Much of the criminal justice systems operates on an assumption (or rather, an aspiration) that prosecutors and law enforcement should be trusted to carry out their duties honestly.
Qualified immunity has to go. I’m less sure about prosecutorial or judicial immunity. I’m pretty sure criminal immunity doesn’t protect you from being disbarred or impeached. I think I’d rather see a lot more of those two things than prosecutions.
Yep, the incentives here just seem to not actually prevent this kind of lying / concealment. The risks of being caught are low, and even if caught the consequences again seem tiny. Maybe you throw some cases, but others (maybe even this one) will still proceed and there will just be an argument on "if you squint and look from this angle it's not exculpatory at all". Balance that vs the fact that these violations can pump up your numbers in the majority of cases where you aren't caught and...
Hopefully the treatment of the J6 defendants will finally make conservatives stop bootlicking cops and prosecutors. But I have a feeling after these trials, they'll go right back to talking about the "thin blue line".
Mar 10, 2023·edited Mar 10, 2023Liked by Yassine Meskhout
Liberals will continue to bootlick cops and prosecutors when the defendants are their enemies. They will feign a touching concern for Muh Precious Civil Rights when the defendants are their allies.
Conservatives will continue to bootlick cops and prosecutors when the defendants are their enemies. They also will feign a touching concern for Muh Precious Civil Rights when the defendants are their allies.
Neither care in the least about any of these things, except to the extent that they can be weaponized to score points at the expense of the other side.
> Civil libertarians have been raising hell on this topic for decades now, but there's little interest and little action. I personally would hope that the clown show the prosecutor put up in the Rittenhouse trial would get more red tribers to wake up and appreciate this problem, but it has long already solidified into culture war alignment. The same thing is happening with the January 6th defendants, the issue is presented as a culture war attack rather than an issue that has long affected thousands of others before and will continue to do so. I have no hope of a resolution. Anytime these issues come to light, the loudest voices on both sides immediately frame it as another front in the culture war, rather than something endemic of the institution. As much as I generally appreciate BLM's platform on this topic, their myopic fixation on race almost to the exclusion of everything else will remain a liability.
I’m pretty law-abiding anyhow, but I’ve also kept my nose clean because absolutely fuck getting fisted by the combined powers of the long arm of the law.
Qualified immunity has to go. I’m less sure about prosecutorial or judicial immunity. I’m pretty sure criminal immunity doesn’t protect you from being disbarred or impeached. I think I’d rather see a lot more of those two things than prosecutions.
Yep, the incentives here just seem to not actually prevent this kind of lying / concealment. The risks of being caught are low, and even if caught the consequences again seem tiny. Maybe you throw some cases, but others (maybe even this one) will still proceed and there will just be an argument on "if you squint and look from this angle it's not exculpatory at all". Balance that vs the fact that these violations can pump up your numbers in the majority of cases where you aren't caught and...
I agree it's a problem.
Hopefully the treatment of the J6 defendants will finally make conservatives stop bootlicking cops and prosecutors. But I have a feeling after these trials, they'll go right back to talking about the "thin blue line".
Liberals will continue to bootlick cops and prosecutors when the defendants are their enemies. They will feign a touching concern for Muh Precious Civil Rights when the defendants are their allies.
Conservatives will continue to bootlick cops and prosecutors when the defendants are their enemies. They also will feign a touching concern for Muh Precious Civil Rights when the defendants are their allies.
Neither care in the least about any of these things, except to the extent that they can be weaponized to score points at the expense of the other side.
I find this to be depressingly true: https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/all-prosecutors-are-bastards-when
> Civil libertarians have been raising hell on this topic for decades now, but there's little interest and little action. I personally would hope that the clown show the prosecutor put up in the Rittenhouse trial would get more red tribers to wake up and appreciate this problem, but it has long already solidified into culture war alignment. The same thing is happening with the January 6th defendants, the issue is presented as a culture war attack rather than an issue that has long affected thousands of others before and will continue to do so. I have no hope of a resolution. Anytime these issues come to light, the loudest voices on both sides immediately frame it as another front in the culture war, rather than something endemic of the institution. As much as I generally appreciate BLM's platform on this topic, their myopic fixation on race almost to the exclusion of everything else will remain a liability.
Start liking it. As the middle class is picked clean and left to rot, we will see more and more "us against them" logic.
I’m pretty law-abiding anyhow, but I’ve also kept my nose clean because absolutely fuck getting fisted by the combined powers of the long arm of the law.
Funny, soon as I read the headline, I wondered whether you were aware of the filing in the Nordean case.
*wink*