[278] in libertarians
Re: Death Penalty
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin THEOBALD)
Tue Sep 27 19:00:10 1994
From: theobald@duke.cs.mcgill.ca (Kevin THEOBALD)
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 1994 18:57:04 -0400
In-Reply-To: "Paul D. Eccles"'s message [Re: Death Penalty] as of Sep 27, 8:54
To: "Paul D. Eccles" <pde@sd.inri.com>, libertarians@MIT.EDU
| I had a conversation about the system with a criminal lawyer. He told me that
| he does not take a case unless the accused tells him exactly the situation.
| The lawyer knows whether the accused did the crime or not. This is the only
| way the lawyer can give his best effort. I asked him what was his experience
| of the percentage of accused persons who go to trial actually commited the
| crime they are accused. He told me it was greater than 99.9%. He said that
| this is because the District Attorney's office only goes to trial when
| it has a a lot of evidence and a very good chance of winning. Otherwise
| a plea bargain is sought.
And why do you think the D.A. only goes with cases for which it has lots
of evidence? Could it be because the D.A. knows that the defense attorney
will be doing everything possible to get an acquittal. Without the
adversarial system, do you think the D.A. would be so careful in picking
only "winnable" cases?
As for the assumption that 99.9% of defendants are guilty, let me tell you
about one of the 0.1%. A friend of mine got into a fight with Config
Systemes, a Montreal company, over ownership of a product. Config was
trying to break a contract which they had signed with him, which states
that he designed the product and which does not transfer rights to them.
Instead of going to a civil court, which could take years to resolve, they
went to the police and told them he stole a hard disk from them.
The MUC (Montreal cops) arrested my friend at his home, at 5:30 AM, and
dragged him to a cell. My friend kept insisting his innocence and asking
them to look at the *contract* which would *prove* his innocence. The cops
simply refused to listen to anything which would change their prejudice
that he was guilty. They wouldn't look at the contract or even consider
that they were being misused to settle a *civil* dispute. They even lied
to a judge, claiming that he had been evicted from his apartment (false)
so that they could hold him and threaten him for an extra 2 days.
The case has yet to go to trial. But I'm glad we have a legal "adversary" to
the MUC and Config Systemes, because I have seen how (in)capable the MUC is
at finding the truth.
- Kevin
