This story was interesting.
Suppose you are charged with a crime. There won't be just one item on the indictment. There will be 10-20 or more charges.
The jury may reach a "compromise verdict". They will acquit you of the more serious charges, but vote guilty on a lesser charge.
However, judges have the discretion to ignore sentencing guidelines! The judge will consider crimes for which you were charged, but acquitted, when imposing a sentence. The judge can even consider conduct not formally on the indictment.
For example, suppose you are accused of A and B. For A, the sentence is 20 years. For B, the sentence is 2 years. Suppose the jury convicts for B but acquits for A. The judge can still impose a sentence of 20 years!
Suppose I were charged of a crime and convicted. The judge could say "FSK questions the legitimacy of the State. Therefore, I'm imposing a harsher sentence than what the guidelines suggest."
Judges lie to juries about their nullification power. Sentencing information is withheld from juries. This leads to "justice" instead of justice.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Acquitted Conduct Sentencing
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2 comments:
I watched a television programme on civil law cases recently.
One company decided to sue a man. In order to frighten him they made up lots of accusations against him and said they were suing him to 200, 000 Pounds.
The man thought the company was trying to bully him and didn't have a valid case.
However he could not back out of the case as to do that would require paying the other side's legal costs which would be tens of thousands of pounds. So he was stuck.
Eventually the company submitted a claim for the high court.
* However the accusations they submitted to the court WERE LESS than the accusations they originally threatened the man with. They also dropped the 200, 000 pounds of damages.
The fact that the accusations decreased with time suggests that they didn't really believe in their own case.
HOW IS THIS NOT EXTORTION?
IF YOU THREATEN SOMEONE WITH SOMETHING AND THEN YOU DROP IT, IT SUGGESTS YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN IT AND HOW IS THIS NOT LYING?
WHY DOES NOT ANYBODY DO ANYTHING ABOUT THIS?
I don't think accusations should be allowed to be dropped in civil law cases as it encourages exaggeration and trumped up cases.
If a lawyer wants to make up stupid things he can't possibly defend, then he should be stuck with them and he shouldn't be able to duck out of them just before submitting things to a court.
As an extra bit to my last comment, on the television programme the man accused of libeling a property company that demanded money from him under a law they could not quote (they told him he would be jailed unless he handed the money to them!) was told by the first set of lawyers he went to a full reply by them would cost 10, 000 pounds.
I guess he couldn't afford that and went to another lawyer.
But 10, 000 pounds is a lot.
Maybe the man would have been better off just asking the property company what exactly about his comment was not true or justified.
Obviously if he had their email exchanges stored way, they could not easily lie and so just by asking what was not true or reasonable comment he could make them go away.
But I guess when people are threatening you with high court action and a demand of 200, 000 pounds it scares you and you go to high priced lawyers.
In the end the man got free representation under a no win/no fee basis.
If there are aggressive lawyers that take on bad cases, then good lawyers that defend people get paid as well.
It seems like a racket to me. Aggressive lawyers with bad cases make money. But the bad lawyers create money for "good" lawyers.
Nobody will stop this madness, if the legal profession is allowed to regulate themselves.
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