Want to hear from some fellow progressive Re: Crime

[Anser]

So, I'm left of left on most issues... crime, and how to deal with it as a society being one of them, but I'd like to ask a question which may sound like it's coming from the right.

It has to do with second chances.

Why do violent criminals deserve them?

This question isn't about innocence or guilt. I am a strong advocate for legal protections of liberty, privacy, and imposing a high burden of proof on the state, with many fail-safes built in.

While in law school I remember talking with a defense attorney that was visiting about such protections of autonomy, and the idea of innocent until proven guilty. We agreed on most things, had a nice discussion, until she said something that surprised me: "But really, it doesn't matter if they are innocent or guilty, they still deserve every protection available and a zealous advocate."

Here I disagreed. The very same principles that make me a strong supporter of human rights, reinforce the idea of human responsibilities. Nothing foolish like the "Freedom isn't free" Orwellian crowd, but just basic things like "do no intentional harm to others."

So finally... can someone defend the position that proven violent criminals, that had purposefully and with forethought, destroyed the lives of others, deserve "every protection" and ultimately a second chance (say, after serving their time.)

In a world where so many of us don't even get a first chance, such as those born into abject poverty, why do rapists, killers, and maimers deserve a second one?


(I realize there is a relatively strong "anti-crime" element here at DU, and I'd of course love to hear from you as well, but I'm really interested in some responses from the far left, anti-nixonian crowd. You know, people who cringe, as I've been known to do, when they here the term "law and order" in reference to a political ideology.)

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. You may not have understood what the defense attorney

said to you.

She was reminding you that guilt is a matter for the jury to decide, and not the defense counsel's, so you are to make sure the client gets every protection available while you are serving as zealous advocate.

Defense counsel doesn't decide guilt - the jury does.

And, until then, the presumption of innocence must hold precedence over anything else.

Your thinking should be clearer now, because your stated position is untenable under our Constitution............................

[Anser]

7. Thanks

Though I don't understand your last line. Is it the assumption of guilt thing? It is meant only for the question, and not to be applied to a real case.

Maybe it's my science background and our love of "thought-experiments" which are not always the most practical in the real world sense. Because I was shocked by what the defense attorney said, I tried to get clarification. She said, even if someone is clearly guilty, admits to it (not under duress), was videotaped, and would jump across and strangle their own attorney if not for the cuffs, that person still deserves every protection just as much as someone falsely accused.

I understand that in a practical sense such cut and dry cases hardly ever exist, but if you take guilt as a given (a HUGE assumption, and one that isn't legal) does someone with actual malice towards others, and an interest in doing harm to the innocent, deserve sociatal resources and second chances. That said, I'm all for providing defendants with an attorney, because I think there is a lot more innocense, or at least, ambiguity, in the real world than in my thught experiment.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

16. You're saying that you have trouble

with the idea of someone who is convicted of a violent crime, does the time, gets out, either with or without parole, and is then turned back into society as a free person being afforded the Constitutionally-protected presumption of innocence should he be charged later with another violent crime?

Well, if you're a law student, or have studied law, you know that the presumption of innocence is granted freely, with absolutely no restrictions, and as you should have learned while studying Evidence and Procedure, no one is allowed to bring up the defendant's prior bad acts unless he takes the stand in his own defense.

So, you are, as a licensed attorney, duty bound to hold the best possible defense for your client, and the concept of "guilt" is not part of your lexicon. Even with your stated "confession" scenario, the defendant's attorney must still mount the best possible defense, exploring the extenuating circumstances which may prove probative in acquitting him of the charged crime.

The last line of my prior post was nothing but a reminder that the presumption of innocence is precious and must always be regarded and protected. Without reservation or qualification. It just stands, and we all have to applaud it.

And, in life - not just in the law - we all deserve second chances.

Today, consider the life of Ted Kennedy, who made some very bad mistakes in his personal life (as a longtime DC-area resident, I can tell you stories about him and Chris Dodd that were never reported in the papers), but who got a second, and a third, and a fourth, and more chances.

Mortal, just like you, just like I am. We all need second chances..................

[XemaSab]

2. Let's use an example:

Say a 22 year old man goes out to a bar, gets in a fight, hits the other guy, and the guy dies.

First, he should get a good defense so that this guy doesn't wind up with life in prison for something which any reasonable person would agree was an accident.

Second, if our guilty criminal does his time and gets out, he should be allowed to be a productive member of society.

(I also think some people should be locked up forever, but we're talking about crimes which no reasonable person would agree should be punished with a life sentence.)

[TheKentuckian]

3. We have an adversarial system where the state has unlimited resources and a huge trust advantage

so, it is absolutely required that any and every defendant must have every protection and a zealous advocate. There is no part of the legal process that is interested in truth so in lieu of that the defendant needs every possible advantage in attempting to stack the deck in their favor or everyone accused will just be trucked by the system and second chances have little to do with anything. We have a rules and consequences. When a rule is broken there is a penalty but once that penance has been completed then that offender's obligations to the state and community should be completed.

It is bullshit that we punish and then continue to punish long after the sentence is completed. If you get 20 years then once that is done you should be fully restored to all rights. Its not a second chance but still the first one. You fucked up and paid a price (often a substantial one beyond the measure of the offense) and are now being allowed to go about your business (or should be but we have a high level of pure vindictiveness and stupidity that leads to a criminal class).

[The Magistrate]

4. What She Read You, Sir, Are Simply the Rules Of Our Social Compact

Since it is not possible really to distinguish between guilt and innocence prior to trial, it is not possible to deprive the guilty of rights to effective consul without depriving the innocent of same. It is in the interests of all that the state be made to prove its case against an individual, since the resources of the state are so much greater. The powers if the state can over-bear any individual, if marshaled effectively, and the potential for mis-use of this power is simply too great to be unopposed by some check, which is what the defense lawyer's creed is. certainly there will be some instances where effective consul for a defendant manages to achieve a result that shocks the community, or even the conscience, and these instances are often no more palatable to me than to you, but they are part of the price paid for living in a free society, and it is just as true that zealous prosecution, sometimes quite illegitimate in character, sometimes manages to achieve results equally shocking to the conscience and the community.

[Greyhound]

5. I think it comes down to what kind of society do you want?

First, I think the only people that should be imprisoned are deliberately and maliciously violent (not a drunken yahoo in a bar brawl). Other people convicted of crimes should spend their time and money helping to make their victims whole. Who is benefited by putting an accountant behind bars for a decade? How is society helped by warehousing a drug dealer?

Next, we have to decide what the purpose of our very expensive penal system is. Rehabilitation or simple punishment?

All of this is based on an assumption of finding clear guilt after a strong defense.

[IDFbunny]

6. The pragmatic Chinese don't believe in long prison terms.

The Chinese system punishes criminals for up to about 5 years, if that isn't enough to recover a productive worker then he is just wasting food and expensive space and isn't worth sustaining at all and is executed. I to think that life in prison is a fate worse than death.

[Jackpine Radical]

8. Most criminals, at least the "habitual" variety,

tend to have thoroughly messed-up backgrounds. You wouldn't believe how many of them meet the formal criteria for PTSD. They tend to use addictive substances and behaviors as a means of self-medicating their anxiety, depression and anger.

Now, certainly many people arise out of equally bad circumstances without becoming criminals. I don't know, and have often wondered, what made the difference between the two groups. Sometimes you can find the thing that made the difference--perhaps there was a sane grandparent or other adult who provided the needed love at the right time. Perhaps the child for some reason learned to reject the destructive, poisonous, message of hate of a damaged parent. Perhaps the child took on the role of a protector of his siblings.

Some, the worst, the psychopaths, I believe become what they are because they don't get certain types of loving social interaction with a parent-figure at a certain critical period of development, between the 1st and 2nd years of life, when the cortical areas above the right eye are developing--the right orbitofrontal cortex, sometimes called the "social cortex." People with microanatomical structural deficiencies in this region seem to be incapable of empathy, tend not to "get it" that others are essentially like they are inside, and tend to treat other people as objects to be conned, manipulated, or randomly injured.

I don't know what any of these people "deserve." Personally, I think we need to heal the ones we can and protect ourselves from the ones we cannot heal. There are a lot of reasons for doing this besides being nice to people who maybe don't deserve our kindness. The major reason, for me at least, is that I prefer to live in a world where redemption is possible, where fewer people are violent, and where there is less need for prisons and the apparatus of punishment. There is simply less hate in a world where there are fewer people deserving of hate.

In case it matters to you, these are the opinions I came to hold after serving 13 years as a chief regional psychologist in a midwestern state correctional system. During those years I estimate that I did psychological evaluations fo 2,000 offenders, ranging from minor drug-possession offenders to multiple murderers.

[Anser]

11. Thank you

This is the sort of "philosophical" response I was looking for. Maybe I'm a bit bitter because I had the sort of background growing up that I normally hear given as an "excuse" for anti-social/violent behavior, yet have worked very hard to avoid that type of life.

There's been no help, just a lot of hard work, pragmatism, and perserverance. So hearing sob stories about violent criminals that make the selfish choice of "self-medicating" as you put it, everyone else be damned, sometimes gets to me.

[Jackpine Radical]

15. What kept you out of the pit?

Somehow, you avoided the trap of hopelessness and despair that caught so many others. What made you believe that your own actions would even make a difference in our life when others fell into a destructive in their own helplessness to change the outcome?

[Anser]

18. I felt it..

I felt the hopelessness and despair very acutely. I think a lot of it was my strongly held progresive ideals I've had from an early age which helped me through.

No matter how bad things are, all you have control over is how you, yourself, are going to act. In a world full of pain, I promised myself that I would live my ideals, and not contribute to that pain. In order for me to do that I had to keep my faculties, and not allow my self the escape drugs/alcohol offered.

Also, I'm a pretty devout agnostic. Heaven here on Earth is my motivator, rather than following a prescribed dogma in hopes of making it to a better place after death. "Be the change that you wish to see in the world" and all that.

[Anser]

9. reply

In response to replies 1-6: Huh... I'm easy. I'm convinced. Maybe I've been watching too much MSM lately or something.

I guess my thought was more philosophical in nature. It seems like the right puts a lot of resources into punishment and the left puts a lot into rehabilitation. Meanwhile, there are genuininely good hearted people, making good choices, and working hard, and receiving hardly any resources. Of course in a country with things like universal health care, real state based help for struggling families, and a bigger emphasis on education, maybe I wouldn't feel that way.

[ieoeja]

10. I'm surprised someone in law school knows so little about the Bill of Rights.

A full 50% of the Bill of Rights concerns the *rights* of people suspected, accused, arrested or convicted of a crime.

Note that last: convicted. The Bill of Rights actually includes rights of people already convicted of a crime.


Of course, you may (and apparently do) disagree with those rights. Ergo, I present the following facts:

1. Recidivism is extremely low for first-time offenders. Why keep someone in jail who will probably never commit a crime again?

2. Recidivism among career criminals is even lower than that once they reach about 35 years of age. Again, why keep someone in jail...?

[Anser]

12. Bill of Rights

I've actualy graduated, and know them quite well.

As I've described, I was more interested in the philosophical question of "Why create second chances for violent criminals, when there are so many that don't even get a first chance?" As in, state or charity run halfway houses, medical care for inmates, 3 squares, and all that, when there are people in just as terrible circumstances, that do not make the selfish choice of commiting crimes that hurt others, who can barely keep a roof over their head, and food in their bellies.

You are preaching to the choir a bit as far as the nuts and bolts of the Bill of Rights law. Anytime a state has the power to take away its citizen's liberty, of course there must be many fail-safes built into the system.

[fishwax]

13. "every protection" and "a second chance" are completely different things

[madmusic]

14. The more heinous the crime, the more important is the Constitution

That is because a) the punishment is more severe, even death, b) what is heinous is often a sign of times, like the 100 to 1 crack ratio, and the Bill of Rights protects the individual from the passionate mob.

Defense attorneys defend the Constitution in the form of due process, which is not necessarily defending the individual, which is why their conscious permits them to take on heinous cases. The issues are larger than any individual case.

Defense attorneys are not popular right now but they actually deserve a great deal of respect. Some DUers are capable of recognizing this when it comes to Gitmo, but not so much when it comes to criminal defense here at home.

Nancy Grace doesn't get it.

[Anser]

17. I may actually be one someday..

A defense attorney that is.

Right now though I've moved away from law in general, and back to my technical roots.

The whole blind "zealous advocacy" and the adversarial system in general left a bad taste in my mouth. A poster above put it succintly, the truth doesn't matter. I have a problem with that. Having a duty to give your client all options, no matter how ethically suspect (Of course, there are "ethics rules" but they come from what I see as a not very enlightened place) is not something I'm willing to do.

For instance, I remember a case involving a man trying to divorce his paralyzed wife and his lawyer suggesting he try to have it annuled under the theory that the marriage was never technicaly "consumated" because she was physically unable to. Gotta give your client all options after all!

[rug]

19. You're confusing proving guilt with sentencing.

Anyone, rap sheet or not, must be proven guilty.

If convicted, the sentence takes into account the priors.

[Strong Atheist]

20. In case it has not happened in your years here: Welcome to DU!

:toast: