied by rounding up a bunch of unlucky people and convicting them? To me it seems like you're just describing the other side of the exact same coin where the justice system isn't doing its job, but in a way that absolves it for not doing its job.
It's outright fallacious to want higher convictions (or even just higher arrests), because crimes aren't even being investigated, right? The goal isn't some scalar "number of people convicted" but rather justice in every case. If cases aren't being investigated, that's a specific problem with a specific part of the system, which needs to be addressed specifically. It can't be fixed by tweaking the numbers further down the line, rather that just creates further corruption.
The way I see it, every time the public demands the justice system (prosecutors, police, etc) do their jobs better, the people in the system respond by doing anything but focusing on their jobs. Either raising the false positive rate ("hard on crime"), going on [possibly silent] strike (raising false negative rate), or even rioting to create disorder from whole cloth (then blaming it on the protestors). What is really needed is accountability in general, so that specific wrongs (either way) can be rectified.
Are there cases or jurisdictions where the outcome is not binary (guilty, not guilty), but has three options: innocent, indeterminate, guilty? With "innocent" leading to some fine, penalty, or even worse, for the prosecution team. That would obviously imply the option for plea deals both ways, and would give the prosecutors a more interesting incentive structure :)
Yes, this kind of thing happens a lot. The incentives are misaligned with the goal to a degree where you almost wonder if it’s intentional.
This happens a lot because at the individual level, it’s sort of in everyone’s best interest to take the deal. The prosecutor wants $2,000 and 0 jail time and it all goes away. If you don’t take the deal, even assuming you win in the end, it will probably cost you way more than $2,000 and however long the probation check ins take. You will recover neither your time, nor the money you spent on lawyers/transportation/days off/etc.
At the macro level it happens because prosecutors get judged on their conviction/case closure rate, because we implicitly assume they found the right person. Browbeating people into accepting token punishments that technically close out the case counts for the metrics voters actually watch.
If I might lean a little conspiratorial for a moment, it also behooves the prosecutors office to flood the defense attorneys with cases. People will vote to raise the prosecutors funding to deal with criminals, no one will vote to raise defense attorney funding. Last I saw the average prosecutors office gets something around double the funding the defense gets.
It got so bad in some city in Oregon there was (is, really), a near constitutional crisis because the city got trapped between the provisions of the 6th amendment. Defense attorneys were so flooded they said they couldn’t take any new cases. The 6th amendment says the accused has a right to counsel, which is an issue. It also says they have a right to a speedy trial. The city was going to have to allocate money to the defense and get them lawyers quick, or drop a bunch of cases.
That never happened, the judge basically just said “Nuh uh” and I believe threatened the defense office with sanctions if they didn’t just assign the cases to lawyers who were already saying they had more cases than they could imagine.
I’m a little shocked we haven’t seen a huge wave of successful “ineffective assistance of counsel” appeals. Pointing to a signed, public statement your lawyer was overworked before you even talked to them seems like a decent starting point.
> This happens a lot because at the individual level, it’s sort of in everyone’s best interest to take the deal. The prosecutor wants $2,000 and 0 jail time and it all goes away. If you don’t take the deal, even assuming you win in the end, it will probably cost you way more than $2,000 and however long the probation check ins take. You will recover neither your time, nor the money you spent on lawyers/transportation/days off/etc.
Are there absolutely no provisions for an innocent person to claim all the expenses they had to incur ?
Not in a criminal court, or really anything where the government is the counterparty. Philosophically it’s because those things are part of your “civic duty” as a citizen like taxes. Realistically it’s because the demographics of people getting the money would be unpalatable to the public. Recidivism is high, some large portion of it would go to people with prior convictions.
The absurd end of this spectrum is what happens when police damage a random persons property while chasing a suspect. They’re generally not liable for it, however most homeowners insurance won’t cover it.
I remember an early GoFundMe from a lady that went to work and a guy broke into her house and had a shootout with the police. She came home to being homeless (house got condemned because plumbing, gas, etc is bullet-riddled), and it’s a really disconcerting story to hear. I don’t recall if the city settled to quiet the story down or not.
The "civic duty" rationalization is bunk, due to how unevenly it ends up applying. Someone having their house destroyed is not a "civic duty". Everyone's taxes going up a few dollars to compensate for the damage the police caused (to a house or otherwise) would be a civic duty, and municipalities paying the full cost of policing would place responsibility where responsibility belongs.
I completely agree about the realpolitik reasons though. Ultimately we need out of touch voters to realize that unaccountable government can easily turn its sights on them, as well. The real difficulty is trying to make people respect numerically low odds without falling for feel-good nonsense about "those people".
I agree about the rationalization, I tried to imply that with air quotes.
> municipalities paying the full cost of policing
Since we're talking realpolitik, this will never happen. In a first principles sense, it won't because it's unpredictable at the locality level (how do you set tax rates for FY27 without knowing what you'll pay out for this?). In a realpolitik sense, it won't because a) people don't like their taxes going up and would rather bank on it not happening to them, and b) the police will throw a shit fit and refuse to work when they realize they have to consider property damage while doing their jobs, and that the public will be _pissed_ if they crash a cruiser into a parked car while LARPing John Rambo.
> Ultimately we need out of touch voters to realize that unaccountable government can easily turn its sights on them, as well.
Good luck and godspeed. The latest stats say 56% of US adults read at or below a 6th grade level, so say it slow and in monosyllabic words lol
Should the innocent person not be able to afford an attorney, they can petition the court to chuck their case at a random lawyer, who's obliged to accept it. Such indigent cases tend to be compensated at a statutory rate well below what the lawyer might be accustomed to—with corresponding effects on the enthusiasm of their defense...
Not only does the US not care about justice, they favor the government, always. In a federal conviction you used to have forever to file an appeal, but that was determined too expensive (because people could utilize it) so they made it 10 days. But that was too short. So they made the fair compromise between 'an appeal should always be allowed' and 10 days, and made it 14 days for defendants (but 30 days for government because you know, the government has more limited resources than someone sentenced and being moved across country in prison transports between detention centers to their assigned prison).
Also a reminder that in order for a plea to be valid the defendant has to agree/swear on the record that they weren't coerced in anyway way into making the deal (because you can't waive your Constitutional right to trial under coercion). The threat of prosecution/a very harsh sentenced being reduced sure seems like coercion and that plea deals are constitutionally invalid by default.
Check out Three Felonies a Day by Silvergate. The writing is poor and it’s one of the only sources that dares suggest that the Enron executives were victims but regardless, there are points relevant to exactly what you’re asking about.
At some point we need to have a tough conversation about collective civic engagement and societal dysfunction and not just individually running from it or routing around it. All these institutional problems have been stacking up for the past twenty years, they're only continuing to get worse and worse, and the most common reaction I see from it is some variation on "try to just stay out of its way".
There's a tendency for people to react to institutional problems like this by saying they'll just move over here to a blue state, or they'll monitor their accounts closer on reporting bureaus, or they'll just have a lawyer on retainer, etc, etc. If a legal system in a red state is this dysfunctional, you can't simply hide away in a blue state with better-run systems. The underlying problem - the social decay of much of the US and the broader world - needs to be directly engaged with and confronted.
I agree, but the "tough conversation about collective civic engagement and societal dysfunction" is actually a "tough conversation about taxing the sh*t out of everyone who makes more than $150k a year". Most of our problems are downstream of our extreme inequality and the way it incentivizes dysfunctional and antisocial behavior across the board. So it's going to be an even harder conversation to have than you think.
And if you don't believe me, consider what, "I'll just move, I'll just retain a lawyer, I'll just spend my precious time monitoring my data or hiring someone else to do it for me," as Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free cards says about the means of the people holding those views. (It's that they can, and intend to, buy their way out of a system stood up by people like them ostensibly to promote accountability and social order.)
Right, whatever the actual fundraising method is, "good justice" is something we must spend to get the same way we spend for drinkable tapwater, or roads, or having someone else watch you child for most of the day every workday for 12 years.
"If a legal system in a red state is this dysfunctional, you can't simply hide away in a blue state with better-run systems."
These sorts of abuses or dysfunction are rampant in all states. I can't think of a single state that actually has a good system (properly staffed, no overreach, etc).
Yes but it only gets worse as you go to red states which are “tough on crime”. Which basically just means they put as many people in prison as humanly possible, and for as long as possible.
But they do tend to have better speedy trial definitions and such. Although it seems they are rolling back bail reform (which may have been too lenient, but they didn't find a middle solution). And it seems they still have ex parte protection from abuse orders, which are notoriously abused in divorce cases.
>All these institutional problems have been stacking up for the past twenty years, they're only continuing to get worse
You're right about "continuing to get worse", but our institutions have been failing for more than 20 years. I think it's more like that Hemingway quote about bankruptcy, “Gradually and then suddenly.” in turn, that always makes me think of an exponential growth curve... and I think America, if not the entire world, is headed towards the vertical. Ib other words, when it comes to how dysfunctional our institutions can get, I think we've just begun.
We are all ears if you'd like to start that conversation. Make a page/blog post and submit it here, and accept ahead of time whatever fallout may arise from doing so. If the benefits outweigh the risks, or if you simply are at a point where the risks do not matter.
You aren't gonna advance your career as a prosecutor, or even win re-election, if you actually care about that "truth and justice" stuff in the case of some rando out-of stater who you already have a really cool-sounding story about the obvious guilt of.
They were quite overpaid compared to other local government roles, and had very poor public visibility. WP says they were originally going to be called "sheriffs" but that was rejected as "too American". This does make it clear that it was an attempt to copy the US system, but I feel obliged to point out that the Scottish court system has had Sheriffs for longer than the US has existed.
The French are just exercising their second amendment rights as originally envisioned by the founding fathers. They're doing America better than Americans!
Decades of reckless deregulation and -er- corporatism, the inevitable corporate consolidation that that behavior encourged, and "Stranger Danger!"-type fearmongering... I reckon.
The previously-super-illegal pervasive domestic surveillance programs sure don't help things, either. No cost is too high to stop "terror" at home and abroad, amirite? :(
I mean, I would like to know what percentage of people makes an informed decision when voting for a judge for example.
A lot of them run unopposed anyway. And if they don't, I have no idea how you would figure out what candidate you like best.
Heck, in the US even the big political positions seem to be largely void of 'ideas'. It's mostly attack ads paid for by shady sources through PACs. That's where the majority of the votes are flipped/won...
Democracy is cool and all but perhaps roles like judges and prosecutors should be selected on competence, not by perceived tough-on-crime popular elections
Who does the selection? In the USA, doesn’t it always come down to voter choice one way or another? We typically elect a sheriff but a mayor appoints a police chief. The mayor is elected however. What process could be used to determine process and selection that would avoid voter input?
Open application process. Select whoever had the highest law school grades. Or alternatively make all the applicants take a competitive exam. Anonymous grading.
> When looking at on-the-job performance, our internal data — based on thousands of reports from actual attorneys at some of the top law firms — tells us that GPA on average has a 2.2% predictive validity. Meaning that GPA, the thing that the LSAT is meant to predict, explains very little. When we look directly at the LSAT, we see an even smaller correlation of 0.9% on average.
Nobody did a correlational study between electability and judge or prosecutor competence either.
Would you agree knowledge of the law is a better, if still imperfect, indicator of ability as a judge or prosecutor than being merely appealing to voters?
In any case, I think a competitive exam is better than law school grades. It allows for applicants who didn't do so well in law school but got better later.
It's hard to craft an exam that isn't mostly testing how good the examinee is at writing exams. Things like the SAT, LSAT, GRE, etc... are good predictors of near-future academic success but not very useful beyond that.
So, I think an exam is a bad idea unless it's a pass/fail exam (ie no grades, you either understand the law or you do not) and there should be no meaningful time constraint when completing the exam. That's basically the system in most states today, except the training comes after someone without a law degree is elected.
There are state and federal oversight mechanisms with the power to remove bad judges.
> That's basically the system in most states today, except the training comes after someone without a law degree is elected.
If you believe this is preferable to a system where knowledge is established before appointing the person, then we're not going to have much common ground.
IMO a law degree is the absolute bare minimum for any kind of judicial or prosecutorial role. It's bad enough cops aren't expected to know the law. How can anyone justify a judge with fewer qualifications than a bootcamp grad in a software role?
I might vote for the 26 year old who just passed the bar but can't find work because I believe they know the law. My neighbor might vote for the retired high school principle because she believes the person has accumulated wisdom and experience dealing with people. Either person could be a great or terrible JP.
Also, don't forget JPs mostly handle basic disputes, misdemeanors, and administrative tasks. You probably don't need a law degree to conduct a wedding ceremony or hear a shoplifting case.
Would it surprise you to find out in lots of places the coroner is an elected position open to high school grads?
Who does the selection? Who approves the applications? Who ensures the process is open? It always comes down to winners of elections. The USA isn’t a technocracy or meritocracy, for better or worse.
Put it on a website and in the local paper. Applicants' names, their exam scores, their law school transcripts.
> It always comes down to winners of elections
Sure somewhere in the chain, at the end, there's an elected official. That's democracy.
But elected officials can be required by law to use meritocratic selection criteria to appoint people. Many countries used or still use exams to hire bureaucrats. It's a very old concept:
Ok. So we just need enlightened legislatures to enact these processes into law and fund them. I actually agree with what you propose, but am having a hard time seeing how to get such a system in place.
Appointment by mayor or local government is fine. Make it a normal public service job. There are reasonable questions about why the US needs quite so many fine-grained local police authorities and who polices the police, though.
The highest level public offices should always be either directly elected, or appointed by an elected person for only the duration of their office. This way voters can get rid of them if necessary. Otherwise they become an unelected deep state.
Other levels of public office should be strictly by competence. Meaning by trials open for all citizens.
Usually when fraud is involved, people don't care about justice, they care about getting their money back, which means often the less legally competent party (who are often victims themselves) have to pay up, and good luck getting your money back.
The story sounds like CashApp didn't do proper KYC, so they should be held liable. Also I very much doubt that someone built up a sophisticated operation just for 1 victim, so there must be others. Why doesn't the police connect the dots?
They don't care. My iPhone was stolen. Through a circuitous route, I was able to get the details of the eBay seller, someone who lived near me, and whose listing pages couldn't have been more blatant if it had a neon sign on it: 100+ laptops, mostly Macs, "no chargers, no accessories", often activation locked. Same with phones.
So I went to my PD, with the buyer information, the seller, all of this. Their response:
"Well, he probably didn't steal it himself."
Huh, "Isn't it still a crime to knowingly sell stolen property?"
"..."
"..."
Nothing done. As of a year later he was still steadily adding multiple phones and laptops a week to his listings.
I'm not a lawyer, but it feels like you should consult one. If you have the legal information of this person and they have possession of your activation locked phone, sounds like you could at least sue him civilly or in small claims court for the value of it, if the DA won't do anything
They give a shit about their conviction rate. And maintaining a comfortable relationship with their local police department(s). Very little else.
While there are definitely issues of pay disparity, there are a lot of criminal law firms employing "former prosecutors". In my conversations with one or two - the pay is better, but the disillusionment and need to railroad defendants got to them.
It's not stated in the article, but quite often when you look into these extraordinary miscarriage of justice stories in the US you find out what race the victim is, and then it becomes clear what's happening.
Time for CashApp founders and C-levels to be held personally liable for creating a system with so few checks that it appears to be designed to facilitate fraud and theft.
Then you sue all the law enforcement officers and local officials who are attempting to lay the blame for this on someone they should know is likely innocent. Make all of the financial liability for this lazy investigation come directly from the pockets of the cops and prosecutors until they have nothing left to their names and then extract every thin dime that you can from the city that hired or elected these clods so that the whole city is bankrupted.
Money is obviously the only thing that talks in this society. Make all these assholes pay with everything that they have managed to accumulate in their lives and kick their asses to the curbs after pointing at a dumpster and telling them that they can likely find some cardboard suitable for beggar signage. They'll need to supply their own writing tools though.
I often think of this audio-skit, Identity Theft by Mitchell & Webb, wherein the bank is regretfully informing a customer that their Identity has been Stolen, which is totally not in any way the bank's responsibility or problem...
>for creating a system with so few checks that it appears to be designed to facilitate fraud and theft.
I'm too lazy to create and verify a cashapp account, but so far as what I can find online they do SSN/name check + id check + selfie (liveliness) check. What more do you want?
Almost everyone's info of the above kind is available on the dark web, as the original article about this case explained. That situation is the result of everyone collecting KYC information while also being too incompetent to properly guard it.
> + selfie (liveliness) check
I don't know what this is, but it protected nothing and it's apparently useless.
Then, after the fraud CashApp protected the fraudster by stonewalling the victim and the lack of exculpatory evidence led to the filing of formal charges.
Someone made a fake account -> we need "Whatever is needed" to make creating fake accounts harder is exactly the wrong way of thinking about it. It's the same kneejerk reaction that got us PATRIOT act and TSA after 9/11.
Or if you're more swayed by social justice, all these onerous checks also makes it harder for "unbanked"/"underbanked" people access to the financial system, which has real harms for them.
The person who is now facing charges for a crime she did not commit is experiencing ‘real harm’.
Absolutely shameful to defend a b$ company that doesn’t not have adequate protections to prevent this from happening. Imagine this happening to you or your own - whisked away and locked up for a month for the crime of losing your wallet and getting your identity stolen.
>Imagine this happening to you or your own - whisked away and locked up for a month for the crime of losing your wallet and getting your identity stolen.
You know what's worse than sitting in jail for a few days? Dying or losing a loved one from 9/11. So you better get used to more federal agents scanning your communications and more TSA groping you at the airport. No cost is too great to prevent losing a loved one to terrorist attacks!
> You know what's worse than sitting in jail for a few days?
You haven't read the article. The stakes are much higher than "a few days in jail" which isn't nearly as small of a problem as you make it out to be either.
> Dying or losing a loved one from 9/11.
Why do you have to repeat this nonsensical 9/11 strawman of an analogy which has nothing to do with the case in question? Nobody asked for government "scanning of your communications". What you failed to notice is the refusal of CashApp to provide information about the fraudulent account because the victim couldn't prove owning it while she was being investigated for owning it.
CashApp stonewalled the victim and prevented proper investigation before charges were formally filed and the prosecutor got involved, after that it was to late and the mess that followed resulted in great expenses, turmoil and further risks for the victim.
A b$ company putting in more protections for its customers and non-customers by doing more checks is equal to TSA groping you? Please make it make sense.
Doubling down on a weak argument doesn’t endear anyone to your position, especially when it’s trivializing actual tragedies. For what, even, for flawed systems to remain flawed? TSA is a joke made to harass innocents while PATRIOT was a consolidation of power. It is true 9/11 was used to ram legislation that hurt Americans. It doesn’t mean every response to an unfortunate situation is wrong.
Additionally, your argument is to do what, exactly? Apply zero pressure to the company which aids and abets fraud to the detriment of innocence because you find “social justice” and restrictions distasteful? Accessing money should be laborious and should require various verification forms (even if I disagree that photographing IDs and selfies are actual forms of verification), because as we see here laxness has resulted in an innocent person’s life being upended.
You're the second person who doesn't seem to realize that fraud prevention requires proper actions before and after fraud is detected/suspected. Failing to react properly on fraud protects the fraudsters - like CashApp has done - and makes the platform a magnet for fraud.
CashApp failed to investigate and provide vital information to victim while she was being investigated - they did that too late only after they were compelled to do so by the court and lawyers, creating a very hard situation for the victim and allowing the fraudsters to cover their tracks.
Zero fraud is non-optimal because the effort required to achieve it would make transacting impossible.
I suppose I should have spelled it out, given that so many people didn't get it.
It would be like declaring that the optimal number of vehicle deaths is zero, but then not realizing that the only way to achieve that is to make sure nobody can drive. When faced with the realities, everyone backs off and acknowledges that some risk is necessary
The simple fact is that you can't just open an app and then let it destroy the lives of people with absolutely no connection to it. The company itself must be responsible. Saying "the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero" is only acceptable if the cost of that "non-zero" amount is borne by the company itself; otherwise the result is plainly misaligned incentives.
Apathy is the main thing allowing this to be a fantasy result. Maybe if enough people are caught up in bullshit like this where their lives and reputations are tarnished due to fraud perpetrated by someone else then we can energize some societal changes that pin the reputational damage and financial penalties on the correct donkey.
Being extradited to Arkansas for a crime one didn't commit, one which is impossible to refute because there is no evidence to begin with, seems like a weirdly American spin on Kafka.
Police never thought to subpoena the ISP for the IP address associated with the cashapp login? This seems like an egregious omission in the investigation. Even if it were a VPN, you could subpoena her email to find payment receipts to the provider, etc. Even that may not necessarily prove guilt if there are no logs. That's all an enormous leap of evidence to assume the account is genuinely hers, especially given how endemic identity theft is.
> According to 404 Media's review, the address on the account was one where neither Smith nor her husband had ever lived. The account had also been accessed through Verizon connections, while Smith says she uses AT&T and has never had a Verizon plan.
> There was also a discrepancy involving the phone used to create the account. Cash App's records showed an iPhone running iOS 16.1.1, an operating system dating back to 2022. Smith, however, provided evidence that her iPhone 13 mini was running the much newer iOS 26.5.2.
That's even crazier. You have to question if they even understand what they're investigating. I expect this to be thrown out in court, although I also have declining faith in our court system.
I think you have to understand that they care more about whether or not they can get a conviction than whatever actually happened. Then the rest of it makes perfect sense.
I think people underestimate how much the separation of roles matters to the case and to the motivations of the people in each role.
The detectives screwed up by doing a piss poor investigation and identifying the wrong suspect (who is a victim herself in this crime).
The prosecutor cares more about whether they can sell the flawed case to an Arkansas jury or use the low plea bargain cost against the high legal defense cost.
So beyond the prosecutor, we have to start questioning judges and juries. If the prosecutor so strongly feels that a weak case has a chance of getting a conviction, then what's really wrong here: the prosecutor or the judge/jury part of the system? Prosecutors are famous for only bring cases to trial they feel they can win. That sense normally comes from their experience directly or reading of previous trials.
The prosecutor is trying to scare this woman into accepting a plea deal. Couple thousand dollars and 6 months probation. Maybe they eventually drop the case, but she’s going to face much more than that in travel and legal costs. No matter what happens here, this woman is, on some level, fucked with no recourse. And the people responsible for it are the ones who should be protecting her from the effects of the identity theft in the first place.
> If the prosecutor so strongly feels that a weak case has a chance of getting a conviction
Who says that's the case? US courts are overloaded and public defenders are massively overloaded.
Most people can't afford to hire a good lawyer, and a (let's say) 10% chance of years in prison isn't worth gambling versus a plea deal to them. Prosecutors know this, file massive scary charges, and motivate people to settle regardless of innocence or guilt.
Having had the opportunity to participate and observe the jury system, there is no way I'd ever take a jury trial for a criminal matter. The judge started off the trial by informing the jury pool that despite the state lacking any evidence, we'd need to attest we could find the defendant guilty. Jurors follow the instructions given to them by judges, that is all.
I have heard from random lawyers that if the facts are in your favor, get a bench trial, if you are actually guilty, you can maybe sway a jury.
We don't have juries because they are smarter or more fair or more just on average than a judge. We have juries entirely due to the concept of jury nullification. It's a formalization of the concept the founders sometimes expressed where "Yes I did it, but that doesn't mean I should go to jail" is an intended outcome. It's explicitly that Justice isn't the same as "follow the letter of the law".
They don't care at all. For her it's potentially six years in prison, for the cops, and the prosecutor it's a small potatoes case on a random Thursday.
The plea deal offer kind of says it all, if this reaches the court it will either very quickly be thrown out or they may drop it because it's not worth the time.
I believe she's innocent, but neither the ISP nor the iOS version are proof of innocence in any way. You can go login from the neighborhood Starbucks and you can simply update your phone.
In the US, the burden of proof is on the criminal justice system, which is required to prove guilt beyond any reasonable doubt. The defendant's goal is therefore to introduce that reasonable doubt, not necessarily prove innocence. They are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Many other countries have proper multi-year colleges specifically for the field of policing, and rigorous physical and mental health tests required to get the job. In those countries the police is more educated and more competent than the vast majority of the population.
I can't think of any country with a competent police force.
The problem is that in most countries (except the US), it is an extremely badly paid job, so it only attracts people who get something else from it: power.
Most people don't have the power to strip me of my freedom and legally shoot me. If anything the police should be held to a higher standard than the average person.
Meanwhile, Cash App who facilitated the scam and actually cost the buyer actual money... walks away with no repercussions. There is something horribly broken when tech companies who are ruining people's lives have zero responsibility but are making money in the process.
So how exactly does Cash App verify users that signup for new accounts? If the process is so lax, shouldn't they be forced to temporary block it? To say nothing about money laundering charges, that would be raised against any bank in such situation.
This is more general issue in the USA. How do you prove who you are? Your driver license / identity card doesn't have a chip, so given enough information about someone else you can sign up as them.
Compare that to say a large part of the EU where people have an identity card with a chip, which has a PIN. It allows institutions to read the chip, and that chip cannot be easily faked (PKI). The photo is on the card and on the chip, so they have to match.
Also, more importantly, all of these financial apps popping up is because the normal banking system is too slow moving for the modern requirements, something the EU has also solved with the SWIFT system.
I can tell you, from personal experience, that the vast majority of sites still don't bother to send a Confirmation Email before allowing you to create an account.
I have a gmail address that I secured back in 2004 which is fairly short in length. Multiple people other than myself have used that email to sign up for all sorts of things which never bothered to confirm that the user actually owned the account before happily signing them up. AWS accounts, hotel sites, innumerable soccer and fantasy-football related sites, etc.
Every time I would try to reach out to the service to tell them that I had never signed up for an account as the email holder, they would give me the same non-answer: "Well if you own the email account, just reset your password and then delete it!" Nope. Not doing that. It was their negligence that allowed the account to be created under my email in the first place. I am not going to acknowledge ownership of the account to cover their fuck-up.
This happens to me frequently, I have an OG gmail account which a bunch of people have associated with their own accounts. The problem is the provider will verify a phone number, and once that's validated, will accept an email address, even if it's wrong. Two financial entities have accepted my email address tied to other people's account: Chime, and Venmo. There's no way to fix this since they all presume I am a customer of theirs, so the path to fix is to do it in their app. It is incredibly frustrating, more so when it's people who handles money do it. They should know better! The "We are not a bank (therefore not covered by banking regulations)" does so much work to cover their shoddy practices.
Same story with Gmail here, and unfortunately over the years it has simply become my primary. I'm still undecided on how I want to handle my own domain+email.
Someone opened a Venmo account using my gmail and immediately started moving thousands of dollars in small transactions, and my only options were to a) take ownership of the thousands of dollars of small transactions that were now associated with my unverified email or b) get my email banned???? Eventually I got an email saying the Venmo was disabled due to suspicious activity, hope that doesn't bite me in the ass in the future.
What if I wanted to sign up for Venmo in the future? Why do I need to create another email address to use their product in the future when they didn't even verify it in the first place? How are they allowed to run their billon dollar business like this?
Want to hear a fun one? You can get realtors to spam any (US) phone number you want by entering it into Zillow for like a rental or something. They do no verification whatsoever.
I cannot believe that in 2026 companies can get away with not confirming your email address. So damn annoying…and apparently something that can get YOU into legal jeopardy. Could we use this case as class-action precedent to sue a few large companies and get them to change?
If they don't do any verification, and I'm not sure how they would in countries like the US, then any fraud case or attempt to claw in money from random people should be thrown out of court by any reasonable judge.
Requiring only public information and a SSN that has probably leaked hundreds of times and can be accessed by any number of random people in public and private administration just shouldn't count as even an attempt to verify identity.
SSN should just be considered public information at this point. It’s not secret so it cannot be treated as a password and it’s not even suitable as an identifier. It’s purpose is for tracking earnings, not identifying a person.
In Poland you can block your PESEL (SSN equivalent) to prevent this kind of fraud. One click in our government app or website. If PESEL is needed to confirm identify with a corporation you can unlock it temporarily.
I think it is slightly different in Poland. PESEL has status blocked or unblocked. Certain operations like taking loan or opening bank account requires PESEL to be unblocked at time of operation. But not everything requires unblocked PESEL. If it is not required to be unblocked by law, companies can still verify identity with PESEL even if status is blocked. Correct me if I am wrong. Anyway it is still big improvement.
A national id number should have never been considered any more privileged or authoritative than a name in the first place, any business that does so is being criminally negligent.
I mean, that is why they exist, to replace names, or perhaps more accurately act as a surrogate key for names. The government specifically said don't use the SSN as a secret, and businesses did so anyway.
Well, now you get to the absolute travesty that is:
Identity theft is a failing of other people that is your problem to solve.
This very nearly burned me when buying my home - having been an AT&T customer in the PNW for nearly two decades, "I" apparently decided to hit up a Walmart on the outskirts of El Paso, sign up for a Verizon service, run up two months of international calls and bail out.
Despite a police report, my utility statements, AT&T bills, etc. (all of which were, to be blunt, none of VZWs business), VZW stood by it initially, "On review of your documentation, we remain satisfied that this debt belongs to you based on the documents used to open your account".
I asked to see them, since they were, in VZW's own words, "mine". "We can't, for customer privacy reasons." Oh, so "mine when the bill needs paid, may not be mine for privacy purposes".
We constantly face the consequences of businesses failing to secure the information which they (and in some cases legislation) requires us to give them. And when it (inevitably) is lost, then you're offered "free credit monitoring"...
The CRAs compete for breach business, because it's absolutely a profitable enterprise for them:
If you've ever signed up for one of these "free credit monitoring for a year" following a breach?
When you do, you typically do so by signing up for the highest tier (sometimes $30 or even $50 a month) product with a redemption code for one year free. You have to enter a credit card to do so, and to no-one's surprise, if you don't cancel in time, it automatically converts to a paid subscription "for your convenience".
There are many consumer protection farces in the US, but right up there has to be the notion that "identity theft" is the consumer's responsibility/obligation to prevent or resolve, not the entity that actually had the data stolen. You're considered liable until you prove innocence, even though you did nothing wrong.
The good thing is that you can keep the free credit monitoring services running until you die, because inevitably a new security breach will offer you free credit monitoring before the previous one expires. /s
I think I currently have two overlapping ones going.
I've signed up for a few bank accounts purely online. And if you give them your SSN and enough other information, they're able to pull all your credit reports, in real time, and then do verification based on them, that tends to be quite effective.
If Cash App had run some sort of bank-level verification, I doubt a garden-variety scammer could've "stolen her identity" like this. But, since Cash App is not a bank... they don't need all those pesky safeguards, do they?
The problem is, if you have a SSN and enough other information, you can pull a credit report and answer all the rest of the questions for opening an account.
All of the associated information tied to your SSN has also been leaked multiple times. Just having it should not be considered any kind of "proof" of identity in 2026. This should be an easy argument for "reasonable doubt" by any defense attorney.
Cash App is owned by Block, and Block has an existing banking license (an Industrial Loan Company chartered in Utah in 2021), and has a new license application is progress (a National Trust Bank Charter filed just last month). I happen to know that internally Jack was saying things like "we are a bank", and "we can use this license to do all sorts of banking things."
Clearly this is evidence that they can't be trusted as a bank, and should have those licenses revoked.
Not a single comment on how an individual can prevent this? Or is there no way to protect from one’s identity getting stolen and used this way ? What can the rest of us learn from this so that we stack the odds in our favor?
There's no such thing as identity theft. Individual companies can be defrauded when they don't do sufficient checks. The companies that do sufficient checks don't get defrauded. You can't prevent someone else's incompetence.
As for being subject to prosecution for crimes that you didn't commit, you can either live in a jurisdiction where the justice system works more effectively, or else be rich and have a good lawyer.
You can freeze your credit with all 7 credit rating agencies (Experian, Equifax, Trans Union, and the 4 smaller ones whose names I always forgot) although that may not have protected this case because it is alleged Cash App does not pull your credit before opening an account.
Also opening a Cash App account yourself (even if you don't use it) is weak protection because they allow multiple accounts.
So if there as a defense I don't know what it is. Hope that identity fraud done with your info doesn't happen in a state with aggressive yet lazy/careless law enforcement.
I recall once reading some Patrick Mckenzie article where he discussed how administrative issues like this used to be easily fixed by journalists. They could reach out to an institution seeking comment on a story, the institution's PR department could then ask for 48 hours to comment, in which time they could run something up the flag pole and get it fix. But with the speed on online reporting, they're now incentivized to report on the scandal ASAP, leading institutions to similarly fail to fix the errors. In that case I believe it was about bank foreclosures, but in this case I suspect there might be a way to convince the DA they're prosecuting an old woman and not an e-scammer.
An adjacent question maybe lawyers can answer. In a hypothetical scenario, can the accused here take the plea and then turn around and sue the city/state for money and have their records expunged? What are the downsides? I believe double jeopardy should prevent them from being tried again for the same crime.
Still waiting for industry fans to comment. But let's get the ball rolling:
"I would never defend <company/common practice>. But this article is such egregious ragebait that I must speak out. It's a very sad outcome. But it's also clearly <her fault/impossible to legislate a fix/evidence that the system is working>."
I don't understand why ID cards with digital features aren't really a thing in the U.S. In many countries, such as Germany, there are ID cards that you can scan with an app to prove your identity. That makes it much harder for fraudsters to simply open bank accounts in other people's names.
In Germany every adult has to have an ID card. You cannot not have one. As a consequence requiring one for voting is practically unproblematic.
In the US the situation is fundamentally different plus there is a history of heinous racial targeted disenfranchisement of voters to consider that is in the extremely recent past and alive and well.
Only Anglo-Saxon society thinks like that. I never ever see another society think like this.
It's like seething over criminal justice system (police, court, prisons), what if govt turns authoritarian? Criminal justice system will become a tool of oppression.
Sure criminal justice system can be and have been a tool of oppression, but no sane society would forgo criminal justice under this fear.
To be fair some things that are considered normal in non-Anglo Saxon societies are considered authoritarian in Anglo Saxon societies, in particular having to register your whereabouts with the government, or having to carry ID at all times.
If it does go to court, would explaining to the jury how half the nation's personal data is leaked twice a month be allowed? Or is this one of those truths that society is not allowed to acknowledge?
I would imagine it would be probative for the defense to bring in evidence of every data breach containing her name and ssn. I don’t think pointing out how common these data leaks are generally would be of direct evidentiary value to the case, though.
Of course it would. Most jurors have probably received more than one "We take security seriously" letter and free credit monitoring because they were included in a data breach. Relating to their own experience and getting them to think "that could be me" about the defendant would be very valuable. Creating reasonable doubt is the primary job of a criminal defense attorney, as that obligates the jury to a not guilty finding.
Lots of mouths are getting fed when someone goes through the legal system. Police, bail bondsman, various clerks, attorneys, …
I can see their motivation in maximizing the interaction.
Third post on the same news item. Clearly struck a chord. Does things like this happen in china?
People indicate how there is no privacy there but if things like this get out of hand and start happening for the masses wouldn’t one prefer a place like china where these things simply don’t happen because the system knows everything about every one? What am I missing ?
Would the EFF get involved in a case like this? Feels like it could set an important principle about how weak the link can be between “PII” and the actual person, given the preponderance of data leaks.
I don't think technical knowledge really comes into play here, which is exactly why it's causing such anxiety. If you're a U.S. citizen, enough of your identity is available for sale that this could happen to you, and there's nothing you can do about it.
You can't keep your PII safe because government and financial institutions have it, have already lost it repeatedly, and keep exposing it. You can't prevent these types of accounts from being opened because credit blocks and monitoring don't come into play with them. You can't monitor it yourself because the accounts don't show up on credit reports and there's no way for you to find out they exist.
The victim in this case was randomly selected. It could have been any person in the country, because literally every single one of us has had the minimum info needed to create a Cash App (et. al) account leaked at least once. Some people commenting here have probably had accounts opened in their names and never knew about it, only because the police weren't as malicious as the guys handling this case, or didn't feel like bothering to investigate at all.
It's good this is seen as big news, but to anyone paying attention this is an everyday occurrence.
All you need to charge someone is to show by a preponderance of the evidence that the elements of the offense were committed. Account being in your name and used in the crime meets that criteria. The problem is that many times a "thorough investigation" was not performed. There's nothing in law requiring a thorough investigation, but it's usually included in department regulations. You can file a complaint, but they won't do anything about it. There is no accountability anywhere in the system. The judges who are supposed to be neutral are severely biased due to the structure of the system and lack of training.
Identify theft/identity fraud is a bullshit risk-shifting move by the banking class.
The actual crime is classic fraud and it's directed at the banks and financiers. By inventing "identify theft", the financial sector shifts responsibility and financial consequences from themselves to the uninvolved, innocent, and frequently totally unaware individuals that fraudsters represent themselves to be.
With this system in place, instead of then requiring that banks spend the resources to verify who they believe they're doing business with (or else risk being defrauded), we have "credit monitoring" and "identity security" services and individuals being held financially and criminally liable for crimes they're often so uninvolved in they _literally don't know they happened_.
Meanwhile in our inboxes: “We take the security and privacy of our users very seriously” and “We have no reason to believe that social security numbers in our user database were accessed.”
May be someone who knows Jack Dorsey (CEO of Block which owns Cash App) should make him aware to the plight of this woman and Cash App can actually use this as an opportunity to do the right thing despite thier mistake.
Playing devil's advocate here, how should this actually be handled? If the police show up (not saying they did all the due diligence they should have) to arrest you for a crime and the person says "Nope, wasn't me."...is that sufficient for police to drop everything and walk away?
She's been accused of a crime. Yes, she was arrested and had to bail out. This is normal process. How else does anyone propose this work?
> the account had been created using Smith's Social Security number and date of birth
This may be enough to open an investigation and start gathering more evidence, but doesn't satisfy probable cause. The cops and court screwed up.
A database match is not enough to confirm that this specific person (may have) committed the crime.
It would be like sending a ransom note asking the money be sent to Joe Smith, 123 Fake St. That doesn't really tell you anything about Joe Smith's connection to the crime. It's completely incidental.
Typically an investigation involving a digital crime lab that understands what they are doing. For example tying the digital traces to the actual suspect. If there are no ties to IP addresses or devices then it gets really tricky.
Again in the article the defense is saying the prosecution is demanding the lady prove her innocence, which is something cops love to do.
And because this is a technical crime the fact there is almost no evidence isn't going to save you in a court of law, especially in the 4th least educated state. It's not about the law any longer, but the stories the lawyers weave.
It's not just an accusation. Her identifying information is basically found at a crime scene.
Every part of this would be fine if the companies allowing fraudulent parties to use their platforms were prosecuted for mail fraud, or interstate commerce fraud. Put the executive in jail. It's really this simple. The moment executives have repercussions they change their actions. Make cashapp prove they did their due diligence.
For starters in this case, extradition shouldn't really work like that. There is no reason a suspect cannot be jailed somewhere close to their home (ie near their family), with police from the distant jurisdiction doing the traveling to question her etc. Doubly so if she's able to post bail. It's the police's day job versus the suspect's life, right?
But as to basic situation, the fundamental problem is that there is no expectation of justice at the end of this.
There isn't really a way around the police (and judges who approve warrants etc) just doing their thing and you having to comply. But if it turns out they were wrong, then they should always be on the hook for all the damage they've caused - the same as every other member of society. In this case, every day the victim was held in jail, her costs of having to hire attorneys and private investigators to represent her, plus simply the distress of having this hanging over her head while being threatened with years in prison.
The article implies this has already been going on for six months. While this isn't a long time as far as the legal system goes (remember, day job), it's an eternity for someone on the receiving end of it. That should be well north of a million dollars for disrupting someone's life that long (especially over a frivolity!) - putting aside any abuse suffered in jail, direct reimbursement for expenses, etc. I want to say it should be more, but $5500/day seems in the correct neighborhood (a daily rate should be much higher for days you're actually in jail, but lower on days you're "free" but are still under attack).
This would create a strong disincentive for incompetent (or in this case, constructively malicious) action by police/prosecutors, as well as demonstrating to all citizens that the justice system actually tries to get correct answers rather than harming innocent people and then merely wiping their hands of it.
I like the theory of this comment. The actual numbers probably wouldn't work, but the theory is sound.
The payment for wrong prosecution would create a back pressure on the justice system which is currently only possible via media reporting, something generally only accessible to the powerful or otherwise sympathetic defendant. We'd need a category of dismissal which is "innocent", where a judge determines not only is the person "not guilty", but that actually, with proper investigation and application of thought, the prosecution could have determined innocence beforehand themselves. This should come with the payment and automatic complete expungement of all records, and an entry in the local newspaper of the declared innocence of the defendant.
Then the last piece of the puzzle would be outlawing police and prosecutor unions, and firing police and prosecutors who have poor records of sending "innocent" cases to trial. This would serve to create a pressure towards correct prosecution.
I wonder whether this type of situation is an artifact of the US system of law being focused on codification / literalism / textualism, as opposed to the UK and similar systems where common law or judge made law has more weight, which permits the injection of some level of common sense into situations where a literal interpretation of the statutes would lead to ridiculous outcomes.
In the UK the vast majority of prosecutions are made by the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS are civil servants and, unlike in the US where they elect the guy emptying the trash, the crossing guards and the receptionist, these are just career lawyers.
You may remember Horizon not so long back, which was a gross misscarriage of justice in which large numbers of people who effectively worked for the Post Office were accused of crimes, in some cases jailed and even in a few cases committed suicide. Horizon is exceptional because, since mail was historically very important, the Post Office actually did have the same power as a Crown Prosecutor. Those cases were still sometimes really the fault of the CPS (not least because the CPS has a legal right to just seize control of, and then terminate a prosecution if they believe it would be prudent to do so) but are exceptional because most organisations could not have done this even if they wanted to try it.
> In the UK the vast majority of prosecutions are made by the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS are civil servants and, unlike in the US where they elect the guy emptying the trash, the crossing guards and the receptionist, these are just career lawyers.
Where did you get the idea that what you're saying is accurate about the US?
In the US most prosecutors are not elected, they are also civil servants and career lawyers. Their boss, a County or State Attorney, typically is elected, but they rarely prosecute cases.
I've also never elected a garbage man, crossing guard, or a receptionist in my life, but I've only been voting for almost 30 years now. Maybe it'll come up soon.
The "guy emptying the trash" and so on were hyperbole. Perhaps I should have made that clearer. Americans elect far too many of these roles and that's a problem but it is true that, so far at least, they do not elect the people who empty their trash.
The ultimate boss at the CPS is just a lawyer, his boss is the Attorney General for England and Wales and the Attorney General (although also usually a lawyer) is a politician, typically an elected politician. But that's quite a lot more distance between your criminal case and somebody trying to get re-elected.
This is kind of true. What is unusual about the Post Office is that they have exceptional investigatory powers but anyone can bring a prosecution in the UK.
And it is an important freedom. If the state is declining to prosecute its own, citizens should be able to.
In my view the biggest problem is the credulity of the courts, who are inclined to believe evidence from corporate officers by default, and often refuse efforts to challenge it. The late Ross Anderson documented many cases from the 1990s onwards of people being convicted on bullshit technical evidence.
Maybe the CPS would have seen through it if they had conducted the prosecutions, but I don't think that's obviously true.
It's a negligible freedom. The CPS can always choose to seize control of any prosecution and, if it sees fit, discontinue the prosecution. So at most they can choose to ignore a prosecution unless either the prosecutor or accused bring it to their attention specifically, and if that happens they're obliged to actually do something (though that might be explicitly taking no action, it's distinct from ignorance because there's a process they have to follow by law to decide what to do).
This is an important defence - every Post Office defendant could have chosen (or rather, their lawyers knowing the law could have done so) to flag their case for this process and force the CPS to decide what to do and as you say it's conceivable that in the most egregious cases that would have stopped it †
There are definitely flaws in this system, I just have more confidence in it than I do for the American system. I didn't know Ross Anderson was dead. He did some really good work.
† We know it wouldn't have always worked because there are Horizon casees where the CPS are the listed prosecutor. Jurors weren't the only people who gullibly accepted that the Computer is infallible, but at least the CPS were not employees of the executives who knew this was bullshit and have largely escaped any consequences.
I know that the CPS could seize and shutdown a politically sensitive case but as far as I know that has never happened. And I hope that if it did people would make a fuss.
Relatedly, after Peter Tatchell failed to arrest Robert Mugabe the government changed the law so that prosecutions for breaches of international law could only be brought by the government.
Anyway, I agree that I'd rather face a criminal charge here than in America.
I don't know what you mean by "politically sensitive"
The CPS does not track what happens to prosecutions it has taken control of. Conveniently they're just CPS cases once that happens, and so the question "What happened to them?" is magically a manual discernment and not amenable to FOIA.
We can ask, and so we have, how many they took control of. The answer is typically in the range of few dozen but not a hundred per year. Since these then disappear into their normal case system they could be prosecuted exactly like any other CPS case, they could be dismissed immediately as erroneous, or any of the usual dispositions for a criminal case, and the CPS won't tell us (if we're to believe them, it doesn't know)
We know a lot of private prosecutions are by the RSPCA, since they have funding to prosecute animal abuse and money is always tight. But presumably in the typical case the CPS is either never told or if it is explicitly told by either party it chooses to do nothing and allow the prosecution to happen. So those cases would not be on the list where the CPS took control.
I mean cases where the state might decline to prosecute the politically powerful.
You may not be able to find out what happens to taken-over cases in general, but are you aware of any case where the CPS took over a prosecution and the original prosecutor simply doesn't know what happened in the end?
If you have a specific case you can just (well, I can't easily but a lawyer will know how without having to go re-read documentation they didn't look at for years) get the court records for that case and see what happened to it. The CPS claims they can't answer a FOIA "what happened to these cases?" type query because once the CPS owns the case it's just another case, but if you had a particular case in mind that's not a FOIA situation you just look at the court records.
From the sound of the things you're thinking about what I'd expect is that the defendant tells the CPS, the CPS seize this case and then they have it dismissed. If you weren't looking for evidence it will be pretty easy in almost any case to decide you do not have sufficient evidence for reasonable prospect of conviction, but in such cases you can probably also make out a position that there is no public interest in such a prosecution - for example because it would be embarrassing.
Both the US and UK operate under common-law systems with substantial judicial precedent. In practice, there is very little difference between the two systems.
Don't forget (and not just in LA) that you can only exercise your right to remain silent not by remaining silent, but by saying those words, ideally in response to each individual question.
Otherwise the prosecutor can stand up in court and say you were "uncooperative" and resisted, even obstructed attempts to investigate the crime, and if your lawyer tries to frame this as you exercising your right, the judge will not permit this because you didn't utter the magical incantations.
The entire concept of identity is very outdated and the general public understanding of digital identity is not accurate. Scammers are one thing but there are other cases where the Gov't itself can direct actions on your accounts if they have a reason to be looking into you. You do not own your medical records, financial records, location data, bank accounts, or anything else.
In this case, it may not matter that she has the truth on her side. The prosecution already took it far enough to offer her a plea deal. All they technically have to prove is that some piece of a digital trail, like having the phone number in the past, is proof that she is guilty of the crime involved here. Her home mailing address, current phone, devices, lack of travel, no associated facebook accounts, none of it mattered to the point she was arrested, extradited and is now being offered a plea deal for something she didn't do.
It's made more complicated by the fact that a prosecution doesn't really care what is true or not. They are not about to devote resources to finding out if the case they are prosecuting is based on accurate evidence. They have to rely on the police report to do this. And good luck with an Arkansas cop understanding how the scamming world operates. He put down his donut long enough to run a search in LexisNexus to link a phone number. And that is enough for a felony conviction in our corrupt court system.
And this was with her being the target of a scammer! Imagine if the Gov't itself was after you and wanted to sort of coerce and frame you for a crime. Or even just use your accounts against you.
The whole system is corrupt and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Starting with the entire concept of IDENTITY.
Sad that Block Inc get to profit from frictionless signups, and outsource any costs of failings to innocent people in the form of jailtime.
Computer fraud, unlawful use of a communication device, and (identity) theft describe what Cash App helped facilitate rather than anything she did.
I wonder what happens if I start allowing people to send me personal information, auto-accept everything as the truth, and start sending their money around the world...
This is so backwards that it doesn't even compute in my brain.
This basically says I can act in bad faith to incriminate anyone if I have access to a somewhat "reputable" SaaS.
I hope some black hat group targets these prosecutors identities and create accounts for them so they experience that firsthand to understand how ridiculous this is.
From what I can tell, the best she can possibly hope for is to be set free after a few hundred thousand dollars in legal fees. I see this as a consequence of increasingly out of control automation.
>Smith later discovered why she had been arrested: a scammer had tricked someone into sending $1,000 to a Cash App account, one that was in her name but controlled by a criminal.
And that brings $50,000 bail and days spend in jail before trial? Should just be a civic matter at worst.
>It turned out that the account had been created using Smith's Social Security number and date of birth. But Smith, who describes herself as not tech-savvy, said she had never used Cash App. The situation sounds like one that should have been resolved quickly. But Smith says she is still being asked to prove her innocence in an ongoing criminal case. One stumbling block was that Cash App refused to hand over details of the account to Smith because she couldn't prove she was the owner. She eventually received the data through discovery in her case.
Surely some details about her are the same as in the account profile, and not just the name, else they wouldn't prosecute her for an app account that bears no relation to her. Do they prosecute people just for something happening on the same name and surname as them?
If the account had others details about here to fool people, like her photo or SSN or address, she should have got access to the account, without having to demand it via discovery.
> she should have got access to the account, without having to demand it via discovery.
Even if she can (which is probably the case), she wants to go through discovery so there is a paper trail of going through a process. If she does this by any other means she depends on them to have the records of that process to prove she didn't have access to the account at the time. By going through discovery there is a trail of when she transferred access to her name and so it is on them to prove she had access to the account before that date.
> If the account had others details about here to fool people, like her photo or SSN or address, she should have got access to the account, without having to demand it via discovery.
Did you read the quote you quoted? Your quote says the account was created with her social and date of birth.
Did you read what I wrote? Did I say it wasn't created with her SSN? I'm saying "if it was created with her SSN, then the service should have given her access.
We use the "if X" in my parts to mean "since X was the case, then....". And it seems it's valid in US English too:
Even if the speaker has just read a report explicitly stating that X did Y, using "if" is perfectly possible. The important distinction is that "if" does not necessarily indicate doubt about whether the Y occurred. In this context, it can have two interpretations:
Conditional justification: "If X did Y, then so and so is justified" The speaker is explaining what makes some reaction justifiable, without necessarily questioning the report.
Uncertainty about the facts: "Assuming X really did Y, then so and so was justified." Here, the speaker is reserving judgment about whether the report is accurate.
Both interpretations are available to a native English speaker.
Bullshit plea deals are offered in bullshit cases like this only so that the "officers" involved can save face and claim "yupp, conviction!! we're the good guys!" because there is no additional downside or risk to them.
It really would be great if judges could (and would) issue sanctions and/or personal fines against people who are so clearly operating in bad faith.
> Just hours after the $1,000 arrived, it was divided into smaller amounts and sent to a network of other accounts
Go after all these network of other accounts and cashapp must be held liable. They didn't do proper identity verification... And, these police seems incapable of finding real criminal. They are fool to assume people will use their own account to scam others.
Before you form a strong opinion on the matter, I recommend you take the time to investigate who the source of the claims is in this article and whether the counterparty has had sufficient opportunity to state their case.
I'm disgusted. How would one go about ensuring that their social couldn't be used to create an account with this much liability? Would freezing a credit line be enough?
Prosecutors have no interest in "justice." They are measured solely on conviction rates. If she's convicted, she will go through needless life-destroying suffering because of this. But at the end, it will be overturned after the prosecutors in question have been elected to Congress or a governorship. And then lawsuits will ensue. And that's why BS like this will never stop.
I'm just wondering where the EFF and the ACLU are at the moment. This seems like a perfect opportunity to point out the dangers in current cyber crime laws and do some genuine good in the world.
And with internet crimes like this the legal attack could come from anywhere. I trust that Arkansas does not have a competent digital crimes task force, as they are idiotic in almost everything else in the legal world.
Someone opened up a PayPal account in my name a few weeks ago using an old address. I canceled my PayPal account years ago because I was afraid of it being linked to my bank.
It took an hour to get past the AI who kept hanging up on me. I’m more concerned after reading the article.
I'm feeling paranoid now and wondering if the best defense is to proactively open accounts with Cash App, Venmo, whatever other stupid peer-to-peer wallet apps exist, just to lock down my identity and be in control of it. I'm not sure if locked credit and monitoring would work here because these services probably don't do credit checks or show up on reports anyway.
I felt the same way, and made a CashApp account, but I don't think it matters. It didnt say anything about the fraud account having her email address. It just had her name and they inputted her social. I don't think there's anything you can do but pray.
That is one defense for having an open system, but that only affects services who use these systems. The article doesn't mention if CashApp actually used her social to check credit, or just took the attackers' word by checking if the SS was valid and provided credit.
The other problem is that there isn't just one credit system, there are 3 major ones for general consumer credit, and other specialty ones (Innovis, etc; I had a list somewhere but can't seem to find it; AI might be a friend here).
Only SSN is not public information. They are not published, but the records are public if you go to the right place in person and ask the right questions. (sometimes you have a "need to know" before they will tell you, but it isn't hard to find one)
Even SSN is not private - you need to share it with enough people that it is safe to assume bad people have it.
Connecting an ID to a individual person is very hard. It is even harder when that person is not physically there.
I've heard someone mention using Chexsystems but I'm not sure if that's available to ordinary consumers or how you'd be able to just go and do that. Or if it would show something like Cashapp.
It actually depends on which credit bureau CashApp is contracted to use. If they use TransUnion, then you'd need a TransUnion account and freeze your credit report there.
Cash App's stock transfer records in the app vs their backend reports and bank transfer amounts don't reconcile and always in their favor. Their and their partners' terms make no provision for this. I have proof, reported to SEC CFPB NYS no enforcement.
I have proof Cash App is skimming stock trades. Their app and backend reports report different settlement amounts always in their favor, their app reports and transfer amounts don't reconcile. Nothing in their terms or partners' terms give them the right to do this. I reported to SEC CFPB NYS finance no action.
In Brazil you can register your cpf (brazilian social security number) on the "Registrato", a Brazilian Central Bank system, and from that point on no new bank/payments account can be created on your name. You have to go to "Registrato" first and remove your name from it. It's amazing that the US doesn't have it. In Brazil you also can put your cpf on a list that forbids it from being added as an owner/partner on any company. I keep my cpf on both lists and sleep peacefully at night.
Stuff like this feels like some kind of society-wide humiliation ritual
Occasionally the system just ruins someone's life even though they're innocent, and the rest of us have to watch it so we learn just how thin ice we're all on. This woman didn't do anything and she's still getting wrung through the system, the rest of you better watch out
Gotta feed a sheep to the wolves every now and then so the other sheep learn to behave :/
There's 330 million people here. You, being not from here, only find out about what's exceptional, not what's normal. This case made the news because of how bad it is. It this was common, it wouldn't have made the news.
You're glossing over the part where this approach brought their message into mainstream culture. If they took the money and dropped the message, sure. The history doesn't really support the narrative, though.
Let's not pretend this is an every day occurrence that happens to everyone. It's a one-off oddball situation. I'm not even sure we have all the details considering the sources.
You need to get off the internet immediately--especially reddit. Normal people wake up in the morning, put their clothes on, go to work, and come home. You're reading about people who are not the normal everyman and applying it to all persons (and all of the USA). Quit doing that.
How I would like this to go so wrong for Cash App and the Prosecution. 10's of millions in fines but we all know the system protects these Corporations and shitty prosecutors. In the end she will have lost years of her life, her savings, etc with no restitution.
Nah people routinely sue local governments and police and win hefty settlements when it's determined that those organizations negligently damaged them in this sort of way. There was a lady in New York a while back who was held on armed robbery charges for like 18 months and it ended up she was set up by her PI ex-boyfriend who was friends with the cops. She lost her business, her job and all that time with her daughter as well. She sued afterwards and won some mid-single-digit-millions sum that I would argue is low (because honestly while that's probably life changing for her, it's not punitive enough for the police department), but it's not nothing.
Some legislators - perhaps honest idealists, perhaps those being paid more by lawyers specializing in such lawsuits - do work at getting such laws passed.
1) No, and 2) Irrelevant. State laws are made by state legislators.
Considering the endless vistas of billboards advertising lawyers for personal injury lawsuits and such in my part of Michigan - I feel pretty sure that >50% of our legislators are enrolled in those lawyers' "gratitude programs".
What a complete and total non sequitur. Go ahead, name drop a folk hero from last decade who HN happens to love, even though his case has nothing in common with the one described in TFA. This is absolutely peak HN.
Go read up on literally any subject outside your narrow bubble of tech culture.
These are felony charges, are there no grand juries in AZ. The defense needs to absolutely unseal the grand jury testimony, there could have been nothing but lies told in that room. Not a single shred of evidence the defendant was ever in Arizona.
Fortunately, this stuff will never change because we're too busy fighting amongst ourselves how much foreign labor we should import to keep people too poor to fight these cases in the first place.
Consider the story a PSA, for folks who still believe that Trust and Justice are somehow part of the American Way. Maybe use it as a teaching tool with your kids, too.
Admitting to guilt, even when innocent, is not normal behavior among a normal population. As evidence, the topic of this thread, and probably you and me, and not some unknown elements in a story by NPR.
> Aside from the paltry number of trials in the federal system, states including Pennsylvania, Texas and New York have trial rates of less than 3%. In Santa Cruz County, Ariz., there were no trials from 2010 to 2012, the report said.
The numbers are damning. It's simply not possible that police & district attorneys are good enough at their jobs to identify the correct perpetrator with >97% accuracy. Or 100% accuracy in Santa Cruz County.
You are arrested for a crime you didn't commit. The prosecution charges you with a serious crime with punishment of years in prison. Your lawyer can't guarantee you'll be found not guilty and you'll be in jail for a least a year until the trial because you can't make bail. The DA then offers a plea bargain to a lessor crime with several months in prison.
Lots of innocent people would, and do, plead guilty to the lessor crime.
* authorities have offered Smith a plea deal including a $1,000 fine, $1,000 in restitution and three years' probation.*
This is the goal ... They know they are at fault but admitting they made a mistake is damaging to careers.
In a lot of cases a carrot is dangled in front of people ... You can wast a lot of time (and money) fighting for your innocent, and take the risk your still going to get convicted.
Or you can take the plea deal, and it absolves us from our mistakes. And you save money because its cheaper then paying all those lawyers and court costs. And your innocent anyway, so that probations has no effect on you.
I forgot the source but the amount of prosecutions that are plea down is staggering. A lot of actual innocent people take plea's because its cheaper, then the alternative. And there have been plenty of people innocently convicted (even on shaky evidence), so most people take plea deals and they can move on with their lives.
This results in a culture where investigations are annoying. Where pressure is ramped up again and again to break people into taking plea deals. The biggest issue is, if you actually refuse to take a plea deal, then all resources are put against you to get a actual conviction, even if they know your innocent. "Why did you not just take the plea deal". Well, time to punish you for not taking it. Because repeat after me again, careers are on the line and losing cases hurt those future (potential political) careers.
Its the same why prosecutors fight tooth and nail, even if clear evidence is shows that a person was innocently convicted and spend X years in jail. It not about justice, its about protecting those careers.
The proof of innocents is heavily put on the other party, and it really hits hard on people who do not have the financial means.
I was in a jury pool for a case where the DA was attempting to prosecute petty vandalism to pressure a young adult over a minor crime ($500 worth of graffiti) because they wanted cooperation on another larger crime.
It wasn't going anywhere. When I finally got called up to voir dir I explained that I thought the real crime was sequestering 300 people for a day over $500. I suggested we collect $2 from each person in the jury pool (far less than we paid for parking that day) and cover the alleged damages and not only be done for the day, but have achieved some real measure of justice.
Lets just say the judge didn't agree and I got let out of voir dir.
My experience has been the same. I was on a grand jury, so pre-indictment and no voir dire, and there were many BS cases like this. We returned "no true bill" on all of them, which made me really proud of my randomly-selected neighbors. Cops were trying to railroad so many people over subway fare evasion, upgrading stealing $2.50 from the MTA to felony drug charges. We didn't bite. I did remark that I would just give them the $2.50 rather than ruining some high school student's life. (Seriously, just take it out of my taxes. I'm happy to work to fund public transportation.)
MTA already has a half-price program for low-income people. I agree fare jumpers don't need jail but they need some punishment. Make them clean the station and pick up trash for an hour, right then and there (I'm just spitballing). Otherwise it's unfair to law-abiding people.
I think public transport should be free. That solves the whole problem because it makes no sense to dis-incentivize the use of public transport to begin with and the fares are disproportionally hard on the lowest earners.
Absolutely not. People don’t appreciate free things psychologically. When they don’t appreciate it they trash it: vandalism, littering will all become bigger problems.
To prevent this effect, you have to have a well educated population first. That’s actually an even more difficult problem to solve.
Limits. You put limits in place.
Don't give endless free fair, give n free fair per day.
This isn't a big problem for roads, sidewalks, or the library.
Roads aren’t really free: you need a car or at least a bike.
Sidewalks are free, but they are usually unpleasant or inaccessible. In places where that isn’t true, they absolutely get trashed by litter; some even spit on the sidewalk.
Libraries are seemingly free, but getting a library card often requires you to provide several forms of proof of address, including evidence of paying rent or property taxes. So they aren’t truly free.
spitting on the sidewalk causes literally no damage. Even peeing on it is minimal.
[dead]
[dead]
It's unfortunate, but one problem with free public transport absent other changes is that then it becomes de facto free shelter, which degrades the service for people using it as transport.
That wouldn't be an issue if we also provided shelter to the most distressed people in our society. As if we don't have the technology to build housing on the cheap. Our lack of communal will to help fellow people is a real shame.
Homelessness only partially overlaps with what British authorities euphemistically refer to as "street lifestyles". The people you see blacked out in the gutter or ranting wildly on a subway car are disproportionately likely to be homeless, but their behaviour is not the result of homelessness - many of them do in fact have a stable home and most of the rest would continue to behave in an antisocial manner even if they were adequately housed.
The problem of persistent disorderly conduct by a small minority of highly disturbed people is either an unfathomably complex psychiatric issue, or a fairly straightforward carceral issue.
Should it be illegal to pass out in a gutter? If so, why specifically?
you can't possibly know that, in the world we live in. Not conclusively - the amount of other factors at play and the ubiquity of those factors - crushing social stratification, pay-to-live capitalism, the overwhelming pressure on people to produce or die (meaning that learning to produce is on them to figure out, and quick, or else.) If you had an example of a society where these things were not at issue, you could more easily make a statement like "their conduct is an unfathomably complex psychiatric issue or otherwise they just need to be punished enough".
It's quite possible that these people would have turned out fine if they grew up provided a path to integrating into society that was less burdensome. It's possible you're right, too, but without controlling for confounding factors there's no way to know.
to offer free public transport to people, we now have to solve housing at a societal level. To solve housing, we have to fix zoning laws. to fix zoning laws, we have to fix NIMBY-ism which needs partisanship to be solved. To fix partisanship...
> to offer free public transport to people, we now have to solve housing at a societal level. To solve housing, we have to fix zoning laws. to fix zoning laws, we have to fix NIMBY-ism which needs partisanship to be solved. To fix partisanship...
Aren't half of these wrong?
NIMBY-ism isn't particularly partisan. Find a suburb and it's probably full of NIMBY zoning rules regardless of which party has the majority there. This is one of the things which isn't red vs. blue, it's "got mine" vs. the people who don't get a vote because they can't afford to live there because they don't get a vote.
You also don't have to "solve housing the societal level" to keep the homeless from using the subway as a bedroom. That's the better way to do that, but you can also do things like build homeless shelters that resemble (and therefore have the density of) college dorms in places where the "neighbors" are auto salvage yards, warehouses, prisons, abandoned buildings or the like and are correspondingly less likely to object to putting them there. And then anyone you catch being disruptive on the subway gets a free one-way ticket to the shelter.
They are wrong but also unrelated to the issue of free public transport and hence include trade offs which don’t directly affect public transport.
Effectively, to offer free public transport, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money in politics.
To promote solar power, you have reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
To promote anti-vaccine ideology, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
To promote a strictly equal society where every person is judged by their abilities and not ethnic history and skin color, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
There are vested interests in every debate and saying we should aim for wholesale societal change for every low hanging result is a recipe for inaction (or at least, very delayed action)
Shelter should be, but doesn't need to be housing. When people fear that public transportation becomes shelter they're not arguing houses will be built in train stations.
Having other places with a roof, some security and some public amenities should go a long way to avoid other services getting bogged down by homelessness.
homeless people are already trying to build that but the so-called "protectors of law and order" keep showing up with bulldozers for some reason, as if they actually want people to be sleeping on public transportation instead of in their own private tents. This is probably because they get paid proportionally to how many people they catch sleeping on public transportation.
Why shouldn't we have exactly the ambitions you're using as an argument against change? I support all of those proposals. The richest nation in history could do all of that easily if there was the will to do so.
If giving away free public services could be grifted to increase the bottom line of the ultra wealthy, we'd have a utopian society.
I absolutely despise the world we live in where the default answer to everything is effectively “no.”
I wish we could get to a point where we default to “yes” and find solutions rather than making it easier to say “no.”
It's worse than that even. It is 'things are bad, therefore we can't begin to improve'. Weirdly enough that never goes in the other direction. The day that people realize that people without a lot of money are also people things will start to improve. And this is rather more than less likely to happen because I suspect there will be a lot more people without a lot of money soon compared to today.
Another commenter already made the same observation. See reply there.
>it becomes de facto free shelter
So? Let it.
If people need shelter, it's a shame we are building a ballroom instead of shelter.
> it makes no sense to dis-incentivize the use of public transport to begin with
MTA serves NYC. People who can't even afford the subway are definitely not driving over there.
It's nice to have an opinion but free public transport causes many issues and isn't great policy, it actually means transport agencies have less money to invest and take out debt on as system use increases which is a very bad position financially. The same issues actually apply to roads as well and are a reason things like congestion taxes are a good idea.
So, explain why it works in 100+ cities all over the world?
Congestion taxes are completely different from ticket fees.
Could you give some example cities? I've never encountered a free metro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport
Fares typically make a negligible contribution to the overall costs of operating the system.
Public transport in the state of Queensland, Australia charges a flat fare of 50 cents. They only reason they charge anything at all is because they want the trip data for route planning purposes.
Free public transport solves many issues and is a great policy.
The notion that transit agencies need to be funded via fares is nonsense to begin with, but it looks even wackier when one looks at how roads are funded.
Free public transport takes away money that can be used to improve service for everyone. Someone on minimum wage would prefer a bus they can actually use to get to work rather than having to buy/maintain a car because the free bus only comes once an hour.
Have targeted low fares for the poor etc.
Of course it doesn't. The cost of public transport is a cost to society. It will be paid regardless of ticket fees. Hence the word 'public' in 'public transport'. The difference is that by making the users of public transport pay you give people a good reason not to use it when there are alternatives available. But those alternatives have a hard time competing with free.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport
It exists, and it works. And the best bit: all the money spent on the whole administration around tickets, making tickets, enforcing laws, gates and so on can be spent on improving the system.
> all the money spent
you mean all the money saved? The unspent money are only a factor in the year following the year when the non-spend started. After that, no one will remember that they used to spend to some big figure on all the things you listed and assume that the operating budget of the transport agency has always been the lower figure.
Go have a look what percentage of the operating costs are covered by fares in your city. I wouldn't be surprised if the costs relating to fare enforcement were more than the revenue from fares.
You aren't taking into account that transport agencies can raise a lot of funding based on yearly revenue so multiplying fares out in terms of the debt that can be serviced yearly can easily reach billions which can be used for capital investment.
I can't tell what you're saying; are you saying that "yearly revenue from fares is big", even when someone says "fares aren't the major revenue source, and sometimes doesn't even exceed the cost to implement"?
The problem with free public transport is that it turns into a de facto homeless shelter. And then it isn't safe to use anymore. You let people evade fares and then those people go onto stab people like Zarutska.
That's a different problem, and it requires a solution by itself.
> You let people evade fares and then those people go onto stab people like Zarutska.
That has nothing to do with it. The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee. But it is interesting that you should right away jump from the one to the other, effectively using the poor dead girl for your agenda. Crime and homelessness are complex problems some parts of which are easy to solve and some of which are much harder.
You can't simply jump from 'someone got murdered on public transport' to 'public transport can't be free'.
https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2026/news20260908
I ride BART. I'm two blocks from a busy transfer station. It's great for going to a show and getting home without driving (drunk).
Arguing that modern fare gates lowered crime is a pretty terrible response to the comment to which you responded. It shows a real lack of articulation ("crime bad, crime down here, therefore I don't need to refute what you said").
The original poster said:
> The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee.
I don't see how lower crime on BART due to fewer people hopping the turnstiles refutes that at all. (Huh, I just learned turnstiles is spelled with an I and not a Y. At least your comment led to me learning something.) It just seems defeatist, which is what the people looting this country want.
You can cut crime all the way down to zero by shutting down all transport. You could decrease it to a very low minimum by setting a $100 / trip fare. But then it wouldn't be public transport anymore.
> The problem with free public transport is that it turns into a de facto homeless shelter.
Perhaps there's something broken about a society that has a significant homelessness issue. The free public transport isn't the problem, it's likely that society has a surplus of citizens that prevent economic progress and/or the deployment of solutions known to be effective against homelessness.
> The problem with free public transport is that it turns into a de facto homeless shelter.
I don't think $2.50 is what's preventing this from happening today.
Or make the transportation free, then you don't have to worry about policing infractions and instead spend the low effort policing money on cleaning, security, and improvement.
There's an argument that making people pay a fare improves cleanliness and security to an extent. I don't know if there are studies about it. But it's a persuasive argument.
At that point just make separate no fee, low fee, and high fee train cars with varying levels of poor people and/or cleanliness.
The class system… such a classic!
You kid, and it would be kinda horrible in certain ways, but I genuinely think it would increase ridership significantly.
Let's face it, classism right now manifests as:
* poor folk use terrible public transit
* med income folk drive cars
* high income/wealth folk get driven around by robots or staff
At least with the classist train you cut down on emissions and public funds spent fixing roads. And I'd argue it's a bit less unequal than the status quo in 95% of the US.
Do you not take flights to travel between cities because they are classist?
Ah yes, a caste system on tracks. That will surely work
Surely you're aware airplanes and cruise ships have different ticket classes and no one considers it a caste system.
Your comment might be deeply offensive to people who have suffered in actual caste systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer
> But it's a persuasive argument.
Persuasive to what type of people?
Even to a lefty liberal like me. But I'm open to data that, actually, it'll turn out fine.
What doesn't work is laws that aren't enforced. Either enforce them or repeal them.
Ah, yes, the cost of the price is rarely considered. Think of the money society would save just in not having to pay up for the payment system!
This is a great way to destroy public transit!
The plan is to let anyone on the subway, with no fares. It turns out that the violent, unstable people who make public spaces unwelcoming are disproportionately represented among those who cannot pay $2.50 for a fare. So they scare off regular transit riders who mode shift to something else. It's vastly more expensive and difficult to react to violence on the subway than to keep violent people out with a small fare, so it's financially and logistically impossible to actually keep it safe. Then your transit ridership tanks and people who hate funding transit can declare the whole thing a giant waste of money and any new funding dies politically because now there's no public ridership constituency left.
Nobody cares about the revenue gained from $2.50 fares. What matters is the tiny amount of resistance that offers to the small number of people who are largely responsible for making public transit unwelcoming.
> It's vastly more expensive and difficult to react to violence on the subway than to keep violent people out with a small fare
Are you making a case that a violent person, who ignores the stringent laws of society against violence, will diligently follow the laws of society requiring $2.50 prior to riding public transport?
LOL
Your argument is like saying I won't put a basic privacy lock on my gym locker because, you know, a creep wanting to sift through my things is going to do it anyway.
There is a cost benefit analysis that even serial offenders go through to pick a victim. If a transit system insists on fares, it is likely they are watching out for fare dodgers which increases the risk of getting caught even before the offender gets a chance to offend.
> There is a cost benefit analysis that even serial offenders go through to pick a victim
Are you making the case that a society unable to protect its denizens from violent offenders in broader society will be able to protect its denizens on public transport from those same violent offenders through the application of a $2.50 fare?
Hmm.
I’m saying that knowing that you’re being (potentially) being watched for fare evasion has a deterrent effect on wanting to commit a crime.
How many times have you heard of road rage incidents which deescalate as soon as one party realises that they are being recorded by a dashcam? People’s behavior under surveillance is different from their private behavior.
There is too much communism in this sentence.
[flagged]
Or fund it fully through taxes, like roads, schools, etc...
A lot of roads have tolls. Don’t forget more specific taxes like gas taxes or vehicle registration and sales taxes.
Or you know run it as a public service like the roads. We are able to do that without enslaving road maintenance employees.
The cop made me call my mom on a pay phone and 40 years later I still have to hear about it. Cruel and unusual.
One made me call my Dad to spite my psycho mother who dragged me tothe Station thinking the cop was gonna scare me straight ratherthen the outcome of him seeing her insanity and pleading with me to stay in contact with the only responsible adult in the room who wouldnt screw me over for the rest of my natura life
It was all very vindicating
> Make them clean the station and pick up trash...
This should just be an established way to pay your fare.
"it's unfair to law-abiding people" is a terrible reason to force more people to abide the law if you think the law is unfair
Then charge them cleanly and don't artificially try to inflate charges. It is the duty of any jury to let someone off when they feel its malicious prosecution.
Police, Prosecutors, and Judges all openly use their discretion. Each of them could have quashed the charge before it got to a jury. The jury is the last line of discretion. Police, prosecutors, and judges love to call it "jury nullification" but its the same power that police, prosecutors, and judges use multiple times a day.
The only crime I see is that police arrested an innocent person on false evidence, prosecutors charged someone based on false evidence, and a judge is actually allowing this case to proceed all based on evidence that everyone knows is false.
There should be some teeth, but also we should be prepared for a small amount of "unfairness" baked into the system. If there are no controls, everyone will cheat. But if there's too many obstacles (turnstiles, checkpoints, conductors, cameras, etc) then people won't want to ride.
> If there are no controls, everyone will cheat.
That just isn't true. Not even remotely.
> Seriously, just take it out of my taxes. I'm happy to work to fund public transportation.
Why don’t you just write a check to your transit authority every year then?
In the off chance this is a genuine question, this thought experiment is always resolved with "reasonable payments are only effective if many people contribute, and that is probably okay".
Consider the extremes: - No one does anything. The cause fails. No one goes broke. Many people are modestly inconvenienced. - One average citizen donates everything to a worthy cause. No one else donates. The cause fails and the donor is broke. Many people are modestly inconvenienced. - Everyone donates a small fee to a worthy cause. The cause achieves its aim. Some people do not benefit, and are modestly inconvenienced.
The choice, when given these two extremes, is clearly to decide by some consensus whether the interests of many (who would otherwise be modestly inconvenienced) outweigh the interests of the few (who would be modestly financially inconvenienced).
But it assumes the cause is truly worthy, the money is handled faithfully, and the survey method is fair and accurate.
That’s a great idea, just get people to voluntarily sign up to pay for things like that for the criminals. Like you said, take the $2.50 one way several times a day, every day for one person, times however many people do that out of your income since you want to pay for it.
I am no fan of this rotten and illegitimate government or the fake and imitation justice system, but what do you think happens if every thug can just jump fare and get away with it, because if you had $1000 per month taken out of your paycheck every month, in sure you’d be singing a different tune.
Or we can all just agree that maybe basic transit in a city should be subsidized, maybe say... To the same degree that road construction is?
At which point no one would need to pay a fare, and we'd all still save money trying to prosecute broke teenagers trying to move around a city?
Public transit is subsidized in a lot of the world. Subsidized is good. Free though.. free is a problem. A good or service that someone doesn't have to pay for becomes valueless to them, despite it still costing someone (sponsor, owner)/something (corp, gov).
Examples:
A free Christmas party, where the cost of the convention center/catered dinner/wine on the table/entertainment was about $110/pp. Those costs were all paid in advance (you might be able to exceed catering, wine is probably fine but at a different rate.. but otherwise you're stuck with the bill/contract), but when tickets were free the no-show rate ("didn't cost me anything") was about 30%. We switched to $20/ticket, and yes there were grumbles about the company being cheap, but the no-shows fell to around 8%.
There's free sections of transit in our city (not the whole system). Most of the disruption and police call-outs happen in this section.. open drug use, screaming at/threatening other passengers or making them feel unsafe, making a home, thefts & pickpockets (does a thief buy a ticket? Perhaps if they spend 6 hours a day "working" and don't need the hassle of being checked for a ticket), even violent crime (stabbings, beatings, one gun situation). An unfortunate side effect of that is we have one of the worst riderships in part because people don't feel safe on transit, and when discussions of subsidies/improvement/expansion come up ridership is basically the only KPI. ("Oh only 12% of the city uses it, let's not further invest").
Transit is very heavily subsidized by taxes. In the US, the least money losing system is BART which covers 70%+ of it's operating (but not capital) expenses through fares.
The point is it should be free. Public roads are free.
Sort of? The people using them (driving) pay significant gas taxes, plus parking permits, and other things.
Do you think that engineering, asphalt, machinery, and labor are bankrolled by charitable goodwill? Public roads are absolutely not free; you simply haven't thought hard enough about how the public indirectly pays for it.
> Transit is very heavily subsidized by taxes.
So are roads.
Nope. In my state 75-95% (depends on year) of _all_ road-related expenses (including capital projects!) is funded by user fees: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-infrastructur...
In comparison, transit is about 99% subsidized (when capital expenses are included) and about 90% subsidized just for the operational budget.
By Republican logic, public libraries "lose money". So do a lot of public services.
But it's not about some shitty private equitymoney extraction. And it's not lost money.
Public transit is already substandard to driving, and should be free. And it'd be a way to reduce congestion too. But no, it "loses money".
Can you name a country where public transit is free?
I think a better goal would be to not have to travel across the city for basic needs and services. Would reduce congestion even more.
The buses running along the I-91 corridor in VT/NH USA centered around White River Junction VT and Hanover/Lebanon NH have been free to ride since around Covid. And those are two transit agencies. Broadly: one serves north of Hanover, the other south.
Not a country, but it's free in Belgrade, Serbia for last two years.
Due to weird goverbnment statistics and unaccounted expats officially it's 1.1M to 1.6M of people, but actually there likely well over 2M people living there.
Public transport is pretty good there and it cost their budget $300M-$400M a year.
I always try to be as bland as possible in voir dir so I can get in and maybe nullify.
I wouldn’t want to live in a place where crimes below $1,000 go unpunished.
Perhaps there are alternatives other than "small crimes go unpunished" and "people make false admissions of guilt, pressured by the ruinous cost of the justice system, 300 jurors needed for a single trial"
If we've got a Lamborghini justice system, delivering amazing performance to people with a spare $250k and doing nothing for anyone else - some would say that's not the right price/performance trade off.
False dichotomy?
Ignoring smaller crimes just because they're under $1,000 isn't the answer. things can quickly spiral. How many times do you wake up to your car scratched window broken or whatever and would be ok ?
> False dichotomy?
Yes, I'm trying to say it's a false dichotomy. There are plenty of other ways you could organise a justice system, many of which would lead to more just results.
For example - a fixed price system. 8 hours wages from the two parties to the dispute buys 30 minutes with one judge and two lawyers. More than enough time to deal with a minor matter like a scratched car. Or if you prefer a continental-style inquisitorial system, you can lose the lawyers and have 90 minutes with a judge. The fees mean judges and lawyers take home 5x the average salary.
If you pay close attention, many of the replies are concerned more about exacting punishment than moving toward justice.
How often do you get that sort of crime attended to and resolved satisfactorily?
I don't like living in a place where wage theft dwarves all other thefts combined, but we put ridiculous resources towards petty crime.
By the way, the stat you mention counts consensual arrangements as wage theft, probably the large majority of it (e.g. hiring illegal immigrants for under the minimum wage). Calling that "theft" is a rhetorical move, much like libertarians calling taxation "theft": it borrows the moral weight of stealing for something that's legally and morally quite different. If the stat had been calculated from asking workers, "does your employer owe you money that they refuse to pay?", I suspect the number would drop dramatically.
You don't think large corporations are stealing from their workers?
I'm saying that much of what's called "wage theft" isn't theft in any normal sense of the word. It's the equivalent of calling employees who take long bathroom breaks or slack off on the clock "wage thieves." Do employees slack off on the job? Yes. Do corporations hire contractors when labor regulations forbids them to? Yes. Is either one comparable to theft? No.
Almost never. The larger the corporation the more strictly the rules are followed. I have worked for fintech startups and have some horrifying stories that would absolutely never fly at a larger company.
Calling the arrangements consensual is also a rhetorical move.
Wage theft is a real crime and you don't get to rename it because your feelings are somehow hurt. Calling taxation "theft" is just vapid right wing mccarythism. Rich people paid mccarthy money to lie over and over again because at the time it was illegal to broadcast those lies on tv or radio. But a senator was immune and could lie all they wanted.
You are never going to be right about anything if you actually think what you posted makes any sense.
Sure, I was just pointing out why the stat is misleading. People unfamiliar with the study or the term would assume it refers to employers outright withholding agreed-upon pay.
If you only counted cases that meet the legal definition of the crime of "wage theft," the figure would much lower.
Gotta keep the poors in line.
To be clear, you're claiming that wrongdoing by one party justifies wrongdoing by another, and your enabling of the latter because you're ideologically aligned with it?
I'd also be interested to know what the crime they were trying to get a lead on was. If it's another case of minor tagging then I can empathize more with the concerns about the prosecution, but if it's something more dire then frankly using judicial leverage strikes me as entirely appropriate.
Im saying they are wasting everybodies time and money and by spending large resources on petty crime like graffiti instead of spending that time and money on prosecuting systemic crime and theft by employers that occurs far more frequently.
If someone gets stabbed outside my house every day with no charges filed, yeah im going to say spending resources prosecuting a fist fight at a bar is a waste of resources.
But GP made it clear that the graffiti charge wasn't the target, it was intended to pressure the person involved into turning on a different criminal associate. Ignoring that reality in favor of focusing exclusively on the charge itself seems unhelpful to me.
"25 to life for jaywalking, but you'll walk free if you snitch" sounds like extortion to me.
If he's an accomplice, them charge him with that, and turn it into a classical prisoner's dilemma. Don't just make up bullshit charges, that's abuse of the justice system.
Except they're not trumping up penalties, it's just "Pay the fine for Jaywalking or snitch."
In this case the person did a little more than Jaywalking so they're on the hook for more. It's also possible to have information on a criminal act or conspiracy without being an accomplice.
I appreciate the extremely... principled morality of some here, but the law isn't an ethical framework, it's a practical one informed by ethical principles. It's also not a computer program, people are involved who make decisions based on a number of factors ranging from professional and selfless, to careerist and selfish. That's life.
A really easy way to avoid all of this is to stay out of the system, it's not as though he's in for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving child.
Extortion for testimony doesn't tend to produce reliable testimony.
Perjuring yourself into a felony to avoid a $500 fine on a misdemeanor sure would be a choice, I'm not convinced it's one frequently made.
“To be clear, you’re saying something that’s impossible to infer from what you wrote because I made it up?” lmao
Im sure you’re familiar with the problem that lower thresholds creates a tool for selective application.
I don't want to live in a place where a fine of < $1000 causes 100 people to have to take a day off of work only paying them $30 for their time.
and still. limited resources means some crimes will go unpunished.
let's start with the ones above $1,000 first, hm?
The interesting thing about thresholds is that antisocial behavior models itself to the threshold, whether by conscious awareness or by an evolutionary pattern.
https://sfist.com/2026/05/14/police-arrest-man-accused-of-re...structuring is illegal for tax evasion too!
obviously if someone is a repeat offender then as they cross the threshold, chop-chop, straight to jail, charge them with the whole batch of crimes together.
it doesn't mean keep no records of crimes and don't respond at all.
Criminals have some brains. What do you think they'll do when they figure out that crimes under $1k go unpunished?
Look what happened with shoplifters.
Doesn’t that prove actually that the act of theft is not some calculated needs based negotiation in need of “the right threshold” to deter crime?
Like fare hopping, first half of my life i thought how unfair that i have to drone away as a tool of society and pay like a shmuck meanwhile these freeloaders have happily escaped the matrix.
second half of life i realized being unwilling or unable to pay $2.50 for public transist is an issue between that person and their life situation. If that’s what they need, I support the subsidy.
safe transit is important exactly for the people who barely have a few dollars for transit. subsidized tickets are the way to go. by enabling and allowing fare evasion for those who need it unfortunately allows those to get in who don't need to.
https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2026/news20260908
Good framing. its a better way to convey that crime isn’t simply solved by punishing the “bad” people.
yeah we have extremely recent examples of this philosophy playing out and people are here defending it. It's bonkers!
> let's start with the ones above $1,000 first, hm?
The criminals start with the ones below $1,000 and then progress above. If you start punishing it earlier, you won't have to deal with as many above $1,000 crimes in the first place.
If you can’t pay for your next meal $20 might as well be $2 thousand or $20 thousand. Thats why overdraft fees are exploitative.
A person doesn’t steal a sandwich from 7-11, not get caught, then suddenly realize they can drain unsuspecting grandmas’ bank accounts by implementing a long con through masquerading as a long lost nephew through Facebook.
Which <1000 crime did maddof start with?
Your claim makes for a good sound bite but its just not how it works. Subway evasion isn’t a gateway crime.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard that some big box stores like Target and Walmart allow shoplifters to get away with petty crime but save all evidence of these crimes to one day prosecute once the total shoplifted goes above the threshold of petty crime. Sometimes, these people would be goaded into this lifestyle by people who have agreements with Loss Prevention teams. Everyone wins except the shoplifter.
How is one earning money through graffiti damage
Ah yes, the graffiti artist to bank robber pipeline.. well done.
So mug a rich person, deal with it. Mug a normal person and ignore it.
Well that would be assault (at least, battery probably too), so wouldn’t fall under the hypothetical $1000 threshold.
[dead]
I wouldn’t want to live in a place where innocent people are forced under threat of financial destruction to make false confessions for crimes they didn’t commit, but here we are.
Having society (a group of unrelated jurors) to pay for the crimes of an individual (however minor you perceive them to be) is not justice. That's why you got kicked out.
But they were already paying for the crimes of an individual, in the form of time wasted, and parking fees. Their suggestion was about minimising it.
If you go further down this line of argumentation you will end up at what will be cheaper capital punishment or prison for life.
Is that not reasonable? The cost on society is a measure of justice.
Brilliant! I'd get the pay per view just to see the judge's face when you made this proposal. Also you have balls of steel.
$500 was the damages that they were caught doing. Not the total damages they caused. If every "empathetic" person volunteers to pay $2 every time someone wants graffiti on their property removed, regardless of how often graffiti keeps reappearing, then maybe the DA wouldn't feel a need to prosecute.
Accused of causing.
What? after reading your first sentence many times it’s basically saying you’re of the mind that a criminal very likely has way more crimes that we’ve just haven’t seen so they should be prosecuted heavily for the one we did see just to make sure we get our prosecution-bang for the buck?
Not sure where you got that idea. No where did I express interest in punishing the perpetrator for anything more than what they were caught. My point is that their "solution" to justice does not solve vandalism the way that it they think it does.
what do you mean when you say the $500 is for what they were caught doing not the total damage caused?
Do you mean like $500 may be the estimate of repair but living in a heavily graffitied neighborhood lowers property values? so net damage is way more?
Do you seriously believe that this person only tagged once in their life and got caught the first time? Even they just happened to be very unlucky, do you think they would never do it again? I'm not talking about how the law should treat them. They should still receive a punishment fit for a $500 crime. The person responded claimed this was a waste of everyone's time and money, but that's missing the point. If the vandal has absolute no consequences they have no incentive to stop.
If the punishment is equal to the value of the crime then as long as the rate at which you are caught is less than 100% crime is a profitable option.
Hot take - the criminal should pay the jury if they're clearly guilty and wasting everyone's time. And the judge. And if they resisted arrest, the cost of the extra police work.
That is literally how it works in many places in the USA. They have to pay for the prison stay too.
Jury duty is the single dumbest thing I have ever done in my adult life. Nobody wants to be there, and half the jurors were falling asleep. When we got to the deliberation room, everyone wanted to GTFO as quickly as possible and we just went by our feels. In the end, everyone loses. Millions of dollars wasted... on perception of justice. What a freaking joke.
[dead]
Vandalism is a crime against the social order.
Kinda depends what you vandalized
Carmen Ortiz, a prosecutor, was accused of driving reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz to his end with her plea-bargain tactics per this article [1][2]
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/01/17/aaron-swa... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20260227061241/https://www.forbe...
It's similar to the Iowa courthouse break-in by hired pentesters. They had a contract for the work and very small people in the place where it occurred wouldn't let go. This kind of behavior is shameful and should result in jail time for bad-faith prosecutions.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/how-a...
Podcast eps about it (with the testers):
https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/59/
https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/179/
Plea bargains used to be considered unethical by courts and the Bar in America pre-Civil War.
We have the Reconstructionist South to thank for normalizing turning judges into form stamping Vogons and allowing prosecutors to routinely use a form of blackmail as a normal course of prosecution.
>This is the goal ... They know they are at fault but admitting they made a mistake is damaging to careers.
Is this actually true? The way the techspot article was laid out certainly implies that prosecutors knew about all the contradicting evidence, but they offered a plea deal. However, if you read the article carefully it doesn't mention any interaction with the prosecutors or that the contradicting evidence was presented to them.
where would the plea deal come from if there was no interaction with the prosecutor's office?
They could have sent her a letter? More importantly it's unclear what the timeline of the events were. All the contradictions could have been discovered after the plea deal was offered.
I want to be very clear here because the implications are extremely funny: Do you not consider sending a letter to be an interaction??
>Is this actually true?
Yes.
It's not that hard to imagine that the legal system is set up to protect the comfort and careers of the people who have to be in court every day, and not necessarily the 99% of people who are in there for a handful of days - total, across a lifetime - because they had a bad day or two, or were unlucky, or need help that society is as-yet unequipped to give them. It does not surprise me that the letter and spirit of the law have a tough time surviving the practical realities of being administered, day-in-and-day-out, by fallible and self-interested human beings.
That is the theme. A jury trial is inherently risky. While conceptually a good idea, you are betting the outcome (and your future) on a bunch of folks without any legal training - and who did not manage to get out of jury duty.
And so the prosecution heaps on threats of years and years of prison time, or "take this little plea bargain". They still get their "conviction."
Prosecutors "protecting those careers" is 100% true
Source: I work with a top defense lawyer in Chicago
Absolutely. I actually went to trial many years ago because a DA wouldn't back down, he thought I'd bend. I didn't. We literally had video footage of the culprit, it clearly wasn't me and clearly WAS someone else. The DA waited until the day before we were to pick a jury to drop the charges, just a few days before trial. After, the DA even said to me, "I'm a dangerous man to make an enemy of." I think I was 20, so obviously I was cocky and snapped back "So am I," and stormed off. I not live a thousand miles away from that crappy little town.
I would be interested to know from him why he, personally, felt that you defending your innocence made you his enemy.
Because the DA has a win/loss ratio to maintain. If it drops too low, how is he ever going to run for governor? It's all about power using it to protect their career.
Being a DA should disqualify you from ever working in politics, especially democratic politics! Looking at your Harris! Liberals know that you forced a lot of people to stay locked up after they should have been freed because she fought a federal order as DA. Fuck whatever her fake liberal accolades were.
Seriously. And what kind of moron did the D.A. he think was that he would take a criminal conviction on his record by pleading guilty, when he had video evidence of his innocence!! Just to avoid embarrassing the D.A., a stranger to him?
When I was 19 and told the DA I'd be fighting my case and proving my innocence, I watched a vein pop out of his head. He got the better of me though, his dad was the mayor and the judge was in his pocket and they facilitated an absolutely mockery of a trial despite zero evidence, and my public defender was in on the racket and refused to allow me an appeal, and the jail refused to give me new counsel.
This same DA has a reputation for assaulting prostitutes and just got sworn in as the parish judge. I guess playing fair would have hurt his career because my understanding is to be a judge out there you have to demonstrate crookedness.
Louisiana? Not surprised.
Especially after reading this earlier in the week
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/...
I was arrested as a minor because someone who was giving me a ride was found with 0.156 grams of cannabis residue in his booksack which was not accessible to me at any point. The other two defendants had parents and accepted pretrial. I was homeless with no parental support or money for pretrial and had to fight it. The driver went on stand and said it was his and that I never had access to it. Half a dozen cops testified wildly different stories.
But, my right to a jury trial was illegally taken from me and the judge simply said, "I think you're lying," without a shred of proof and gave me the maximum allowed 6 month jailtime and maximum fines for a misdemeanor charge given to me as a minor with no prior record. I immediately told my attorney I wanted to appeal due to a mistrial and her failure to make a valid motion to quash, and she looked at me, pointed at the judge, and furiously scolded me, saying, "Absolutely not. That is my boss and he will make my life hell if I allow you to appeal."
The other parish public defender, which they'd pulled from my case due to his desire to actually help me, was so upset that he went to the judge's quarters, screamed at him and then came to my cell to apologize profusely about me getting illegally railroaded. He was never able to fix my case.
His brother... was the DA. Now he is running to replace him as DA since his brother got sworn in as a judge. I'm going to reach out to him and try to get it removed from the system now.
Also, when I got arrested, the DA's dad, the town mayor, personally visited the home of the folks who were letting me stay in their garage so I could finish high school and tried to convince them to put me out on the street so that I would fail my classes and end back up in jail. The fucking mayor.
So many levels of fucked up to that case. Not to mention that the officer who arrested me is a known meth producer, distributor and user. I have personally witnessed her bring a smurf to the pharmacy to buy sudafed IN HER POLICE UNIT so that she could go cook meth while on duty.
And while in court for my own case for 0.156 grams of a material that was never found on my person or within reach of me, I watched a man who was friends with the judge get sentenced to a grand total of 20 days of community service after being found with two ounces of pot in his pockets and a bottle of whiskey while illegally hunting on someone else's land out of season without permits, operating a firearm while basically blackout drunk. It is literally who you know.
How many years ago was this. I think I’d pay money to see them in deep shit.
Can the DA's past history be used as evidence in future cases to show they're not credible?
Courtroom trials aren't supposed to be the DA's word against the defending lawyers. They are supposed to be about evidence presented by them.
Should reply "and you have made an enemy today."
I'd like to see a three way verdict: guilty/not guilty/innocent.
An innocent verdict would mean the defendant had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they did not do the act and would put the state on the hook for all costs. A jury that hung between not guilty and innocent would be considered to be not guilty, no retrial. Reality works better when misdeeds carry costs for those who commit them.
People mentioned it in the article, it used to be "innocent until proven guilty". No need for a third category.
You're presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
They used to have this in Scorland - Guilty, Not Guilty and Not Proven, with the last two legally having the same affect (ie being aquitted) but I believe Not Proven was abolished at the start of this year.
I believe the problem was that in practice it became He Totally Did It But The Evidence Sucks So He Gets To Walk Free, and was increasingly interpreted as such. In the public's eye, everything besides a Not Guilty meant you did it.
Or if the jury acquits, they are asked whether it was reasonable for the state to prosecute the case for each of the charges. If ≥50% say no on any charge, criminal charges are automatically brought against the prosecuting attorney and judge for malicious prosecution. Conviction carries mandatory disbarment plus prison time.
"Your honor, I was innocent of that prior crime and it shouldn't be used to enhance the sentencing of this current case, nor to influence the jury's perception."
"I'm sorry, it says you weren't found guilty; it doesn't say you were innocent."
Now extrapolate this to your friends or potential employers.
"Sure, LorenPechtel wasn't proven guilty of murdering 500 orphans as accused, but he never fully proved his innocence with a detailed and corroborated minute-by-minute log of his activities for the past 5 years. So maybe he did it!"
It's innocent until proven guilty. Not guilty until proven innocent. A third category would be abused to high heaven, and the courts already engage in far too much abuse.
Except for plea bargains, where it is often "innocent until bullied into accepting a plea deal as the better option - even when you didn't do it". No need to prove anything there.
I am currently in the court system defending my innocence regarding a recent incident which I can't currently discuss, and the officer who charged me was literally bragging about how most of the charges would get "pled down"; he was openly and deliberately frontloading me with bogus extra charges hoping some would stick if I did a plea deal for the rest. He told me that if I talked back to him, he'd give me an assaulting an officer charge just because he could get away with it. The corruption is baked into the system from top to bottom.
There are sort of other options like an Alford plea where, my understanding is, the prosecution knows you didn’t do it, you plead guilty anyway and they tell you to just fuck off.
I like this!
so then if you're not guilty, so not actually innocent, you're like... kinda guilty, right? you could still end up on the no-fly list, or the sex offenders list, or what have you.
Serious question.. when you do get picked up for something like that and you invoke your rights for silence. How do you get council? Do you already have a number, do you already have a relationship with a defense attorney? How do you navigate that?
This is partially fixed by making The People of the State of __________ pay for the lawyer of the defendant's choosing. It imposes real costs to the state in these cases.
There's an argument that the cost of prosecution is one reason for the proliferation of offenses and increase in sentence lengths.
Part of that is the de facto extension of a right to jury trials for misdemeanor offenses in almost every American jurisdiction. If the defendant can force a jury trial for a misdemeanor, which is in fact quite costly for prosecutors, then the response is to raise the stakes with felony charges. Legislatures are aware of this dynamic and oblige prosecutors with more offenses and more punitive maximum penalties.
Countries like the UK and France don't have jury trials for minor offenses. (They're not as common for major offenses, either, but that's a different matter.) Sentences tend to be much shorter and it's a major reason their incarceration rate is so much lower.
I'm not against jury trials. For one thing it'd be better if juries were more local. 100+ years ago in major US cities it was more common for trials to take place within or closer to each neighborhood. Juries were often composed of people from the neighborhood. The consolidation of courts and trials in mega courthouses broke this community link; people from outside a neighborhood are systematically more harsh than they would be if judging their actual neighbors. Not because of favoritism, but because it's easier for them to appreciate the repercussions of an overly punitive system (broken families, destroyed career prospects, etc).
If you want community involvement in even minor crimes, misdemeanor jury trials can still be streamlined. You could do something similar to some European countries where a few lay judges sit alongside the professional judge, or something that used to be more common in the US where a single jury hears multiple cases each day (still a thing for indictments). But such trials would still have to dispense with alot of the procedural rigor to keep things moving along at a rapid clip.
> If the defendant can force a jury trial for a misdemeanor, which is in fact quite costly for prosecutors, then the response is to raise the stakes with felony charges.
I'm not quite understanding this. What is there to be gained by raising the stakes? Doesn't it make defendants even more determined to seek justice?
Justice is unavoidably somewhat a "roll the dice" situation.
Suppose the threat is 10 years in Jail. You reckon there's a 1-in-a-million chance they can convict you since you're innocent and they have no evidence. The plea offer is $100 fine. That's a good deal, not taking it on principle is a stance I admire but it does not make good logical sense.
What the US needs is a strong incentive for prosecutors not to take cases they expect to lose. That wouldn't really fit with the rest of the US "justice" system though.
The sad thing is that speed in apprehension and prosecution has been shown to be the most important element by far for deterrence. Marginal deterrence effects of harsher sentencing for most crimes is basically nil at this point. The complexity of plea deals and the incentive they create for defense attorneys to drag things out breaks the perceived cause+effect dynamic, at least for typical criminals. The system just becomes this juggernaut where both guilty and innocent people alike feel it's utterly capricious.
At least until the recent tough-on-crime regression almost everybody agreed the system is too harsh. Even conservatives were on board with lighter sentencing. But unsurprisingly that broad public support didn't persist for long because the structural incentives of the system push it toward greater dysfunction. Without structural changes lighter sentencing alone just makes it more profitable for criminals to roll the dice. The complexity of the system evolved with the harsher sentencing, but can't change back as easily as sentencing policies, so we fall back to the old equilibrium that slowly gets worse along every dimension--fairness, cost, deterrence, etc.
IMO low level offenses like shoplifting would be better served by a quick cheap ass kicking on the spot by the police with no charges filed. You get the deterrent effect without the massive waste of resources.
Before the advent of the modern carceral approach that's not unlike what we had. You got flogged 3 times or stood in the stocks for a day. Though at least there was process--the sentence was imposed by a judge, not a cop. The benefit there was you weren't disappeared for days or months on end, completely destroying your life.
[dead]
> Countries like the UK and France don't have jury trials for minor offenses.
If it leaves you with a criminal conviction, I don't consider it to be "minor".
If the state wants to label me as a criminal, I should get a jury trial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_defender_(United_States...
Of course, "of the defendant's choosing" causes all sorts of moral hazard.
The defendant's choosing is so he doesn't get stuck with a [relatively] low paid and overworked public defender. It's so he has the same opportunity to hire the high powered winners on the state's dime and the state has to pay full price that attorney demands. If costs and taxes get too high, people should start voting for more selective prosecution candidates.
The state intends to take [part of] his life away, the state needs to pay for the process.
Easy fix make prosecutors become defense lawyers every second case. Outcomes of both affect careers.
Unfortunately chief public prosecutor is an elected political position.
Chief public defender isn't, and in fact that position doesn't even exist.
So success in defending will never affect political careers.
Did you not consider that they were proposing "change"?
There's probably arguments against the change, I dunno, I haven't thought about it. "You can't change things" isn't one of them.
its sad peoples job security or toxic work culture can cause innocent people to rot in jail. humans really suck at being human.
the app providers dont want to admit fraud is running over their platform. the justice department cant admit any mistakes either.
Its a problem which will only get worse as the economy declines. And as the economy declines, more places get breached because more criminality and at the same time less money to secure things.
I cant see this getting any better which is kind of terrifying.
One more reason i can think of is that if people get super afraid of these problems, then they might even start asking for mass surveilance to help prove their innocense in these kinds of things. Which again is an incentive / reasoning for higher government not to do anything about it, because it creates opportunities where current population sentiment is taking them away...
Our society is like a beastly machine that feeds on the souls of living beings (Human and animal) in order to keep functioning.
I studied Masters in Criminology and I have to say that Justice is absent from the Criminal 'Justice' system.
One of these days someone, or some people, will finally lose it and this time hopefully they aim away from the schools.
Plea bargains should not be allowed. Rewarding someone for not going to trial is equivalent to punishing them for insisting on their ancient legal right to a fair trial. If the prosecution wants to make a deal with someone in exchange for testimony then they can request a lighter sentence after the defendant is found guilty, but they should still be required to prove guilt.
Yes, I know the legal system doesn’t have anywhere near enough resources to take every case to trial. Don’t care. Give the system more resources or prosecute fewer people or some combination of the two.
I stated above, part of a plea requires the defendant to affirm that they were not coerced into the plea, because you can't legally waive your Constitutional right to trial under coercion, you would still retain that right if coerced. But how can the Courts accept that a threat of many more years of incarceration over your head is not a threat, and you weren't coerced by that into accepting a lessor plea? Plea deals are constitutionally invalid because they coerce defendants into giving up their constitutional right to trail with the threat of the 'trial tax' (a much much longer sentence if you DO go to court and exercise your Constitutional right).
I've thought about this and I don't understand why we can have plea deals which are so radically different from the potential punishment if found guilty. Like, if the state thinks you did it and offers you a $1000 fine, how is it reasonable to potentially go to jail for 6 years if found guilty?
The state already showed that it believed that the crime was only worth a $1000 fine.
Maybe there should be a rule that whatever plea deal offered should be the maximum punishment possible if you're found guilty.
Because is bullshit so you take the plea. The huge fine is just up crap to force you to plea
It would be an interesting mechanic if the plea deal also altered a ceiling penalty (multiplier maybe?) in the event of a loss for the defendant.
Would be also better if the lawyer on the other side gets some penalty if lies or is misleading and pay to defendants cash
The job description of US criminal persecutors is wrong. People there should work into fixing it.
It's not the lawyers but the KPAs. If a prosecutor's promotion is judged based on the number of successful prosecutions, then there's every incentive to prosecute and zero incentive to dismiss charges.
Fixing the system requires changing the incentives. Individuals would adjust accordingly.
Edit: It won't get fixed because ultimately the metrics trickle up to Joe Public, who is notoriously tough on crime. Lawyers had to fight popular sentiment to get rid of the death penalty in most states. Even today, between death and life imprisonment, the former is preferred by the general public.
The prosecutor where I grew up had the cops mad at him too because he would only prosecute if it was a slam dunk win. He didn't want to risk not getting a conviction so many crimes had no action if they didn't have spotless evidence. So somewhat a win, but still not good that known criminals are out and about because the prosecutor didn't want to risk a not-guilty verdict.
The whole system is pretty broken.
>Even today, between death and life imprisonment, the former is preferred by the general public.
Source?
Yeah, that seems dubious to me. Among the public here in Britain it's somewhat popular but not a majority, with far lower popularity among people who understand how the sausage is made. Here's somebody who has put quite a lot of thought into this explaining why it's a bad idea from a purely practical standpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DrsVhzbLzU
The woman defending the Death Penalty in that clip is Priti Patel, a Tory MP who was until recently in their Shadow Cabinet. You'd hope she can do better, but judging from her subsequent comments she still doesn't get it.
Now, in the UK most people with a life sentence will (after quite some time) be eligible for parole. Historically it was possible for politicians to block this, but of course the consequence is that if a particularly notorious criminal is scheduled to be paroled, politicians are under pressure to prevent that, while a criminal who didn't attract much public interest leaves on schedule - that's manifestly unfair and a European court told the Brits they can't do that, so eventually the UK's Supreme Court decided there needed to a specific rule, identify a category of people who won't be paroled, and the category they decided on was people who have been convicted of at least two separately conceived murders.
Several European countries have no life sentences. Breivik for example got 21 years, and since he's still an avowed Nazi who wants to kill more people, and will likely still be an avowed Nazi when his sentence ends, they will just hold him until he stops being a Nazi or he dies. No additional sentence needed.
[Edited: Priti left her Shadow role a few weeks ago]
What's the motivation for keeping Breivik locked up? I have trouble believing it is for his political views, the human rights courts don't tend to like that sort of thing.
Is it not just a case of "murderous lunatic remains locked in asylum after criminal sentence until cured" - which can very well be until his death?
"I want to kill people" isn't a "political view" in the sense you seem to imagine. Maybe I should have emphasised the bit where he wants to kill people more than the fact he's a Nazi? But the two are intertwined. He wants to kill people because he's a Nazi, these are not unrelated in his mind.
I'm sure in his mind it makes sense. But everybody else disagrees and considers that, as you said, the murderous lunatic can't be released.
> ultimately the metrics trickle up to Joe Public, who is notoriously tough on crime
This behaviour, by Joe Public, is a serious problem, in that it's an emotional response, not a logical one, and absolutely never based on informed debate
Joe Sixpack is not a deep thinker.
He cares about getting his immediate needs met.
He wants to be entertained without having to be forced to think.
He wants to see people that he's been conditioned to hate be punished.
He wants people he can look down on so he doesn't feel like he's at the bottom of the pile.
It will not be fixed. The lawyers have control of our legal system. They are the politicians and judges. The system is theirs; if we want to change the status quo, it will take nothing less than a bloody revolution.
Or a flood of new lawyers with a basis of Beneficence and ethics, and a knowing willingness to act against maximal short-term self interest. (Though still self profitable, just not maximally)
The old lawyers determine who gets to become a new lawyer.
Medieval guild mechanics. Same with doctors.
I didnt know this. I thought it was just an exam.
I guess the exam is only the step one. Who decides which intern is picked for the next level up?
That may be just as likely as having a high net worth individual donate their entire fortune to you gratis.
As in, just as unlikely.
Politicians being trained lawyers is a good thing - they (supposedly) know the nightmare that is the legal system
To put it into a software developers context - which hopefully makes it easier to understand for some.
The law is legacy code that stretches back a few centuries (literally) that has been written by many many people with little in common, and has active users who must be consulted upon change.
Also most of the legislators
Lawyers are the first thing AI should drive out of business.
"First thing we do, let's [automate] all the lawyers."
> I forgot the source but the amount of prosecutions that are plea down is staggering.
I'd wager that 99% of the plea deals that occur in the world occur in the US. No other country uses it to the extent we do, and it's not even close. In many countries it's not an available option, or when it is and it's used, its use is heavily regulated and requires (meaningful) oversight by the judge on fairness, likelihood of conviction, etc.
And once you've accepted a plea deal it's not just a matter of making your plea - you also have to sign a whole raft of documents waiving a whole raft of rights, about appealing your conviction, about the right to present evidence in your defense in the future, or to witnesses, you have to sign a statement saying that even if you were to (attempt to) change your plea that it is your acknowledgment, "based on material facts" that the state is in possession of enough evidence to convict you.
>No other country uses it to the extent we do
That is incorrect. Japan has a 99% criminal justice conviction rate because of so many plea deals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap...
It sort of makes sense, why would you bring a case to trial that is not complete? A complete case will always win. The trial is the final check if the case is complete.
Japan only takes cases they know they can get a prosecution on, not that they know they are guilty
Huh? This is a wild misstatement. Even your link doesn’t support this, and says that the "most likely reason" for the high rate is that prosecutors have broad discretion over whether to prosecute at all, and credits low prosecution rates and a different way of calculating the rate.
The new system has been in place for less than ten years, only covers a very limited set of crimes and is much more modeled on cooperation than coercion. The Ramseyer and Rasmusen paper reported 99.9% convictions in 1994 (49,598 of 49,643), when the law did not allow plea bargains. The rate was already above 99% long before plea deals existed.
nasty that 'statistics' are hauled out as 'proof', fuck me Japan has an unbelievable low crime rate, and some ridiculous number of criminals turn them selves in. There is something like a 90%+ rate of lost wallets just droped in a mail box and returned, and american soldiers are responsible for the bulk of violent crime in a large radius around each base. It goes on and on, not that I think that highly of the Japanese, but due credit is theres and the US is the crime, jail, more crime and corruption leader of the planet and there is nowhere worse except where the US (cia) is running some through the worst sadistic perverts they can find and support, which makes almost all of the worst crime on the planet the direct fault of america, but as we see in this case under discusion, america is now having trouble EXPORTING it's contradictions and is just eating the coolaid powder dry.
[dead]
Japan has a ridiculously high crime rate for many crimes such as sexual assault.
See also: settlement in lieu of judgment in civil cases. There is an entire industry (debt collection) built around using the courts as a cudgel to coerce people into settlements for debts that they might not have a legal obligation to pay (because of the debt collectors' poor record-keeping, running afoul of procedural issues or consumer protection laws, etc.). Particularly for smaller amounts, attorneys will not represent consumers for defense, and (no matter what anyone tells you) judges defer to fellow lawyers if the issue goes to trial and a defendant is self-represented. Perversely, it's sometimes in a person's best interests to rack up larger debts, so that their case is worthwhile for an attorney to pick up, at which point they will likely try to negotiate a settlement rather than go to trial.
And the worst part is that once you take the plea deal, you are guilty. Both in perception and by record. So once it comes out that you plead, your employers will fire you. Makes it impossibly hard to find another job as your name comes up as a criminal. What I'm really confused about: Can't they have just checked the victim's bank records? The money would be taken out of the the Cash app and back into their own account. Or, if used for other service, there would be records of where it was spent and you could see the geographic activity.
On an entirely different note. Just wow. I know a lot of people who don't "do online" finance anything. And this kind of stuff is terrifying, because they would not even know that someone else had setup an account using their PII.
This shit is why my hippie dippie state where it’s hard to prosecute people is actually a good thing. Sadly, more fenty street walker is a sign that cops aren’t as empowered to deprive random people of rights.
But everyone knee jerks into voting out the cool DA who drops victimless criminal prosecutions because they don’t like a fenty zombie screaming in the streets.
I happen to love my mostly low policed state for this exact reason. They’re almost never there to help you, and mostly just want to fuck you up!
> This is the goal ... They know they are at fault but admitting they made a mistake is damaging to careers.
I iamgine bullshit easy plea deals also get you nice numbers for a "tough of crime" image for political clout even if some of the most vile crimes get some of the lightest sentences imaginable
> Meanwhile, authorities have offered Smith a plea deal including a $1,000 fine, $1,000 in restitution and three years' probation. She has refused, saying she is innocent.
This is nuts. Is it possible US prosecutors give so few shits about justice?
If only a reverse plea deal gambit were realistic. Counter with an offer to accept $10k and an apology for malpractice in exchange for her not going after those involved. Unfortunately a decent chunk of the justice system here doesn't appear to have any real accountability for poor conduct.
She kind of can do that in the form of a settlement offer for her lawsuit.
The DA (District Attorney) is elected, so they love to cite their tough-on-crime statistics. There are few incentives for them to not "win".
They're still a lawyer. Getting disbarred often means the end of their professional career. So file a bar complaint.
https://arcourts.gov/professional-conduct
https://opinions.arcourts.gov/ark/cr/en/item/1868/index.do#!...
>The DA (District Attorney) is elected, so they love to cite their tough-on-crime statistics.
Its the opposite nowadays. The current meta is to advertise yourself as light on crime. So you get to the point where Philadelphia has an open-air drug market filled with fentanyl, the DA was actually impeached for dereliction of duty by the Pennsylvania house of representatives, and Philadelphians STILL re-elected him with over 75% of the vote.
Think the Philly DA situation is a bit more unique and interesting. Yeah, agree, he was one of the first progressive DA's elected in recent times, and he is in many ways light on crime. But he just got re-elected by a 75% in 2025 for a third term. That's incredible and think there is a reason for this.
Am no expert on him, but as we're all talking about here, the legal system is really messed up. Yeah, there are a lot of terrible processes and laws that get in the way of justice, and a lot of the things his office did made a lot of sense.
Probably one of the biggest was the "Elimination of Cash Bail for Low-Level Offenses." The cash bail system for minor crimes really screws poor people, who can't make bail for things like shoplifting, and have to stay in jail until their pre-trial. (it's often something like $1000, which for middle-class people is not a big deal at all). But imagine a teen who had to stay out of school for a month or even two just because they stole something for $20 and his family can't put together $1k. The teen gets behind in class and stops trying, and this becomes the start of getting further and further behind in life. And a similar situation happens with poor working-class people for a minor crime, they can't pay bail, so they are in jail and can't work. They are often fired or just get into debt because they're not drawing a salary.
I don't know about anything about open drug markets, but think overall what the Philly DA seemed sensible (and just looked briefly and it seems like the crime statistics turned out well in Philly, but that could be from a number of things).
>I don't know about anything about open drug markets
Search "Kensington, Philadelphia" on Youtube. Its pretty crazy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWGwCbSUECw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_KO90n6KJ4
Or Tenderloin in SF.
Actually, used to live in SF. And yeah the tenderloin is pretty bad. Saw drug use and and a lot incredible things walking through those areas.
But wondering if that is also just a city thing? LA has Skid Row and just looked it up online, many metros have a Skid-Row type area.
Not saying that lenient crime policies don't make them worse, but it also might just be a feature of cities?
You're not entirely wrong but I think that description of the situation is rather heavily colored by partisanship. Being lenient about a very limited subset of crime that "the system" is particularly ineffective at dealing with (to the point that it is arguably racist/classist/etc) is viewed favorably by certain (primarily urban) demographics. When you have broad support for an elected official who is exercising a great deal of discretion to not enforce the law that should trigger fundamental changes to the system as opposed to impeachment.
Good. DA should focus on a rational plan to tackle high-impact crimes, not drug offenses.
Good!!!
That’s why I live hippie liberal voters!
You're assuming people view all crime the same.
I'll applaud ignoring the open air drug market. It's a symptom, not a cause. The drug *war* is the biggest crime problem in the country.
> It's a symptom, not a cause
A symptom of what?
Seriously did nobody watch The Wire?
Hamsterdam.
I get all my best political information from popular fiction!
Bioshock -> Libertarians bad
Handmaid's Tale -> Christians bad
The Boys & Marvel -> Corporations and governments are all secret Nazis
Everything else -> Nazis bad
That's all you need, really
Don't they also hate to lose though? This seems an unlikely case for a prosecutor to win. If it were a civil case, sure, the standard is much lower there, but for a criminal case the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt".
I guess they could be gambling that she can't afford a good lawyer; many people can't.
Which is why there's a push to accept a plea deal. Innocent people can easily end up accepting a plea deal after a day in jail, and pushy investigators trying to get out a confession.
> I guess they could be gambling that she can't afford a good lawyer; many people can't.
Then the government provides a lawyer; you can't be without counsel even if you can't afford them.
https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/resource/right-assistance...
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/right_to_counsel
Whether you qualify for a public defender varies by state. It might be that while yes, hiring a lawyer would destroy her financially, she has the assets to afford it. In which case, depending on your local laws, the court might be fine saying she has to get her own lawyer.
Often a lawyer that doesn't want the case because the pay is lower than private work, and also if the defendant loses their case they must pay both the lawyer and the court their fees and hours.
Sometimes the public defenders actions are indistinguishable from collusion with the prosecution. The window to appeal can close before your sentence is over.
I'm well aware of that. I was speculating that the prosecutor may think that they could prevail vs a court appointed lawyer.
But the public defender has had 5 seconds to prepare for your case.
>> I guess they could be gambling that she can't afford a good lawyer; many people can't.
>Then the government provides a lawyer; you can't be without counsel even if you can't afford them.
I'd note that many (most?) state jurisdictions (the Federal judiciary has the Federal Defender's Service[0]) require a defendant to be "indigent"[1] before a lawyer is appointed, rather than requiring the defendant to hire a lawyer.
Also, in many jurisdictions, private lawyers are appointed by judges to take on the cases of "indigent" defendants. Often there's little in the way of vetting such lawyers, and the fees paid generally aren't very high -- resulting in subpar lawyers and representation.
Even in places (like NYC[2]) with a more robust public defender system, these lawyers are generally handling dozens of cases at once and don't have the resources of the prosecutor's office (investigators, budgets for forensic testing/analysis, etc.), leaving the defendants' side at a considerable disadvantage.
As such, it's not just saying "I can't afford a lawyer," and Perry Mason rushes to your rescue.
[0] https://www.uscourts.gov/topics/defender-services
[1] Different jurisdictions have different standards for determining if a defendant is "indigent." But many of those won't appoint a lawyer unless you're flat broke. Own a home? Take out a second mortgage. Have a job? You're not indigent. Etc, etc, etc.
[2] https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/2024/04/08/how-public-defend...
And this is a complicated case.
You need evidence from Cash App and likely other third parties like ISPs. You ideally would have an expert to testify about the limitations of the prosecution evidence.
They said "good lawyer".
Well, now that this story is coming to light, I'm guessing getting a decent lawyer will be pretty easy.
Surely a widely read news story about prosecuting an obviously innocent person is bad for this particular DA? Or do the voters not care about that?
Surely an embarrassing loss is worse than dropping a case.
The DA can file the charges and drop the case right before (or even during) trial. No loss on their books
This is "lock the innocent" tho. The DA is not tough om crime, the criminal went to his merry way.
"Tough on crime" is often a euphemism for "lock the innocent".
> they love to cite their tough-on-crime statistics.
Where can we see their tough-on-innocence statistics?
https://innocenceproject.org/all-cases/
You can get a rough idea of innocence by exoneration rates + years served. Above-link is just for that one project, which is one of the largest in this arena.
It would also be wise to assume that all exonerations only reflect a small minority of actually innocent people especially when you start factoring in 'crimes' like possession charges or debt (https://www.aclu.org/publications/pound-flesh-criminalizatio...)
A corollary of the “innocent until proven guilty” standard is that there’s just no way to compute such statistics. It’s impossible by design to distinguish between a clearly innocent person and a very suspicious person whose guilt couldn’t quite be proven without looking into the details of their case.
"It’s impossible by design to distinguish between a clearly innocent person and a very suspicious person whose guilt couldn’t quite be proven"
Oh, you mean another innocent person? (Emphais mine)
They are innocent under the law, not necessarily innocent.
There's no functional difference in this context - the legal system determines legal issues.
There’s a functional difference if you’re trying to compute “tough-on-innocence statistics”, because it means that the target for the only possible metric is much higher than zero. A healthy criminal justice system should routinely rule people innocent; if nearly everyone who’s prosecuted is found guilty, that doesn’t mean prosecutors are being really picky about filing charges, it means the system doesn’t treat innocence as an acceptable outcome.
You'd be better off assessing that via analysis of laws and policies. That would show what could be abused and to what degree, even if it's abused by the people in power now. That's really the whole point of the analysis - to create laws and policies with better protections, so we should measure what we're looking to change.
I've never understood that. There's a claim you are guilty of robbery. You get charged and go to court. You plead not guilty. The da insists and you go to trial. During trial, you manage to provide cctv showing that you were 1000 miles away. The jury says "not guilty".
Is there any reasonable way to say "we don't know, he might be guilty, we just didn't reach 'beyond reasonable doubt '"?
A jury I was on came to that exact conclusion. Some crimes require state of mind to be proven. In my case, a guy was at a bar and got kicked out. He went to his car and grabbed a gun and fired two shots. Ultimately the decision hanged on "did he fear for his life" when two bouncers rushed him in the parking lot.
He was probably guilty of the two counts of aggravated assault, but the prosecution never showed that it wasn't self defense, which is what Arizona required.
If he was able to get to his car and retrieve his gun and shoot at them, it seems very unlikely that the “two bouncers rushed him in the parking lot”. He could have just driven away. Much more likely he was angry about being kicked out and went back with his gun and then the “two bouncers rushed him”.
Not in the US. In Scotland, until this year, there was a "not proven" verdict, which was more or less what you just said.
The effect was the same as "not guilty", but there was an idea that allowing the jury to express doubt allowed them to avoid erring on the side of guilt. But it also confused people so they finally got rid of it.
Well the point of the trial is to make a binary decision, so it has to be guilty or not guilty to a certain standard of evidence.
Think of it as "should you bring an umbrella to go outside today?" – the weather forecast has a probability, but your job is to turn that probability into a decision based on your risk tolerance. You can't bring a 30% umbrella for a 30% chance of rain.
The closest thing is probably a mistrial due to a hung jury. That allows a retrial.
CCTV shows you were in the general area of the crime, but your shady friend says you were hanging out with him at the exact time the robbery happened, and the guy who says he saw you do the robbery is also kinda shady. I think it’d be reasonable for a juror to think you probably did it (because your friend is untrustworthy and has obvious incentives to lie) but didn’t do it beyond a reasonable doubt (because the witness just isn’t credible enough).
Yes that's the obvious case for the "we can't be sure". It's the classic example really. It's not what I asked.
"Is it possible US prosecutors give so few shits about justice?"
If you are part of a system and have power in it, you believe the system is good. You believe that everyone else in that system is also good. That's why you have prosecutors and judges just believing the police automatically. Nobody wants to be in a job that ruins innocent people's lives, so everyone must be guilty or the cognitive dissonance will run you out (if the others in power don't first).
It's a legal system, not a justice system. That distinction is the point. Legal systems are not meant to be for justice. It's to protect and empower the people already in power or in a position to buy and control power.
Unfortunately the court system is such that it would collapse under the load if everyone actually exercised their right to a trial which heavily incentivizes plea deals
That is a different problem. In this case it should be clear that the prosecutors have messed up and won't admit it, maybe to save their carriers. They are going after someone innocent because it is the easy target while the real criminal is at large.
Partially. The prosecutors and DAs are motivated by conviction rates. The delays in the court system are a bludgeon to encourage that end. Just like identity theft in itself, no-one is motivated to fix the system but the ones being fucked by it, who are the least able to do so.
American voters care about conviction rate above all else for their prosecutors.
We like convictions because there's a hell of a lot of actual crime that is never punished. Just my circle of friends has suffered car break-ins, burglaries (no suspects), grand theft auto (never recovered the car), and devastatingly, a rape on school property. Most of these crimes weren't investigated, despite real damages, and the couple that were never saw a conviction.
By encouraging prosecutors to punish the innocent, you ensure that the guilty go free to commit more crimes.
Sure, but does voting for DAs with a high conviction rate get you any closer to solving these problems?
My guess is that it does not.
In theory, if crimes exceed prosecutions, then number of convictions being closest to the number of prosecutions should indicate an effective use of resources. The real problem is that thorough investigations are rare for most crimes and it's just and industrial-scale process to show the elements of an offense were met by a preponderance of the evidence.
Sure, but it feels like you're doing something helpful. It's like self-help books, or new years resolutions. The emotional fulfillment of feeling like you've done something is vastly more popular and marketable than doing the actual work.
In recent years we have also witnessed the outcomes from DAs who refuse to prosecute -- having someone more hard nosed in office seems vastly preferable to losing the local Walgreens and still not having my burglaries prosecuted.
> ...any closer to solving these problems?
If "these problems" is the criminals getting away with their crimes? No.
Unfortunately, human nature is such that many peoples' actual priority is venting the intense angry they feel about the real-world crimes.
And for far too many people, harsh punishments inflicted on expendable whipping boys are an all-too-satisfying way of doing that.
So then is your need for "justice" satisfied by rounding up a bunch of unlucky people and convicting them? To me it seems like you're just describing the other side of the exact same coin where the justice system isn't doing its job, but in a way that absolves it for not doing its job.
It's outright fallacious to want higher convictions (or even just higher arrests), because crimes aren't even being investigated, right? The goal isn't some scalar "number of people convicted" but rather justice in every case. If cases aren't being investigated, that's a specific problem with a specific part of the system, which needs to be addressed specifically. It can't be fixed by tweaking the numbers further down the line, rather that just creates further corruption.
The way I see it, every time the public demands the justice system (prosecutors, police, etc) do their jobs better, the people in the system respond by doing anything but focusing on their jobs. Either raising the false positive rate ("hard on crime"), going on [possibly silent] strike (raising false negative rate), or even rioting to create disorder from whole cloth (then blaming it on the protestors). What is really needed is accountability in general, so that specific wrongs (either way) can be rectified.
All countries not only America
America is pretty much the only country with elected prosecutors. Everyone else considers it a career position, and then incentives are different.
Are there cases or jurisdictions where the outcome is not binary (guilty, not guilty), but has three options: innocent, indeterminate, guilty? With "innocent" leading to some fine, penalty, or even worse, for the prosecution team. That would obviously imply the option for plea deals both ways, and would give the prosecutors a more interesting incentive structure :)
Yes, this kind of thing happens a lot. The incentives are misaligned with the goal to a degree where you almost wonder if it’s intentional.
This happens a lot because at the individual level, it’s sort of in everyone’s best interest to take the deal. The prosecutor wants $2,000 and 0 jail time and it all goes away. If you don’t take the deal, even assuming you win in the end, it will probably cost you way more than $2,000 and however long the probation check ins take. You will recover neither your time, nor the money you spent on lawyers/transportation/days off/etc.
At the macro level it happens because prosecutors get judged on their conviction/case closure rate, because we implicitly assume they found the right person. Browbeating people into accepting token punishments that technically close out the case counts for the metrics voters actually watch.
If I might lean a little conspiratorial for a moment, it also behooves the prosecutors office to flood the defense attorneys with cases. People will vote to raise the prosecutors funding to deal with criminals, no one will vote to raise defense attorney funding. Last I saw the average prosecutors office gets something around double the funding the defense gets.
It got so bad in some city in Oregon there was (is, really), a near constitutional crisis because the city got trapped between the provisions of the 6th amendment. Defense attorneys were so flooded they said they couldn’t take any new cases. The 6th amendment says the accused has a right to counsel, which is an issue. It also says they have a right to a speedy trial. The city was going to have to allocate money to the defense and get them lawyers quick, or drop a bunch of cases.
That never happened, the judge basically just said “Nuh uh” and I believe threatened the defense office with sanctions if they didn’t just assign the cases to lawyers who were already saying they had more cases than they could imagine.
I’m a little shocked we haven’t seen a huge wave of successful “ineffective assistance of counsel” appeals. Pointing to a signed, public statement your lawyer was overworked before you even talked to them seems like a decent starting point.
> This happens a lot because at the individual level, it’s sort of in everyone’s best interest to take the deal. The prosecutor wants $2,000 and 0 jail time and it all goes away. If you don’t take the deal, even assuming you win in the end, it will probably cost you way more than $2,000 and however long the probation check ins take. You will recover neither your time, nor the money you spent on lawyers/transportation/days off/etc.
Are there absolutely no provisions for an innocent person to claim all the expenses they had to incur ?
Not in a criminal court, or really anything where the government is the counterparty. Philosophically it’s because those things are part of your “civic duty” as a citizen like taxes. Realistically it’s because the demographics of people getting the money would be unpalatable to the public. Recidivism is high, some large portion of it would go to people with prior convictions.
The absurd end of this spectrum is what happens when police damage a random persons property while chasing a suspect. They’re generally not liable for it, however most homeowners insurance won’t cover it.
I remember an early GoFundMe from a lady that went to work and a guy broke into her house and had a shootout with the police. She came home to being homeless (house got condemned because plumbing, gas, etc is bullet-riddled), and it’s a really disconcerting story to hear. I don’t recall if the city settled to quiet the story down or not.
The "civic duty" rationalization is bunk, due to how unevenly it ends up applying. Someone having their house destroyed is not a "civic duty". Everyone's taxes going up a few dollars to compensate for the damage the police caused (to a house or otherwise) would be a civic duty, and municipalities paying the full cost of policing would place responsibility where responsibility belongs.
I completely agree about the realpolitik reasons though. Ultimately we need out of touch voters to realize that unaccountable government can easily turn its sights on them, as well. The real difficulty is trying to make people respect numerically low odds without falling for feel-good nonsense about "those people".
I agree about the rationalization, I tried to imply that with air quotes.
> municipalities paying the full cost of policing
Since we're talking realpolitik, this will never happen. In a first principles sense, it won't because it's unpredictable at the locality level (how do you set tax rates for FY27 without knowing what you'll pay out for this?). In a realpolitik sense, it won't because a) people don't like their taxes going up and would rather bank on it not happening to them, and b) the police will throw a shit fit and refuse to work when they realize they have to consider property damage while doing their jobs, and that the public will be _pissed_ if they crash a cruiser into a parked car while LARPing John Rambo.
> Ultimately we need out of touch voters to realize that unaccountable government can easily turn its sights on them, as well.
Good luck and godspeed. The latest stats say 56% of US adults read at or below a 6th grade level, so say it slow and in monosyllabic words lol
Should the innocent person not be able to afford an attorney, they can petition the court to chuck their case at a random lawyer, who's obliged to accept it. Such indigent cases tend to be compensated at a statutory rate well below what the lawyer might be accustomed to—with corresponding effects on the enthusiasm of their defense...
Not only does the US not care about justice, they favor the government, always. In a federal conviction you used to have forever to file an appeal, but that was determined too expensive (because people could utilize it) so they made it 10 days. But that was too short. So they made the fair compromise between 'an appeal should always be allowed' and 10 days, and made it 14 days for defendants (but 30 days for government because you know, the government has more limited resources than someone sentenced and being moved across country in prison transports between detention centers to their assigned prison).
Also a reminder that in order for a plea to be valid the defendant has to agree/swear on the record that they weren't coerced in anyway way into making the deal (because you can't waive your Constitutional right to trial under coercion). The threat of prosecution/a very harsh sentenced being reduced sure seems like coercion and that plea deals are constitutionally invalid by default.
I guess facing decades in prison or a $100 fine--accepting the fine wouldn't be considered coercion, right?--legally speaking I mean.
Check out Three Felonies a Day by Silvergate. The writing is poor and it’s one of the only sources that dares suggest that the Enron executives were victims but regardless, there are points relevant to exactly what you’re asking about.
im gonna have a real hard time believing enron executives were innocent
Anyone who has dealt with US cops and courts personally would say yes.
At some point we need to have a tough conversation about collective civic engagement and societal dysfunction and not just individually running from it or routing around it. All these institutional problems have been stacking up for the past twenty years, they're only continuing to get worse and worse, and the most common reaction I see from it is some variation on "try to just stay out of its way".
There's a tendency for people to react to institutional problems like this by saying they'll just move over here to a blue state, or they'll monitor their accounts closer on reporting bureaus, or they'll just have a lawyer on retainer, etc, etc. If a legal system in a red state is this dysfunctional, you can't simply hide away in a blue state with better-run systems. The underlying problem - the social decay of much of the US and the broader world - needs to be directly engaged with and confronted.
I agree, but the "tough conversation about collective civic engagement and societal dysfunction" is actually a "tough conversation about taxing the sh*t out of everyone who makes more than $150k a year". Most of our problems are downstream of our extreme inequality and the way it incentivizes dysfunctional and antisocial behavior across the board. So it's going to be an even harder conversation to have than you think.
And if you don't believe me, consider what, "I'll just move, I'll just retain a lawyer, I'll just spend my precious time monitoring my data or hiring someone else to do it for me," as Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free cards says about the means of the people holding those views. (It's that they can, and intend to, buy their way out of a system stood up by people like them ostensibly to promote accountability and social order.)
Right, whatever the actual fundraising method is, "good justice" is something we must spend to get the same way we spend for drinkable tapwater, or roads, or having someone else watch you child for most of the day every workday for 12 years.
"If a legal system in a red state is this dysfunctional, you can't simply hide away in a blue state with better-run systems."
These sorts of abuses or dysfunction are rampant in all states. I can't think of a single state that actually has a good system (properly staffed, no overreach, etc).
Yes but it only gets worse as you go to red states which are “tough on crime”. Which basically just means they put as many people in prison as humanly possible, and for as long as possible.
New Hampshire is pretty great. That may be due to them having some of the lowest crime rates in the country to begin with.
This doesn't look great. https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2026-09-21/nh-newhampshire-supr...
But they do tend to have better speedy trial definitions and such. Although it seems they are rolling back bail reform (which may have been too lenient, but they didn't find a middle solution). And it seems they still have ex parte protection from abuse orders, which are notoriously abused in divorce cases.
>All these institutional problems have been stacking up for the past twenty years, they're only continuing to get worse
You're right about "continuing to get worse", but our institutions have been failing for more than 20 years. I think it's more like that Hemingway quote about bankruptcy, “Gradually and then suddenly.” in turn, that always makes me think of an exponential growth curve... and I think America, if not the entire world, is headed towards the vertical. Ib other words, when it comes to how dysfunctional our institutions can get, I think we've just begun.
IL here.
Blue state systems are not better run.
You’re in the most corrupt state in the nation. Go look at your state bond ratings. Of course it doesn’t work there!!!
WA here.
Most definitely are.
Source?
I think we would need to quantify "better", but there aren't any states that are good.
Oregon here. If you mean better in the sense that they dont convict guilty people much less innocent people, then yes much better run.
Nobody wants their taxes raised to fund the courts and prosecutors it would actually take. It's amazing it works as well as it does.
We are all ears if you'd like to start that conversation. Make a page/blog post and submit it here, and accept ahead of time whatever fallout may arise from doing so. If the benefits outweigh the risks, or if you simply are at a point where the risks do not matter.
It'll be flagged and your HN account banned or restricted. HN hates political posts unless they confidently assert nothing is wrong with the system.
We will just have to deal with it I suppose. That's why it is best if the source is outside of HN to begin with.
prosecutors measure success by conviction rates. they cant have a dismissed case bringing down their averages
Poor incentives.
You aren't gonna advance your career as a prosecutor, or even win re-election, if you actually care about that "truth and justice" stuff in the case of some rando out-of stater who you already have a really cool-sounding story about the obvious guilt of.
having judges and prosecutor elected sure is an american experiment that i'm too european to understand
The UK tried the experiment and gave up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_and_crime_commissioner
They were quite overpaid compared to other local government roles, and had very poor public visibility. WP says they were originally going to be called "sheriffs" but that was rejected as "too American". This does make it clear that it was an attempt to copy the US system, but I feel obliged to point out that the Scottish court system has had Sheriffs for longer than the US has existed.
Does any sheriff have better name recognition than the Sheriff of Nottingham, England?
It's democratic. You don't have much democracy if the population is only allowed to elect some of the powers. Americans elect their sheriffs as well.
Yes, it's democratic. But there's a reason we're not electing doctors and engineers.
The reason being that they're not part of the government?
Is that like how european's don't understand not to burn down cities over school employee pensions?
The French are just exercising their second amendment rights as originally envisioned by the founding fathers. They're doing America better than Americans!
The right to loot and burn buildings and threaten shopkeepers with rape
Exactly how the American slavers called the civil rights movement.
America was founded on vandalism and violence, and Americans used to be proud of that. What happened?
Decades of reckless deregulation and -er- corporatism, the inevitable corporate consolidation that that behavior encourged, and "Stranger Danger!"-type fearmongering... I reckon.
The previously-super-illegal pervasive domestic surveillance programs sure don't help things, either. No cost is too high to stop "terror" at home and abroad, amirite? :(
[dead]
> or even win re-election
I mean, I would like to know what percentage of people makes an informed decision when voting for a judge for example.
A lot of them run unopposed anyway. And if they don't, I have no idea how you would figure out what candidate you like best.
Heck, in the US even the big political positions seem to be largely void of 'ideas'. It's mostly attack ads paid for by shady sources through PACs. That's where the majority of the votes are flipped/won...
Democracy is cool and all but perhaps roles like judges and prosecutors should be selected on competence, not by perceived tough-on-crime popular elections
Who does the selection? In the USA, doesn’t it always come down to voter choice one way or another? We typically elect a sheriff but a mayor appoints a police chief. The mayor is elected however. What process could be used to determine process and selection that would avoid voter input?
Open application process. Select whoever had the highest law school grades. Or alternatively make all the applicants take a competitive exam. Anonymous grading.
First you should find some correlation between law school grades and competence of the lawyer.
https://www.alanet.org/legal-management/2023/february/column...
> When looking at on-the-job performance, our internal data — based on thousands of reports from actual attorneys at some of the top law firms — tells us that GPA on average has a 2.2% predictive validity. Meaning that GPA, the thing that the LSAT is meant to predict, explains very little. When we look directly at the LSAT, we see an even smaller correlation of 0.9% on average.
Nobody did a correlational study between electability and judge or prosecutor competence either.
Would you agree knowledge of the law is a better, if still imperfect, indicator of ability as a judge or prosecutor than being merely appealing to voters?
In any case, I think a competitive exam is better than law school grades. It allows for applicants who didn't do so well in law school but got better later.
It's hard to craft an exam that isn't mostly testing how good the examinee is at writing exams. Things like the SAT, LSAT, GRE, etc... are good predictors of near-future academic success but not very useful beyond that.
So, I think an exam is a bad idea unless it's a pass/fail exam (ie no grades, you either understand the law or you do not) and there should be no meaningful time constraint when completing the exam. That's basically the system in most states today, except the training comes after someone without a law degree is elected.
There are state and federal oversight mechanisms with the power to remove bad judges.
> That's basically the system in most states today, except the training comes after someone without a law degree is elected.
If you believe this is preferable to a system where knowledge is established before appointing the person, then we're not going to have much common ground.
I'd invite you to read https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/... for a look at Louisiana's justice of the peace system, whose justices only need a high-school diploma.
IMO a law degree is the absolute bare minimum for any kind of judicial or prosecutorial role. It's bad enough cops aren't expected to know the law. How can anyone justify a judge with fewer qualifications than a bootcamp grad in a software role?
I might vote for the 26 year old who just passed the bar but can't find work because I believe they know the law. My neighbor might vote for the retired high school principle because she believes the person has accumulated wisdom and experience dealing with people. Either person could be a great or terrible JP.
Also, don't forget JPs mostly handle basic disputes, misdemeanors, and administrative tasks. You probably don't need a law degree to conduct a wedding ceremony or hear a shoplifting case.
Would it surprise you to find out in lots of places the coroner is an elected position open to high school grads?
Who does the selection? Who approves the applications? Who ensures the process is open? It always comes down to winners of elections. The USA isn’t a technocracy or meritocracy, for better or worse.
> Who does the selection?
Of what?
> Who approves the applications?
What's to "approve"?
> Who ensures the process is open?
Put it on a website and in the local paper. Applicants' names, their exam scores, their law school transcripts.
> It always comes down to winners of elections
Sure somewhere in the chain, at the end, there's an elected official. That's democracy.
But elected officials can be required by law to use meritocratic selection criteria to appoint people. Many countries used or still use exams to hire bureaucrats. It's a very old concept:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_entrance_examina...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination
> The USA isn’t a technocracy or meritocracy, for better or worse.
That's fine but a different argument from "it can't be done".
Ok. So we just need enlightened legislatures to enact these processes into law and fund them. I actually agree with what you propose, but am having a hard time seeing how to get such a system in place.
Appointment by mayor or local government is fine. Make it a normal public service job. There are reasonable questions about why the US needs quite so many fine-grained local police authorities and who polices the police, though.
Make them fight to the death? Seriously, it would solve sooo many problems.
The highest level public offices should always be either directly elected, or appointed by an elected person for only the duration of their office. This way voters can get rid of them if necessary. Otherwise they become an unelected deep state.
Other levels of public office should be strictly by competence. Meaning by trials open for all citizens.
[dead]
Usually when fraud is involved, people don't care about justice, they care about getting their money back, which means often the less legally competent party (who are often victims themselves) have to pay up, and good luck getting your money back.
The story sounds like CashApp didn't do proper KYC, so they should be held liable. Also I very much doubt that someone built up a sophisticated operation just for 1 victim, so there must be others. Why doesn't the police connect the dots?
> Why doesn't the police connect the dots?
They don't care. My iPhone was stolen. Through a circuitous route, I was able to get the details of the eBay seller, someone who lived near me, and whose listing pages couldn't have been more blatant if it had a neon sign on it: 100+ laptops, mostly Macs, "no chargers, no accessories", often activation locked. Same with phones.
So I went to my PD, with the buyer information, the seller, all of this. Their response:
"Well, he probably didn't steal it himself."
Huh, "Isn't it still a crime to knowingly sell stolen property?"
"..."
"..."
Nothing done. As of a year later he was still steadily adding multiple phones and laptops a week to his listings.
I'm not a lawyer, but it feels like you should consult one. If you have the legal information of this person and they have possession of your activation locked phone, sounds like you could at least sue him civilly or in small claims court for the value of it, if the DA won't do anything
They give a shit about their conviction rate. And maintaining a comfortable relationship with their local police department(s). Very little else.
While there are definitely issues of pay disparity, there are a lot of criminal law firms employing "former prosecutors". In my conversations with one or two - the pay is better, but the disillusionment and need to railroad defendants got to them.
Yes. My brother is a retired Public Defender. There are crazier stories.
It's not stated in the article, but quite often when you look into these extraordinary miscarriage of justice stories in the US you find out what race the victim is, and then it becomes clear what's happening.
Time for CashApp founders and C-levels to be held personally liable for creating a system with so few checks that it appears to be designed to facilitate fraud and theft.
Then you sue all the law enforcement officers and local officials who are attempting to lay the blame for this on someone they should know is likely innocent. Make all of the financial liability for this lazy investigation come directly from the pockets of the cops and prosecutors until they have nothing left to their names and then extract every thin dime that you can from the city that hired or elected these clods so that the whole city is bankrupted.
Money is obviously the only thing that talks in this society. Make all these assholes pay with everything that they have managed to accumulate in their lives and kick their asses to the curbs after pointing at a dumpster and telling them that they can likely find some cardboard suitable for beggar signage. They'll need to supply their own writing tools though.
I often think of this audio-skit, Identity Theft by Mitchell & Webb, wherein the bank is regretfully informing a customer that their Identity has been Stolen, which is totally not in any way the bank's responsibility or problem...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E
>for creating a system with so few checks that it appears to be designed to facilitate fraud and theft.
I'm too lazy to create and verify a cashapp account, but so far as what I can find online they do SSN/name check + id check + selfie (liveliness) check. What more do you want?
> they do SSN/name check + id check + selfie (liveliness) check.
They obviously failed to do that here.
> SSN/name check + id check
Almost everyone's info of the above kind is available on the dark web, as the original article about this case explained. That situation is the result of everyone collecting KYC information while also being too incompetent to properly guard it.
> + selfie (liveliness) check
I don't know what this is, but it protected nothing and it's apparently useless.
Then, after the fraud CashApp protected the fraudster by stonewalling the victim and the lack of exculpatory evidence led to the filing of formal charges.
Whatever is needed to prevent fraud perpetuated on their platforms.
>Whatever is needed
Someone made a fake account -> we need "Whatever is needed" to make creating fake accounts harder is exactly the wrong way of thinking about it. It's the same kneejerk reaction that got us PATRIOT act and TSA after 9/11.
https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
Or if you're more swayed by social justice, all these onerous checks also makes it harder for "unbanked"/"underbanked" people access to the financial system, which has real harms for them.
The person who is now facing charges for a crime she did not commit is experiencing ‘real harm’.
Absolutely shameful to defend a b$ company that doesn’t not have adequate protections to prevent this from happening. Imagine this happening to you or your own - whisked away and locked up for a month for the crime of losing your wallet and getting your identity stolen.
>Imagine this happening to you or your own - whisked away and locked up for a month for the crime of losing your wallet and getting your identity stolen.
You know what's worse than sitting in jail for a few days? Dying or losing a loved one from 9/11. So you better get used to more federal agents scanning your communications and more TSA groping you at the airport. No cost is too great to prevent losing a loved one to terrorist attacks!
/s
> You know what's worse than sitting in jail for a few days?
You haven't read the article. The stakes are much higher than "a few days in jail" which isn't nearly as small of a problem as you make it out to be either.
> Dying or losing a loved one from 9/11.
Why do you have to repeat this nonsensical 9/11 strawman of an analogy which has nothing to do with the case in question? Nobody asked for government "scanning of your communications". What you failed to notice is the refusal of CashApp to provide information about the fraudulent account because the victim couldn't prove owning it while she was being investigated for owning it.
CashApp stonewalled the victim and prevented proper investigation before charges were formally filed and the prosecutor got involved, after that it was to late and the mess that followed resulted in great expenses, turmoil and further risks for the victim.
A b$ company putting in more protections for its customers and non-customers by doing more checks is equal to TSA groping you? Please make it make sense.
Doubling down on a weak argument doesn’t endear anyone to your position, especially when it’s trivializing actual tragedies. For what, even, for flawed systems to remain flawed? TSA is a joke made to harass innocents while PATRIOT was a consolidation of power. It is true 9/11 was used to ram legislation that hurt Americans. It doesn’t mean every response to an unfortunate situation is wrong.
Additionally, your argument is to do what, exactly? Apply zero pressure to the company which aids and abets fraud to the detriment of innocence because you find “social justice” and restrictions distasteful? Accessing money should be laborious and should require various verification forms (even if I disagree that photographing IDs and selfies are actual forms of verification), because as we see here laxness has resulted in an innocent person’s life being upended.
The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero.
This statement is obvious to anyone who has any experience dealing with fraud, but shocking if you haven’t thought much about it.
It’s actually impossible to completely prevent fraud on a platform because there are so many variations of fraud that can’t be prevented up front.
They could demand in-person DNA samples to open an account and there would still be some fraud.
You're the second person who doesn't seem to realize that fraud prevention requires proper actions before and after fraud is detected/suspected. Failing to react properly on fraud protects the fraudsters - like CashApp has done - and makes the platform a magnet for fraud.
CashApp failed to investigate and provide vital information to victim while she was being investigated - they did that too late only after they were compelled to do so by the court and lawyers, creating a very hard situation for the victim and allowing the fraudsters to cover their tracks.
The optimal amount is zero, but the realistic amount is non-zero.
Zero fraud is non-optimal because the effort required to achieve it would make transacting impossible.
I suppose I should have spelled it out, given that so many people didn't get it.
It would be like declaring that the optimal number of vehicle deaths is zero, but then not realizing that the only way to achieve that is to make sure nobody can drive. When faced with the realities, everyone backs off and acknowledges that some risk is necessary
The simple fact is that you can't just open an app and then let it destroy the lives of people with absolutely no connection to it. The company itself must be responsible. Saying "the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero" is only acceptable if the cost of that "non-zero" amount is borne by the company itself; otherwise the result is plainly misaligned incentives.
>The simple fact is that you can't just open an app and then let it destroy the lives of people with absolutely no connection to it.
Wait till you realize how 911 aka "swatting" works.
>The company itself must be responsible.
So in the swatting case should we blame Verizon for allowing the call to be placed in the first place?
Say goodbye to being able to pay for anything by credit card unless accompanied by valid state ID, passport. and iris scan.
They would probably have to send out an agent to your house to live with you and watch you make every transaction to ensure it’s legitimate.
And, even then, you might lie to the agent or maybe strike up a deal or something so… even that wouldn’t work.
The ideal number of fraud is not zero, if it was zero we would either be living in a dystopian novel or not using the service at all.
If the article is correct, I was surprised that the lawsuit doesn't appear to include CashApp. Definitely appears they were negligent here as well.
Nice revenge fantasy bro
Apathy is the main thing allowing this to be a fantasy result. Maybe if enough people are caught up in bullshit like this where their lives and reputations are tarnished due to fraud perpetrated by someone else then we can energize some societal changes that pin the reputational damage and financial penalties on the correct donkey.
It will never stop until prosecutors/police become liable for gross negligence.
This is the original reporting: https://www.404media.co/amanda-smith-opened-a-cashapp-in-her...
And it's behind a paywall. Damned if you do, damned if you don't....
> Damned if you do, damned if you don't....
I’ve seen this phrase maybe 10 times in the last week on this site. Is this some new hacker news trend to pull out this old cliché on everything now?
No? It’s free to read there’s no paywall. You do need a free account to read it.
Oh it's not free. You're paying with your data.
No, it's paywalled: there's 4 paragraphs, then it fades out to
> Sign up for free access to this post
> Free members get access to posts like this one along with an email round-up of our week's stories.
Sometimes these paywalls are variable, triggering sometimes and not others.
> Sign up for free access to this post
That's not a pay wall, it's a sign-in wall.
A wall is a wall, here's an unwalled one: https://archive.ph/WZh8X
Being extradited to Arkansas for a crime one didn't commit, one which is impossible to refute because there is no evidence to begin with, seems like a weirdly American spin on Kafka.
Police never thought to subpoena the ISP for the IP address associated with the cashapp login? This seems like an egregious omission in the investigation. Even if it were a VPN, you could subpoena her email to find payment receipts to the provider, etc. Even that may not necessarily prove guilt if there are no logs. That's all an enormous leap of evidence to assume the account is genuinely hers, especially given how endemic identity theft is.
> According to 404 Media's review, the address on the account was one where neither Smith nor her husband had ever lived. The account had also been accessed through Verizon connections, while Smith says she uses AT&T and has never had a Verizon plan.
> There was also a discrepancy involving the phone used to create the account. Cash App's records showed an iPhone running iOS 16.1.1, an operating system dating back to 2022. Smith, however, provided evidence that her iPhone 13 mini was running the much newer iOS 26.5.2.
That's even crazier. You have to question if they even understand what they're investigating. I expect this to be thrown out in court, although I also have declining faith in our court system.
I think you have to understand that they care more about whether or not they can get a conviction than whatever actually happened. Then the rest of it makes perfect sense.
I think people underestimate how much the separation of roles matters to the case and to the motivations of the people in each role.
The detectives screwed up by doing a piss poor investigation and identifying the wrong suspect (who is a victim herself in this crime).
The prosecutor cares more about whether they can sell the flawed case to an Arkansas jury or use the low plea bargain cost against the high legal defense cost.
So beyond the prosecutor, we have to start questioning judges and juries. If the prosecutor so strongly feels that a weak case has a chance of getting a conviction, then what's really wrong here: the prosecutor or the judge/jury part of the system? Prosecutors are famous for only bring cases to trial they feel they can win. That sense normally comes from their experience directly or reading of previous trials.
The prosecutor is trying to scare this woman into accepting a plea deal. Couple thousand dollars and 6 months probation. Maybe they eventually drop the case, but she’s going to face much more than that in travel and legal costs. No matter what happens here, this woman is, on some level, fucked with no recourse. And the people responsible for it are the ones who should be protecting her from the effects of the identity theft in the first place.
It’s insane that a prosecutor can do this and not be sued for those damages.
The breadth of prosecutorial immunity is one of those things that reveals how broken the American system is.
>then what's really wrong here: the prosecutor or the judge/jury part of the system?
Arkansas is one of the least educated states in the US and one of the poorest. So, yea, there are a lot of systemic issues there.
> If the prosecutor so strongly feels that a weak case has a chance of getting a conviction
Who says that's the case? US courts are overloaded and public defenders are massively overloaded.
Most people can't afford to hire a good lawyer, and a (let's say) 10% chance of years in prison isn't worth gambling versus a plea deal to them. Prosecutors know this, file massive scary charges, and motivate people to settle regardless of innocence or guilt.
Having had the opportunity to participate and observe the jury system, there is no way I'd ever take a jury trial for a criminal matter. The judge started off the trial by informing the jury pool that despite the state lacking any evidence, we'd need to attest we could find the defendant guilty. Jurors follow the instructions given to them by judges, that is all.
I have heard from random lawyers that if the facts are in your favor, get a bench trial, if you are actually guilty, you can maybe sway a jury.
We don't have juries because they are smarter or more fair or more just on average than a judge. We have juries entirely due to the concept of jury nullification. It's a formalization of the concept the founders sometimes expressed where "Yes I did it, but that doesn't mean I should go to jail" is an intended outcome. It's explicitly that Justice isn't the same as "follow the letter of the law".
They don't care at all. For her it's potentially six years in prison, for the cops, and the prosecutor it's a small potatoes case on a random Thursday.
The plea deal offer kind of says it all, if this reaches the court it will either very quickly be thrown out or they may drop it because it's not worth the time.
Key insight: the police and prosecutors are not measured by crimes solved but by number of convictions.
Is there a way to know if she is being represented by a public defender?
I believe she's innocent, but neither the ISP nor the iOS version are proof of innocence in any way. You can go login from the neighborhood Starbucks and you can simply update your phone.
In the US, the burden of proof is on the criminal justice system, which is required to prove guilt beyond any reasonable doubt. The defendant's goal is therefore to introduce that reasonable doubt, not necessarily prove innocence. They are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Police are largely incompetent, what do you really expect?
In USA*
Many other countries have proper multi-year colleges specifically for the field of policing, and rigorous physical and mental health tests required to get the job. In those countries the police is more educated and more competent than the vast majority of the population.
I can't think of any country with a competent police force.
The problem is that in most countries (except the US), it is an extremely badly paid job, so it only attracts people who get something else from it: power.
*People
Most people don't have the power to strip me of my freedom and legally shoot me. If anything the police should be held to a higher standard than the average person.
People are likely on average a lot more competent than american police.
unlikely
Police don't issue subpoenas. The courts and prosecuting attorneys do. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/subpena_%28subpoena%29
funny you think cops are supposed to actually solve crimes.
Meanwhile, Cash App who facilitated the scam and actually cost the buyer actual money... walks away with no repercussions. There is something horribly broken when tech companies who are ruining people's lives have zero responsibility but are making money in the process.
So how exactly does Cash App verify users that signup for new accounts? If the process is so lax, shouldn't they be forced to temporary block it? To say nothing about money laundering charges, that would be raised against any bank in such situation.
This is more general issue in the USA. How do you prove who you are? Your driver license / identity card doesn't have a chip, so given enough information about someone else you can sign up as them.
Compare that to say a large part of the EU where people have an identity card with a chip, which has a PIN. It allows institutions to read the chip, and that chip cannot be easily faked (PKI). The photo is on the card and on the chip, so they have to match.
Also, more importantly, all of these financial apps popping up is because the normal banking system is too slow moving for the modern requirements, something the EU has also solved with the SWIFT system.
I can tell you, from personal experience, that the vast majority of sites still don't bother to send a Confirmation Email before allowing you to create an account.
I have a gmail address that I secured back in 2004 which is fairly short in length. Multiple people other than myself have used that email to sign up for all sorts of things which never bothered to confirm that the user actually owned the account before happily signing them up. AWS accounts, hotel sites, innumerable soccer and fantasy-football related sites, etc.
Every time I would try to reach out to the service to tell them that I had never signed up for an account as the email holder, they would give me the same non-answer: "Well if you own the email account, just reset your password and then delete it!" Nope. Not doing that. It was their negligence that allowed the account to be created under my email in the first place. I am not going to acknowledge ownership of the account to cover their fuck-up.
This happens to me frequently, I have an OG gmail account which a bunch of people have associated with their own accounts. The problem is the provider will verify a phone number, and once that's validated, will accept an email address, even if it's wrong. Two financial entities have accepted my email address tied to other people's account: Chime, and Venmo. There's no way to fix this since they all presume I am a customer of theirs, so the path to fix is to do it in their app. It is incredibly frustrating, more so when it's people who handles money do it. They should know better! The "We are not a bank (therefore not covered by banking regulations)" does so much work to cover their shoddy practices.
Same story with Gmail here, and unfortunately over the years it has simply become my primary. I'm still undecided on how I want to handle my own domain+email.
Someone opened a Venmo account using my gmail and immediately started moving thousands of dollars in small transactions, and my only options were to a) take ownership of the thousands of dollars of small transactions that were now associated with my unverified email or b) get my email banned???? Eventually I got an email saying the Venmo was disabled due to suspicious activity, hope that doesn't bite me in the ass in the future.
What if I wanted to sign up for Venmo in the future? Why do I need to create another email address to use their product in the future when they didn't even verify it in the first place? How are they allowed to run their billon dollar business like this?
Want to hear a fun one? You can get realtors to spam any (US) phone number you want by entering it into Zillow for like a rental or something. They do no verification whatsoever.
THIS! THIS! THIS!
I cannot believe that in 2026 companies can get away with not confirming your email address. So damn annoying…and apparently something that can get YOU into legal jeopardy. Could we use this case as class-action precedent to sue a few large companies and get them to change?
Make sure to report the emails as spam. They might actually wake up once their marketing slop stops being delivered to gmail inboxes.
If they don't do any verification, and I'm not sure how they would in countries like the US, then any fraud case or attempt to claw in money from random people should be thrown out of court by any reasonable judge.
Requiring only public information and a SSN that has probably leaked hundreds of times and can be accessed by any number of random people in public and private administration just shouldn't count as even an attempt to verify identity.
SSN should just be considered public information at this point. It’s not secret so it cannot be treated as a password and it’s not even suitable as an identifier. It’s purpose is for tracking earnings, not identifying a person.
In Poland you can block your PESEL (SSN equivalent) to prevent this kind of fraud. One click in our government app or website. If PESEL is needed to confirm identify with a corporation you can unlock it temporarily.
I think it is slightly different in Poland. PESEL has status blocked or unblocked. Certain operations like taking loan or opening bank account requires PESEL to be unblocked at time of operation. But not everything requires unblocked PESEL. If it is not required to be unblocked by law, companies can still verify identity with PESEL even if status is blocked. Correct me if I am wrong. Anyway it is still big improvement.
A national id number should have never been considered any more privileged or authoritative than a name in the first place, any business that does so is being criminally negligent.
I mean, that is why they exist, to replace names, or perhaps more accurately act as a surrogate key for names. The government specifically said don't use the SSN as a secret, and businesses did so anyway.
Well, now you get to the absolute travesty that is:
Identity theft is a failing of other people that is your problem to solve.
This very nearly burned me when buying my home - having been an AT&T customer in the PNW for nearly two decades, "I" apparently decided to hit up a Walmart on the outskirts of El Paso, sign up for a Verizon service, run up two months of international calls and bail out.
Despite a police report, my utility statements, AT&T bills, etc. (all of which were, to be blunt, none of VZWs business), VZW stood by it initially, "On review of your documentation, we remain satisfied that this debt belongs to you based on the documents used to open your account".
I asked to see them, since they were, in VZW's own words, "mine". "We can't, for customer privacy reasons." Oh, so "mine when the bill needs paid, may not be mine for privacy purposes".
We constantly face the consequences of businesses failing to secure the information which they (and in some cases legislation) requires us to give them. And when it (inevitably) is lost, then you're offered "free credit monitoring"...
The CRAs compete for breach business, because it's absolutely a profitable enterprise for them:
If you've ever signed up for one of these "free credit monitoring for a year" following a breach?
When you do, you typically do so by signing up for the highest tier (sometimes $30 or even $50 a month) product with a redemption code for one year free. You have to enter a credit card to do so, and to no-one's surprise, if you don't cancel in time, it automatically converts to a paid subscription "for your convenience".
There are many consumer protection farces in the US, but right up there has to be the notion that "identity theft" is the consumer's responsibility/obligation to prevent or resolve, not the entity that actually had the data stolen. You're considered liable until you prove innocence, even though you did nothing wrong.
The good thing is that you can keep the free credit monitoring services running until you die, because inevitably a new security breach will offer you free credit monitoring before the previous one expires. /s
I think I currently have two overlapping ones going.
I've signed up for a few bank accounts purely online. And if you give them your SSN and enough other information, they're able to pull all your credit reports, in real time, and then do verification based on them, that tends to be quite effective.
If Cash App had run some sort of bank-level verification, I doubt a garden-variety scammer could've "stolen her identity" like this. But, since Cash App is not a bank... they don't need all those pesky safeguards, do they?
The problem is, if you have a SSN and enough other information, you can pull a credit report and answer all the rest of the questions for opening an account.
The credit agencies have also leaked all their info many times. You don't even need a credit report if you're already dealing with leaked PII.
All of the associated information tied to your SSN has also been leaked multiple times. Just having it should not be considered any kind of "proof" of identity in 2026. This should be an easy argument for "reasonable doubt" by any defense attorney.
Cash App is owned by Block, and Block has an existing banking license (an Industrial Loan Company chartered in Utah in 2021), and has a new license application is progress (a National Trust Bank Charter filed just last month). I happen to know that internally Jack was saying things like "we are a bank", and "we can use this license to do all sorts of banking things."
Clearly this is evidence that they can't be trusted as a bank, and should have those licenses revoked.
Not a single comment on how an individual can prevent this? Or is there no way to protect from one’s identity getting stolen and used this way ? What can the rest of us learn from this so that we stack the odds in our favor?
I was scared just reading the article.
There's no such thing as identity theft. Individual companies can be defrauded when they don't do sufficient checks. The companies that do sufficient checks don't get defrauded. You can't prevent someone else's incompetence.
As for being subject to prosecution for crimes that you didn't commit, you can either live in a jurisdiction where the justice system works more effectively, or else be rich and have a good lawyer.
For your amusement/future-utility, the Mitchell & Webb audio skit captures it pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E
You can freeze your credit with all 7 credit rating agencies (Experian, Equifax, Trans Union, and the 4 smaller ones whose names I always forgot) although that may not have protected this case because it is alleged Cash App does not pull your credit before opening an account.
Also opening a Cash App account yourself (even if you don't use it) is weak protection because they allow multiple accounts.
So if there as a defense I don't know what it is. Hope that identity fraud done with your info doesn't happen in a state with aggressive yet lazy/careless law enforcement.
As long as qualified immunity exists, no citizen is safe from this kind of terrorism.
I recall once reading some Patrick Mckenzie article where he discussed how administrative issues like this used to be easily fixed by journalists. They could reach out to an institution seeking comment on a story, the institution's PR department could then ask for 48 hours to comment, in which time they could run something up the flag pole and get it fix. But with the speed on online reporting, they're now incentivized to report on the scandal ASAP, leading institutions to similarly fail to fix the errors. In that case I believe it was about bank foreclosures, but in this case I suspect there might be a way to convince the DA they're prosecuting an old woman and not an e-scammer.
I have a feeling that she will get a very good lawyer, willing to work on contingency, on the ensuing sueball that she'll throw at the state.
As mentioned in other comments, plea deals are basically unconstitutional.
An adjacent question maybe lawyers can answer. In a hypothetical scenario, can the accused here take the plea and then turn around and sue the city/state for money and have their records expunged? What are the downsides? I believe double jeopardy should prevent them from being tried again for the same crime.
Still waiting for industry fans to comment. But let's get the ball rolling:
"I would never defend <company/common practice>. But this article is such egregious ragebait that I must speak out. It's a very sad outcome. But it's also clearly <her fault/impossible to legislate a fix/evidence that the system is working>."
Irony notice. This comment contains irony.
hilarious that the sort of comment you predicted was at the top of the page when i got here.
Was that this one, by any chance? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50195562
I don't understand why ID cards with digital features aren't really a thing in the U.S. In many countries, such as Germany, there are ID cards that you can scan with an app to prove your identity. That makes it much harder for fraudsters to simply open bank accounts in other people's names.
I mean this is a country in which the question of Voter ID can be very controversial.
That’s the wrong framing.
In Germany every adult has to have an ID card. You cannot not have one. As a consequence requiring one for voting is practically unproblematic.
In the US the situation is fundamentally different plus there is a history of heinous racial targeted disenfranchisement of voters to consider that is in the extremely recent past and alive and well.
And what if germany turns authoritarian again? Unthinkable I know, but ID cards will only become a tool of oppression.
Only Anglo-Saxon society thinks like that. I never ever see another society think like this.
It's like seething over criminal justice system (police, court, prisons), what if govt turns authoritarian? Criminal justice system will become a tool of oppression.
Sure criminal justice system can be and have been a tool of oppression, but no sane society would forgo criminal justice under this fear.
To be fair some things that are considered normal in non-Anglo Saxon societies are considered authoritarian in Anglo Saxon societies, in particular having to register your whereabouts with the government, or having to carry ID at all times.
If it does go to court, would explaining to the jury how half the nation's personal data is leaked twice a month be allowed? Or is this one of those truths that society is not allowed to acknowledge?
I would imagine it would be probative for the defense to bring in evidence of every data breach containing her name and ssn. I don’t think pointing out how common these data leaks are generally would be of direct evidentiary value to the case, though.
Of course it would. Most jurors have probably received more than one "We take security seriously" letter and free credit monitoring because they were included in a data breach. Relating to their own experience and getting them to think "that could be me" about the defendant would be very valuable. Creating reasonable doubt is the primary job of a criminal defense attorney, as that obligates the jury to a not guilty finding.
Isn't it Cashapp that allowed a criminal to open an account with someone else's social security number? Does she have a case against Cashapp?
I believe this is the case record and the arrest warrant:
https://caseinfo.arcourts.gov/opad/case/46CR-26-292
https://caseinfo.arcourts.gov/opad/case/46AW-26-272
Lots of mouths are getting fed when someone goes through the legal system. Police, bail bondsman, various clerks, attorneys, … I can see their motivation in maximizing the interaction.
Cash app and all of the organizations that stored but did not secure her social security number and other information should be liable, not her
If innocent, the prosecutors need to fail jail time. This is absurd.
I hope she wins, sues the state, sues the individuals, sues everyone, and retires on a private island.
Third post on the same news item. Clearly struck a chord. Does things like this happen in china?
People indicate how there is no privacy there but if things like this get out of hand and start happening for the masses wouldn’t one prefer a place like china where these things simply don’t happen because the system knows everything about every one? What am I missing ?
Way to Know Your Customer, CashApp!
Her next lawsuit needs to be CashApp and their grotesque negligence on that front.
Would the EFF get involved in a case like this? Feels like it could set an important principle about how weak the link can be between “PII” and the actual person, given the preponderance of data leaks.
This story is making me angrier than any story in the news right now
Sam this really hits a nerve just thinking about all my friends and elderly family that are not tech savvy.
I don't think technical knowledge really comes into play here, which is exactly why it's causing such anxiety. If you're a U.S. citizen, enough of your identity is available for sale that this could happen to you, and there's nothing you can do about it.
You can't keep your PII safe because government and financial institutions have it, have already lost it repeatedly, and keep exposing it. You can't prevent these types of accounts from being opened because credit blocks and monitoring don't come into play with them. You can't monitor it yourself because the accounts don't show up on credit reports and there's no way for you to find out they exist.
The victim in this case was randomly selected. It could have been any person in the country, because literally every single one of us has had the minimum info needed to create a Cash App (et. al) account leaked at least once. Some people commenting here have probably had accounts opened in their names and never knew about it, only because the police weren't as malicious as the guys handling this case, or didn't feel like bothering to investigate at all.
It's good this is seen as big news, but to anyone paying attention this is an everyday occurrence.
All you need to charge someone is to show by a preponderance of the evidence that the elements of the offense were committed. Account being in your name and used in the crime meets that criteria. The problem is that many times a "thorough investigation" was not performed. There's nothing in law requiring a thorough investigation, but it's usually included in department regulations. You can file a complaint, but they won't do anything about it. There is no accountability anywhere in the system. The judges who are supposed to be neutral are severely biased due to the structure of the system and lack of training.
If you can afford it, always make them take it to jury trial.
Identify theft/identity fraud is a bullshit risk-shifting move by the banking class.
The actual crime is classic fraud and it's directed at the banks and financiers. By inventing "identify theft", the financial sector shifts responsibility and financial consequences from themselves to the uninvolved, innocent, and frequently totally unaware individuals that fraudsters represent themselves to be.
With this system in place, instead of then requiring that banks spend the resources to verify who they believe they're doing business with (or else risk being defrauded), we have "credit monitoring" and "identity security" services and individuals being held financially and criminally liable for crimes they're often so uninvolved in they _literally don't know they happened_.
Meanwhile in our inboxes: “We take the security and privacy of our users very seriously” and “We have no reason to believe that social security numbers in our user database were accessed.”
May be someone who knows Jack Dorsey (CEO of Block which owns Cash App) should make him aware to the plight of this woman and Cash App can actually use this as an opportunity to do the right thing despite thier mistake.
Playing devil's advocate here, how should this actually be handled? If the police show up (not saying they did all the due diligence they should have) to arrest you for a crime and the person says "Nope, wasn't me."...is that sufficient for police to drop everything and walk away?
She's been accused of a crime. Yes, she was arrested and had to bail out. This is normal process. How else does anyone propose this work?
> the account had been created using Smith's Social Security number and date of birth
This may be enough to open an investigation and start gathering more evidence, but doesn't satisfy probable cause. The cops and court screwed up.
A database match is not enough to confirm that this specific person (may have) committed the crime.
It would be like sending a ransom note asking the money be sent to Joe Smith, 123 Fake St. That doesn't really tell you anything about Joe Smith's connection to the crime. It's completely incidental.
I wonder how much nonsense gets misattributed to Joe Smith [0].
[0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/xnJUmJArCeaDmKem9
Typically an investigation involving a digital crime lab that understands what they are doing. For example tying the digital traces to the actual suspect. If there are no ties to IP addresses or devices then it gets really tricky.
Again in the article the defense is saying the prosecution is demanding the lady prove her innocence, which is something cops love to do.
And because this is a technical crime the fact there is almost no evidence isn't going to save you in a court of law, especially in the 4th least educated state. It's not about the law any longer, but the stories the lawyers weave.
An accusation is typically not sufficient to arrest someone for a suspected crime.
It's not just an accusation. Her identifying information is basically found at a crime scene.
Every part of this would be fine if the companies allowing fraudulent parties to use their platforms were prosecuted for mail fraud, or interstate commerce fraud. Put the executive in jail. It's really this simple. The moment executives have repercussions they change their actions. Make cashapp prove they did their due diligence.
> Her identifying information is basically found at a crime scene.
This means nothing in reality. These days half the USA has their personal information stolen in a data breach every week.
Why would they need to arrest and extradite her for a crime like this?
That's what I'm saying. people do way way worse things and are given a notice to appear.
For starters in this case, extradition shouldn't really work like that. There is no reason a suspect cannot be jailed somewhere close to their home (ie near their family), with police from the distant jurisdiction doing the traveling to question her etc. Doubly so if she's able to post bail. It's the police's day job versus the suspect's life, right?
But as to basic situation, the fundamental problem is that there is no expectation of justice at the end of this.
There isn't really a way around the police (and judges who approve warrants etc) just doing their thing and you having to comply. But if it turns out they were wrong, then they should always be on the hook for all the damage they've caused - the same as every other member of society. In this case, every day the victim was held in jail, her costs of having to hire attorneys and private investigators to represent her, plus simply the distress of having this hanging over her head while being threatened with years in prison.
The article implies this has already been going on for six months. While this isn't a long time as far as the legal system goes (remember, day job), it's an eternity for someone on the receiving end of it. That should be well north of a million dollars for disrupting someone's life that long (especially over a frivolity!) - putting aside any abuse suffered in jail, direct reimbursement for expenses, etc. I want to say it should be more, but $5500/day seems in the correct neighborhood (a daily rate should be much higher for days you're actually in jail, but lower on days you're "free" but are still under attack).
This would create a strong disincentive for incompetent (or in this case, constructively malicious) action by police/prosecutors, as well as demonstrating to all citizens that the justice system actually tries to get correct answers rather than harming innocent people and then merely wiping their hands of it.
I like the theory of this comment. The actual numbers probably wouldn't work, but the theory is sound.
The payment for wrong prosecution would create a back pressure on the justice system which is currently only possible via media reporting, something generally only accessible to the powerful or otherwise sympathetic defendant. We'd need a category of dismissal which is "innocent", where a judge determines not only is the person "not guilty", but that actually, with proper investigation and application of thought, the prosecution could have determined innocence beforehand themselves. This should come with the payment and automatic complete expungement of all records, and an entry in the local newspaper of the declared innocence of the defendant.
Then the last piece of the puzzle would be outlawing police and prosecutor unions, and firing police and prosecutors who have poor records of sending "innocent" cases to trial. This would serve to create a pressure towards correct prosecution.
I wonder whether this type of situation is an artifact of the US system of law being focused on codification / literalism / textualism, as opposed to the UK and similar systems where common law or judge made law has more weight, which permits the injection of some level of common sense into situations where a literal interpretation of the statutes would lead to ridiculous outcomes.
In the UK the vast majority of prosecutions are made by the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS are civil servants and, unlike in the US where they elect the guy emptying the trash, the crossing guards and the receptionist, these are just career lawyers.
Most importantly here, the CPS has a "Test" https://www.cps.gov.uk/publication/code-crown-prosecutors#se... to tell them whether they should prosecute people. This is going to weed out a whole lot of the worst examples you'll see in the US.
You may remember Horizon not so long back, which was a gross misscarriage of justice in which large numbers of people who effectively worked for the Post Office were accused of crimes, in some cases jailed and even in a few cases committed suicide. Horizon is exceptional because, since mail was historically very important, the Post Office actually did have the same power as a Crown Prosecutor. Those cases were still sometimes really the fault of the CPS (not least because the CPS has a legal right to just seize control of, and then terminate a prosecution if they believe it would be prudent to do so) but are exceptional because most organisations could not have done this even if they wanted to try it.
> In the UK the vast majority of prosecutions are made by the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS are civil servants and, unlike in the US where they elect the guy emptying the trash, the crossing guards and the receptionist, these are just career lawyers.
Where did you get the idea that what you're saying is accurate about the US?
In the US most prosecutors are not elected, they are also civil servants and career lawyers. Their boss, a County or State Attorney, typically is elected, but they rarely prosecute cases.
I've also never elected a garbage man, crossing guard, or a receptionist in my life, but I've only been voting for almost 30 years now. Maybe it'll come up soon.
The "guy emptying the trash" and so on were hyperbole. Perhaps I should have made that clearer. Americans elect far too many of these roles and that's a problem but it is true that, so far at least, they do not elect the people who empty their trash.
The ultimate boss at the CPS is just a lawyer, his boss is the Attorney General for England and Wales and the Attorney General (although also usually a lawyer) is a politician, typically an elected politician. But that's quite a lot more distance between your criminal case and somebody trying to get re-elected.
This is kind of true. What is unusual about the Post Office is that they have exceptional investigatory powers but anyone can bring a prosecution in the UK.
And it is an important freedom. If the state is declining to prosecute its own, citizens should be able to.
In my view the biggest problem is the credulity of the courts, who are inclined to believe evidence from corporate officers by default, and often refuse efforts to challenge it. The late Ross Anderson documented many cases from the 1990s onwards of people being convicted on bullshit technical evidence.
Maybe the CPS would have seen through it if they had conducted the prosecutions, but I don't think that's obviously true.
It's a negligible freedom. The CPS can always choose to seize control of any prosecution and, if it sees fit, discontinue the prosecution. So at most they can choose to ignore a prosecution unless either the prosecutor or accused bring it to their attention specifically, and if that happens they're obliged to actually do something (though that might be explicitly taking no action, it's distinct from ignorance because there's a process they have to follow by law to decide what to do).
This is an important defence - every Post Office defendant could have chosen (or rather, their lawyers knowing the law could have done so) to flag their case for this process and force the CPS to decide what to do and as you say it's conceivable that in the most egregious cases that would have stopped it †
There are definitely flaws in this system, I just have more confidence in it than I do for the American system. I didn't know Ross Anderson was dead. He did some really good work.
† We know it wouldn't have always worked because there are Horizon casees where the CPS are the listed prosecutor. Jurors weren't the only people who gullibly accepted that the Computer is infallible, but at least the CPS were not employees of the executives who knew this was bullshit and have largely escaped any consequences.
I know that the CPS could seize and shutdown a politically sensitive case but as far as I know that has never happened. And I hope that if it did people would make a fuss.
Relatedly, after Peter Tatchell failed to arrest Robert Mugabe the government changed the law so that prosecutions for breaches of international law could only be brought by the government.
Anyway, I agree that I'd rather face a criminal charge here than in America.
I don't know what you mean by "politically sensitive"
The CPS does not track what happens to prosecutions it has taken control of. Conveniently they're just CPS cases once that happens, and so the question "What happened to them?" is magically a manual discernment and not amenable to FOIA.
We can ask, and so we have, how many they took control of. The answer is typically in the range of few dozen but not a hundred per year. Since these then disappear into their normal case system they could be prosecuted exactly like any other CPS case, they could be dismissed immediately as erroneous, or any of the usual dispositions for a criminal case, and the CPS won't tell us (if we're to believe them, it doesn't know)
We know a lot of private prosecutions are by the RSPCA, since they have funding to prosecute animal abuse and money is always tight. But presumably in the typical case the CPS is either never told or if it is explicitly told by either party it chooses to do nothing and allow the prosecution to happen. So those cases would not be on the list where the CPS took control.
I mean cases where the state might decline to prosecute the politically powerful.
You may not be able to find out what happens to taken-over cases in general, but are you aware of any case where the CPS took over a prosecution and the original prosecutor simply doesn't know what happened in the end?
If you have a specific case you can just (well, I can't easily but a lawyer will know how without having to go re-read documentation they didn't look at for years) get the court records for that case and see what happened to it. The CPS claims they can't answer a FOIA "what happened to these cases?" type query because once the CPS owns the case it's just another case, but if you had a particular case in mind that's not a FOIA situation you just look at the court records.
From the sound of the things you're thinking about what I'd expect is that the defendant tells the CPS, the CPS seize this case and then they have it dismissed. If you weren't looking for evidence it will be pretty easy in almost any case to decide you do not have sufficient evidence for reasonable prospect of conviction, but in such cases you can probably also make out a position that there is no public interest in such a prosecution - for example because it would be embarrassing.
Both the US and UK operate under common-law systems with substantial judicial precedent. In practice, there is very little difference between the two systems.
For those of us who are outside of the US, can someone explain why we see things like a judge ordering a 7 year old without legal representation to file legal paperwork? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/15/us/lawyers-unaccompanied-...
I'm not a lawyer, but I always associated (perhaps wrongly) common law with common sense. I don't see much of the latter here.
“Immigration judges” are not judges in the normal sense, they’re employees of the Department of Justice.
Unless you're in Louisiana, which has some really weird processes.
Specifically in Louisiana you need to ask for a lawyer when arrested, not a 'lawyer dog'
Don't forget (and not just in LA) that you can only exercise your right to remain silent not by remaining silent, but by saying those words, ideally in response to each individual question.
Otherwise the prosecutor can stand up in court and say you were "uncooperative" and resisted, even obstructed attempts to investigate the crime, and if your lawyer tries to frame this as you exercising your right, the judge will not permit this because you didn't utter the magical incantations.
The U.S. system of law is also based on common law, and is indeed derived from the English legal system. It's called "English common law".
With the exception of Louisiana, the US system of law is rooted in the common law as inherited directly from the UK in the late 18th century, so no.
[dead]
The entire concept of identity is very outdated and the general public understanding of digital identity is not accurate. Scammers are one thing but there are other cases where the Gov't itself can direct actions on your accounts if they have a reason to be looking into you. You do not own your medical records, financial records, location data, bank accounts, or anything else.
In this case, it may not matter that she has the truth on her side. The prosecution already took it far enough to offer her a plea deal. All they technically have to prove is that some piece of a digital trail, like having the phone number in the past, is proof that she is guilty of the crime involved here. Her home mailing address, current phone, devices, lack of travel, no associated facebook accounts, none of it mattered to the point she was arrested, extradited and is now being offered a plea deal for something she didn't do.
It's made more complicated by the fact that a prosecution doesn't really care what is true or not. They are not about to devote resources to finding out if the case they are prosecuting is based on accurate evidence. They have to rely on the police report to do this. And good luck with an Arkansas cop understanding how the scamming world operates. He put down his donut long enough to run a search in LexisNexus to link a phone number. And that is enough for a felony conviction in our corrupt court system.
And this was with her being the target of a scammer! Imagine if the Gov't itself was after you and wanted to sort of coerce and frame you for a crime. Or even just use your accounts against you.
The whole system is corrupt and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Starting with the entire concept of IDENTITY.
Digital identity is one thing. But I am curious to hear why you think identity, itself, is very outdated? If that is what you are actually saying.
Is there a GoFundMe for her?
wondering the same I would happily contribute
Shame on Cash App and Block for their horrible customer support.
Sad that Block Inc get to profit from frictionless signups, and outsource any costs of failings to innocent people in the form of jailtime.
Computer fraud, unlawful use of a communication device, and (identity) theft describe what Cash App helped facilitate rather than anything she did.
I wonder what happens if I start allowing people to send me personal information, auto-accept everything as the truth, and start sending their money around the world...
This is so backwards that it doesn't even compute in my brain.
This basically says I can act in bad faith to incriminate anyone if I have access to a somewhat "reputable" SaaS.
I hope some black hat group targets these prosecutors identities and create accounts for them so they experience that firsthand to understand how ridiculous this is.
From what I can tell, the best she can possibly hope for is to be set free after a few hundred thousand dollars in legal fees. I see this as a consequence of increasingly out of control automation.
>Smith later discovered why she had been arrested: a scammer had tricked someone into sending $1,000 to a Cash App account, one that was in her name but controlled by a criminal.
And that brings $50,000 bail and days spend in jail before trial? Should just be a civic matter at worst.
>It turned out that the account had been created using Smith's Social Security number and date of birth. But Smith, who describes herself as not tech-savvy, said she had never used Cash App. The situation sounds like one that should have been resolved quickly. But Smith says she is still being asked to prove her innocence in an ongoing criminal case. One stumbling block was that Cash App refused to hand over details of the account to Smith because she couldn't prove she was the owner. She eventually received the data through discovery in her case.
Surely some details about her are the same as in the account profile, and not just the name, else they wouldn't prosecute her for an app account that bears no relation to her. Do they prosecute people just for something happening on the same name and surname as them?
If the account had others details about here to fool people, like her photo or SSN or address, she should have got access to the account, without having to demand it via discovery.
To get access to the account probably required using e-mail or phone number to match 2FA for a password reset.
> she should have got access to the account, without having to demand it via discovery.
Even if she can (which is probably the case), she wants to go through discovery so there is a paper trail of going through a process. If she does this by any other means she depends on them to have the records of that process to prove she didn't have access to the account at the time. By going through discovery there is a trail of when she transferred access to her name and so it is on them to prove she had access to the account before that date.
>Even if she can (which is probably the case), she wants to go through discovery
The case, as per TFA, was the opposite: she wanted to get access and couldn't, and she finally managed through discovery.
You describe what she "should have preferred" (in order to have the trail), I was talking about the actual case.
> If the account had others details about here to fool people, like her photo or SSN or address, she should have got access to the account, without having to demand it via discovery.
Did you read the quote you quoted? Your quote says the account was created with her social and date of birth.
>Did you read the quote you quoted?
Did you read what I wrote? Did I say it wasn't created with her SSN? I'm saying "if it was created with her SSN, then the service should have given her access.
We use the "if X" in my parts to mean "since X was the case, then....". And it seems it's valid in US English too:
Even if the speaker has just read a report explicitly stating that X did Y, using "if" is perfectly possible. The important distinction is that "if" does not necessarily indicate doubt about whether the Y occurred. In this context, it can have two interpretations:
Conditional justification: "If X did Y, then so and so is justified" The speaker is explaining what makes some reaction justifiable, without necessarily questioning the report.
Uncertainty about the facts: "Assuming X really did Y, then so and so was justified." Here, the speaker is reserving judgment about whether the report is accurate.
Both interpretations are available to a native English speaker.
Bullshit plea deals are offered in bullshit cases like this only so that the "officers" involved can save face and claim "yupp, conviction!! we're the good guys!" because there is no additional downside or risk to them.
It really would be great if judges could (and would) issue sanctions and/or personal fines against people who are so clearly operating in bad faith.
Land of the free...
But they sure are brave to continue living there.
"land of the brave home of the free"
It's just another fallen pillar: innocent until proven guilty.
[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50181794
> Just hours after the $1,000 arrived, it was divided into smaller amounts and sent to a network of other accounts
Go after all these network of other accounts and cashapp must be held liable. They didn't do proper identity verification... And, these police seems incapable of finding real criminal. They are fool to assume people will use their own account to scam others.
Before you form a strong opinion on the matter, I recommend you take the time to investigate who the source of the claims is in this article and whether the counterparty has had sufficient opportunity to state their case.
She should say her chatbox went rogue on her. It seems to be a efficient line of defence.
I'm disgusted. How would one go about ensuring that their social couldn't be used to create an account with this much liability? Would freezing a credit line be enough?
Prosecutors have no interest in "justice." They are measured solely on conviction rates. If she's convicted, she will go through needless life-destroying suffering because of this. But at the end, it will be overturned after the prosecutors in question have been elected to Congress or a governorship. And then lawsuits will ensue. And that's why BS like this will never stop.
Even if she’s not convicted, paying lawyers, time off work, mental health, etc., can still be plenty life-destroying.
I'm just wondering where the EFF and the ACLU are at the moment. This seems like a perfect opportunity to point out the dangers in current cyber crime laws and do some genuine good in the world.
And with internet crimes like this the legal attack could come from anywhere. I trust that Arkansas does not have a competent digital crimes task force, as they are idiotic in almost everything else in the legal world.
Someone opened up a PayPal account in my name a few weeks ago using an old address. I canceled my PayPal account years ago because I was afraid of it being linked to my bank.
It took an hour to get past the AI who kept hanging up on me. I’m more concerned after reading the article.
How did you know the PayPal account had been created?
I'm feeling paranoid now and wondering if the best defense is to proactively open accounts with Cash App, Venmo, whatever other stupid peer-to-peer wallet apps exist, just to lock down my identity and be in control of it. I'm not sure if locked credit and monitoring would work here because these services probably don't do credit checks or show up on reports anyway.
I felt the same way, and made a CashApp account, but I don't think it matters. It didnt say anything about the fraud account having her email address. It just had her name and they inputted her social. I don't think there's anything you can do but pray.
That is one defense for having an open system, but that only affects services who use these systems. The article doesn't mention if CashApp actually used her social to check credit, or just took the attackers' word by checking if the SS was valid and provided credit.
The other problem is that there isn't just one credit system, there are 3 major ones for general consumer credit, and other specialty ones (Innovis, etc; I had a list somewhere but can't seem to find it; AI might be a friend here).
It would be a significant improvement if full names with middle name and maiden name/name changes (if any), date of birth, and SSN were published:
Because then nobody could keep using them like they're a password, and would have to find actually secure ways of identifying people.
Only SSN is not public information. They are not published, but the records are public if you go to the right place in person and ask the right questions. (sometimes you have a "need to know" before they will tell you, but it isn't hard to find one)
Even SSN is not private - you need to share it with enough people that it is safe to assume bad people have it.
Connecting an ID to a individual person is very hard. It is even harder when that person is not physically there.
One of the more irritating forms of "ID" now is asking people to upload a driver licence photo, passport photo, or take a selfie of themselves.
I've heard someone mention using Chexsystems but I'm not sure if that's available to ordinary consumers or how you'd be able to just go and do that. Or if it would show something like Cashapp.
https://www.chexsystems.com/security-freeze/place-freeze
I don't know enough about it to say if it would prevent the opening of a CashApp account.
It actually depends on which credit bureau CashApp is contracted to use. If they use TransUnion, then you'd need a TransUnion account and freeze your credit report there.
And what should be inflicted on the Cash App company for causing her this distress?
Few millions should be fine so they really think through their procedures.
This is equivalent of swatting her. They should pay and at least few people who did actual crime of negligence should go to jail.
Cash App's stock transfer records in the app vs their backend reports and bank transfer amounts don't reconcile and always in their favor. Their and their partners' terms make no provision for this. I have proof, reported to SEC CFPB NYS no enforcement.
I have proof Cash App is skimming stock trades. Their app and backend reports report different settlement amounts always in their favor, their app reports and transfer amounts don't reconcile. Nothing in their terms or partners' terms give them the right to do this. I reported to SEC CFPB NYS finance no action.
This is absurd. Would she be able to sue Block/CashApp? She should. For millions and millions of dollars.
Obviously one could subpoena the Facebook Marketplace account to get information on the user
In Brazil you can register your cpf (brazilian social security number) on the "Registrato", a Brazilian Central Bank system, and from that point on no new bank/payments account can be created on your name. You have to go to "Registrato" first and remove your name from it. It's amazing that the US doesn't have it. In Brazil you also can put your cpf on a list that forbids it from being added as an owner/partner on any company. I keep my cpf on both lists and sleep peacefully at night.
I saw this advertised on the dark web somewhere as a way to make money, along with a list of other services that support easy identity theft.
Stuff like this feels like some kind of society-wide humiliation ritual
Occasionally the system just ruins someone's life even though they're innocent, and the rest of us have to watch it so we learn just how thin ice we're all on. This woman didn't do anything and she's still getting wrung through the system, the rest of you better watch out
Gotta feed a sheep to the wolves every now and then so the other sheep learn to behave :/
Wow, that's crazy.
Cash App sounds pretty scummy TBH
Let me guess. USA?
For the land of the free and home of the brave ... it's incredible what you let happen.
There's 330 million people here. You, being not from here, only find out about what's exceptional, not what's normal. This case made the news because of how bad it is. It this was common, it wouldn't have made the news.
The instance might be exceptional, but the steady torrent of different varities of shit coming out of the USA is not exceptional. It's incredible.
And don't me wrong, I'm certain there are millions of good people in the USA. But the assholes are in the ascendancy. Obviously.
Stand up, or get flushed down the shitter.
Lots of people are from many different places where this kind of shit never happens. Yet it keeps happening in America.
You think instances of bad policing and prosecuting only happens in the US? For real?
Again, you're being presented with this article because it is an exceptional occurrence. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be discussing it.
"Land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy" -Zakk DeLaRoche
"Rage Against the Machine? Let's do 9 figures of highly profitable revenue for a large multinational, that'll show them!" - Zakk DeLaRoche, probably
You're glossing over the part where this approach brought their message into mainstream culture. If they took the money and dropped the message, sure. The history doesn't really support the narrative, though.
Let's not pretend this is an every day occurrence that happens to everyone. It's a one-off oddball situation. I'm not even sure we have all the details considering the sources.
The instance might be exceptional, but the steady torrent of different varities of shit coming out of the USA is not exceptional. It's incredible.
And don't me wrong, I'm certain there are millions of good people in the USA. But the assholes are in the ascendancy. Obviously.
Stand up, or get flushed down the shitter.
You need to get off the internet immediately--especially reddit. Normal people wake up in the morning, put their clothes on, go to work, and come home. You're reading about people who are not the normal everyman and applying it to all persons (and all of the USA). Quit doing that.
How I would like this to go so wrong for Cash App and the Prosecution. 10's of millions in fines but we all know the system protects these Corporations and shitty prosecutors. In the end she will have lost years of her life, her savings, etc with no restitution.
Nah people routinely sue local governments and police and win hefty settlements when it's determined that those organizations negligently damaged them in this sort of way. There was a lady in New York a while back who was held on armed robbery charges for like 18 months and it ended up she was set up by her PI ex-boyfriend who was friends with the cops. She lost her business, her job and all that time with her daughter as well. She sued afterwards and won some mid-single-digit-millions sum that I would argue is low (because honestly while that's probably life changing for her, it's not punitive enough for the police department), but it's not nothing.
Ideally, her home state might have some laws (consumer protection, criminal neglect, whatever) which allowed her to sue Cash App for a very large sum.
IANAL - might any such care to comment?
A related angle is trying to get such laws passed, to discourage similar cases in the future.
> A related angle is trying to get such laws passed, to discourage similar cases in the future
Who is going to sponsor such a law? The same representatives that are paid by the lobbyists of the corporations the laws are targeting?
Some legislators - perhaps honest idealists, perhaps those being paid more by lawyers specializing in such lawsuits - do work at getting such laws passed.
You're telling me you think there are >50% of congress critters and senators that are not on the take?
1) No, and 2) Irrelevant. State laws are made by state legislators.
Considering the endless vistas of billboards advertising lawyers for personal injury lawsuits and such in my part of Michigan - I feel pretty sure that >50% of our legislators are enrolled in those lawyers' "gratitude programs".
If you don't know who Aaron Swartz is, you may want to read up on how he was bullied by very much the same justice system.
What a complete and total non sequitur. Go ahead, name drop a folk hero from last decade who HN happens to love, even though his case has nothing in common with the one described in TFA. This is absolutely peak HN.
Go read up on literally any subject outside your narrow bubble of tech culture.
These are felony charges, are there no grand juries in AZ. The defense needs to absolutely unseal the grand jury testimony, there could have been nothing but lies told in that room. Not a single shred of evidence the defendant was ever in Arizona.
Fortunately, this stuff will never change because we're too busy fighting amongst ourselves how much foreign labor we should import to keep people too poor to fight these cases in the first place.
Consider the story a PSA, for folks who still believe that Trust and Justice are somehow part of the American Way. Maybe use it as a teaching tool with your kids, too.
Don't teach your kids that some one-off oddball case reported by non-standard news media is the norm. It's not.
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-crim...
Accepting plea bargains, even when innocent, to avoid the huge expense of defending yourself is the norm.
Admitting to guilt, even when innocent, is not normal behavior among a normal population. As evidence, the topic of this thread, and probably you and me, and not some unknown elements in a story by NPR.
> Aside from the paltry number of trials in the federal system, states including Pennsylvania, Texas and New York have trial rates of less than 3%. In Santa Cruz County, Ariz., there were no trials from 2010 to 2012, the report said.
The numbers are damning. It's simply not possible that police & district attorneys are good enough at their jobs to identify the correct perpetrator with >97% accuracy. Or 100% accuracy in Santa Cruz County.
This is naive.
You are arrested for a crime you didn't commit. The prosecution charges you with a serious crime with punishment of years in prison. Your lawyer can't guarantee you'll be found not guilty and you'll be in jail for a least a year until the trial because you can't make bail. The DA then offers a plea bargain to a lessor crime with several months in prison.
Lots of innocent people would, and do, plead guilty to the lessor crime.
[flagged]
[dead]
[flagged]
[dead]
[flagged]
[dead]