US Bashing

[Mike Holmes]

David, the "Ugly truth" cuts both ways. That is, it's just as likely that the white jury convicted an innocent man out of racial bias as it is that the black jury freed a guilty man out of racial bias.

What, white people are incapable of bias?

And, again, I'm not saying that OJ was innocent. Just that the prosecution didn't do a great job in presenting the case.

Should we try guilty until proven innocent, instead? What's the alternative that the scientists would try? I would argue that, in fact, the legal system is what it is today because it is the longest running scientific experiment in history. Jurisprudence is not new.

Bashing lawyers... that's original.

"First thing we do, kill all the lawyers..."

Mike

[ravingdave]

Some believe the system worked in the case of OJ Simpson, (MSimon) I say this case demonstrates the worst of what's wrong with it.

I don't disagree with that at all. In fact I totally agree. If the police get a reputation for dishonesty it ruins the system.
.

I consider that one aspect of it. Other things that ruin the system are stupid jurors, technicalities, biases, and lawyers who are willing to see injustice done. (by that I mean defense attorneys getting known guilty clients off, and prosecutors willing to convict known innocent people. )

It has long been my legal philosophy that a lawyers job is to see that his client gets a FAIR trial. The outcome of a fair trial for a guilty client is a conviction with a fair sentence.

Likewise, a prosecutor should be willing to dismiss a case if evidence turns up indicating innocence.

In cases of police misconduct, the police should be tried for breaking laws prohibiting it. Throwing out the case doesn't punish bad cops, it punishes society. Throwing bad cops in jail punishes bad cops.

The current system works thus:

Criminal commits crime. (kills someone e.g.) Cop commits crime. (frames someone e.g.)

Let criminal go. Let cop go.

Nobody gets punished. EVERYBODY HAPPY!

not.

Police should not be testilying and prosecutors and judges should not let them get away with it.

Did I mention forensic labs "adjusting" results? State expert witnesses lying?

The Duke Lacrosse case was full of all the above. And those guys had the money to defend themselves. Think about what happens to some poor kid who has nothing except a public defender and no budget to do independent investigations.

Worst of the worst? Maybe. Or maybe just standard practice applied to the wrong people.

The general attitude is that everything is mostly fine because the alternative is just too horrible to contemplate.

For instance - the railroading in death penalty cases in Illinois. Or torture to get confessions - again in Illinois. But for sure it is limited to Illinois. Ya gotta have faith.

.

MSimon, I think you and I are probably on the same page, we either have access to facts the other doesn't have, or we are interpreting them somewhat differently. I suspect if we looked at it with the benefit of each others perspective, we would probably come to a consensus.

I am disgusted with the conviction of innocent people, and that has happened all too often on the flimsiest of evidence. I have long wondered, How do you prove that someone did something they didn't do?

It is impossible, but it happens a lot. Apparently jurors aren't understanding "Reasonable Doubt", or they aren't smart enough to puzzle things out.

I've heard calls for "proffesional jurors" and the older I get the more i'm leaning in that direction.


David

[Mike Holmes]

I don't know about "proffessional jurors" but I know a few people who are professional witnesses - experts in their fields who can make an impact on a trial based on their expertise. That's a good place to insert oneself, if one wants to be able to improve the system by their integrity. Assuming you have some pertinent skill.

A problem with such witnesses is often they are base mercenaries, however. Willing to testify to most anything, given the right financial incentive.

Mike

[ravingdave]

David, the "Ugly truth" cuts both ways. That is, it's just as likely that the white jury convicted an innocent man out of racial bias as it is that the black jury freed a guilty man out of racial bias.

What, white people are incapable of bias?

You make my point for me. At least one of the jurors in the OJ trial indicated the verdict was payback for all the times blacks were unfairly convicted. That's where I got that "convict another brother" reference.

And, again, I'm not saying that OJ was innocent. Just that the prosecution didn't do a great job in presenting the case.

In my opinion, the nature of the evidence makes the prosecutions case irrelevant.
Everyone criticizes the prosecutions decision to have OJ put on the glove. Yes, that was a mistake. Why they would expect OJ to cooperate I have no Idea. As people have often pointed out, he made a big show of putting the glove on, pretending it was too small and couldn't be pulled over his hand, (all the while wearing a latex glove) but when it came to remove the glove, he pulled it off with the least effort.

A sensible person could see through this act, and a sensible prosecutor would have demanded a 1 to 1 scale casting of OJ's hand, (without a latex glove on it ) and put the glove on the casting, leaving it there constantly for the jury to see.

The prosecution could have done a better job, but they did a good enough job that anyone with the means to understand the evidence could have. As it is my opinion that the aquital had nothing to do with the evidence or the testimony or the prosecutions case, then a better "all of the above" would have made no difference.

Should we try guilty until proven innocent, instead? What's the alternative that the scientists would try? I would argue that, in fact, the legal system is what it is today because it is the longest running scientific experiment in history. Jurisprudence is not new.

Bashing lawyers... that's original.

"First thing we do, kill all the lawyers..."

Mike

Maybe the longest running "Social" experiment in history, but Scientific ?
If the legal system were a computer program it would be considered "spagetti code". The concept "Ad Hoc" comes to mind. It is a mishmash of pseudo logical arguments mixed in with a bunch of pseudo logical concepts that yield a result which everyone hails as correct simply because it is the commonly held belief that the result will be correct.

The legal system is rife with conflicts, paradoxes, bad reasoning, and bad outcomes.




The alternative ? Well, I can think of two reforms right off the top.

Scientists will look at ALL evidence, and they won't discount it because of it's source. Throw out the exclusionary rule. ( a relatively recent invention by liberal courts anyway.)

I have always wondered why the legal system would trust a jury to come to a decision regarding a man's fate, but not trust them with all the evidence to decide it.



Scientists expect processes and results to be consistent. Especially math.

1 wrong = a crime. A crime = A punishment.
2 wrongs = 2 crimes. 2 crimes = 2 punishments.


Punish cops who break laws, rather than letting bad cops and bad criminals go.




As the attorney sat their fuming over the judges decision against him, the judge noticed him and said "Sir, are you trying to show contempt for this court ? "

The attorney replied... "No your honor, I am doing my best to conceal it! "



David

[MSimon]

I consider that one aspect of it. Other things that ruin the system are stupid jurors,

Prosecutors and defense attorneys prefer stupid jurors. Our jury selection system is broken.

technicalities,

Uh, do you mean things like the Constitution and laws? Their bias is towards protection of the innocent. A rather important principle don't you think?

biases,

You have a fix for that?

and lawyers who are willing to see injustice done. (by that I mean defense attorneys getting known guilty clients off, and prosecutors willing to convict known innocent people. )

You do not understand the system. It is the defense lawyers job to present the best possible defense. It is the prosecutors job to do justice. If our system is failing it is the prosecutors who are falling down on the job.

It has long been my legal philosophy that a lawyers job is to see that his client gets a FAIR trial. The outcome of a fair trial for a guilty client is a conviction with a fair sentence.

But that is not the philosophy of our system.

As to fair sentences - look up the history of mandatory minimums. It was instituted by Congress. Rescinded because it didn't work and then reinstituted. And what is the result? Mr. Big who has people he can turn in gets a greatly reduced sentence. Mr. Little who knows no one other than Mr. Big gets a very long sentence.

[Mike Holmes]

The exclusionary rule doesn't exist to "punish" cops, but to take away positive incentive to cheat the system. If every bit of evidence, no matter how problematically manufactured, could be introduced, you'd get the problems that we had, well, before the exclusionary rule was introduced.

I'm not against punishments for cops that lie, but those laws already exist. And when that was the only disincentive, the behavior in question was rampant. The exclusionary rule helps, but even that will never stop all of the errors by cops. They're human too, and I give them the benefit of the doubt. But we have to do what we can to try to keep them honest. Better to protect the rights of the many, and have occasional injustice than to trample everyones rights in which case there is little justice at all.

By the way, as a programmer who learned BASIC first, I'm a big fan of so-called "spaghetti code," which has some advantages over object orientated code and other schemes (mostly in terms of lower overhead).

Mike

[MSimon]

The exclusionary rule doesn't exist to "punish" cops, but to take away positive incentive to cheat the system. If every bit of evidence, no matter how problematically manufactured, could be introduced, you'd get the problems that we had, well, before the exclusionary rule was introduced.

I'm not against punishments for cops that lie, but those laws already exist. And when that was the only disincentive, the behavior in question was rampant. The exclusionary rule helps, but even that will never stop all of the errors by cops. They're human too, and I give them the benefit of the doubt. But we have to do what we can to try to keep them honest. Better to protect the rights of the many, and have occasional injustice than to trample everyones rights in which case there is little justice at all.

By the way, as a programmer who learned BASIC first, I'm a big fan of so-called "spaghetti code," which has some advantages over object orientated code and other schemes (mostly in terms of lower overhead).

Mike

You ought to learn FORTH. It is probably the simplest object oriented system currently known to man.

In addition FORTH solves the problem of object overloading where people get confused about what object is referred to. In FORTH you can only refer (without a lot of effort) to the most recent definition of a word or an object. You can change definitions on the fly but such changes preclude (easy) reference to earlier code. If you really have to refer to two objects (or definitions) at the same time you ought to change the name of one of them - get out your Thesaurus.

Spaghetti code is then eliminated. Oh, yeah. FORTH probably has the lowest overhead of any modern language. Passing as much data as you need on the stack eliminates the necessity of naming passed data (as you need to do in C when you have several results to pass). It also eliminates the C stack thrash on context changes. This encourages writing code the proper way - small well defined easily testable fragments.

I will say that it is well known that poor to average programmers can get in a LOT of trouble with FORTH. There is no casting etc. Bits are bits. Good to outstanding programmers can do really well in FORTH. In fact (as I have mentioned before) I had a team of 3 FORTH programmers run circles around a team of 30 C programmers. We would complete in 1 month what the 30 C guys couldn't do in 6 months. (What is that? A productivity advantage of 60 or more?) And note: My FORTH guys knew NOTHING about FORTH when I hired them. The learning curve is not very steep.

[Mike Holmes]

Where can I get a compiler?

Wait, I hear that FORTH is promulgated by Islamic sympathists who are weak on terror, and want to legislate from the bench.

Sorry.

Mike

[MSimon]

Where can I get a compiler?

Wait, I hear that FORTH is promulgated by Islamic sympathists who are weak on terror, and want to legislate from the bench.

Sorry.

Mike

Go to FORTH INC. they have a free 32 bit compiler for Wintel systems. I'm using it to design a FORTH compiler for some ARM chips.

http://www.forth.com/swiftforth/index.html

Here are some application stories:

http://www.forth.com/resources/appNotes/index.html

[Nanos]

I have to say, I've never met a more beautiful instruction set than what you find on the ARM chips. (Unless anyone can point me to one!)

[MSimon]

I have to say, I've never met a more beautiful instruction set than what you find on the ARM chips. (Unless anyone can point me to one!)

You might want to look at the Novix Chip. It was in rather limited production but it was rather neat. Returns could be included with other instructions making a CALL/RETURN pair cost you only one instruction cycle total.

The chip was used in some space applications and a series of boards by Force Computer used the chip.

I also like some of the innovations in the SeaFORTH chips. They have an architecture that amounts to a processor for every two pins (24 processors total), very low power (200 mW with everything running - 750 MHz), and an architecture that automatically turns off processors that are waiting for data from other internal processors or for an external input. Data flow at its finest. It is not very general purpose at this time and the internal memories are rather limited (I think it was designed for cell phones). A greatly expanded version with more internal memory or a wide data bus could be a real screamer for more general purpose applications.

Oh yeah. It has no clocks. So the clock tree botheration and power down of unused sections is transparent to the programmer. Of course if a section needs to be clocked for timing purposes you just feed it to one of the pins.

[ravingdave]

Prosecutors and defense attorneys prefer stupid jurors. Our jury selection system is broken.

Agreed

technicalities,

Uh, do you mean things like the Constitution and laws? Their bias is towards protection of the innocent. A rather important principle don't you think?

That is their stated purpose, but how do you protect the innocent by letting murderers kill more of them ?

biases,

You have a fix for that?

The first step in fixing a problem is recognizing that it exists. Professional jurors might solve the problem. In any case, it is a problem.

and lawyers who are willing to see injustice done. (by that I mean defense attorneys getting known guilty clients off, and prosecutors willing to convict known innocent people. )

You do not understand the system. It is the defense lawyers job to present the best possible defense. It is the prosecutors job to do justice. If our system is failing it is the prosecutors who are falling down on the job..

Why would you suggest that I don't understand the system when I merely disagree with it ? Why is it not the duty of everyone involved in the justice system to do the justice ?

It has long been my legal philosophy that a lawyers job is to see that his client gets a FAIR trial. The outcome of a fair trial for a guilty client is a conviction with a fair sentence.

But that is not the philosophy of our system. .

No, it is not. I think that is what is wrong with it. It SHOULD be our system.

As to fair sentences - look up the history of mandatory minimums. It was instituted by Congress. Rescinded because it didn't work and then reinstituted. And what is the result? Mr. Big who has people he can turn in gets a greatly reduced sentence. Mr. Little who knows no one other than Mr. Big gets a very long sentence.

Don't get me started on congressional meddling. I don't consider it the equivilant of fair.

The current legal methodology relies on precedent, guidlines, and the judges discretion. In many cases it looks like no improvement on hamarabi's code.

Funny thing. The constitution doesn't guarantee us equal outcome in our lives, but it does guarantee equal treatment under the law. What a joke. It is laughable to think that a poor man and a rich man would get the same treatment.

I personally think that capitalism in the legal system should be illegal. Socialize the legal system !!!!!

Make ALL people have equivilant acess to legal representation, and it would even curtail excesses by the rich.


David

[Mike Holmes]

Hard to enforce that. Without Sharia. They claim to have a fair system because it's legally mandated.

I mean... let's say I hire a "legal expert" to talk to my legally appointed lawyer, and give him pointers. Illegal? How far do you take this? Should everyone involved be sequestered until it's all sorted out?

Mike

[ravingdave]

The exclusionary rule doesn't exist to "punish" cops, but to take away positive incentive to cheat the system. If every bit of evidence, no matter how problematically manufactured, could be introduced, you'd get the problems that we had, well, before the exclusionary rule was introduced.

No, the exclusionary rule doesn't exist to punish cops, and it doesn't. That is the problem with the system. The cops don't get punished for breaking the law. Neither does the criminal.

Why do we use one set of rules for criminals and another for cops ? Not getting a conviction doesn't punish a cop. Putting him in jail for evidence tampering does. The exclusionary rule is wrong headed, and is typical thinking for the sort of people who don't seem to have been correct about anything in the history of mankind. (liberals)

I'm not against punishments for cops that lie, but those laws already exist. And when that was the only disincentive, the behavior in question was rampant. The exclusionary rule helps, but even that will never stop all of the errors by cops. They're human too, and I give them the benefit of the doubt. But we have to do what we can to try to keep them honest. Better to protect the rights of the many, and have occasional injustice than to trample everyones rights in which case there is little justice at all.

I hear this often, but I wonder if it's true ? I recall a judge once saying "better ten innocent hang then one guilty go free! " and I started wondering what the ratio of guilty to innocent was, how severe and how often the crimes of the guilty were, and whether or not the equation was equal. I figure it is unlikely that a typical guilty man would likely do as much harm as killing ten innocent people, (even by inspiring proxy killers) so I figured the judge was probably wrong.

I wonder if we could put some numbers to this conjecture ?

By the way, as a programmer who learned BASIC first, I'm a big fan of so-called "spaghetti code," which has some advantages over object orientated code and other schemes (mostly in terms of lower overhead).

Mike

I started with 8080 binary instructions, moved to RCA 1802 machine code, tried a bit of 6502 machine code, screwed around a bit with basic and pascal, moved to 6800 assembly, on to Z80 and 80286 assembly, Messed with Dbase and Dbxl, AutoCad and finally ended up with C\C++.

I read about fourth probably 25 years ago, and they said it would takeover everything. Looks like the prize so far is C\C++\C#, but I don't keep up with it much anymore, so I really don't know. Last piece of code I wrote was in PIC assembly.

In basic, you can write code pretty fast, until it gets complicated. Apart from that, a main aim of professional software designers is to write code in such a way that another person can read it, (and modify or port to it) not just the person who created it.



David

[ravingdave]

Hard to enforce that. Without Sharia. They claim to have a fair system because it's legally mandated.

I mean... let's say I hire a "legal expert" to talk to my legally appointed lawyer, and give him pointers. Illegal? How far do you take this? Should everyone involved be sequestered until it's all sorted out?

Mike

The lawyers all say the law is too complicated to be understood by lay people. I have always felt that this may not be true, but is only true now in the special case of the current system. What is wrong with everyone understanding law ?

Why not teach basic law in high school ? Is it really so complicated that the hoi poloi won't get it ?

David