My partner was once one jury duty, said it was the most boring case ever because both sides basically agreed. The client was bonkers and they just needed to determine the punishment. When the folks you hire to defend you realise it is a situation worse than Sisyphus, you are going to do time.
This is a fairly common scenario for defense attorneys.
I needed a lawyer for a misdemeanor charge (cop was having a bad day, the other cops that arrived on the scene seemed like they would have let me off with a warning but it was not their call). I was certainly guilty by the letter of the law and had no defense but the lawyer I was referred to from a friend of a friend negotiated with the prosecution and I plead guilty to a civil ordinance violation for disturbing the peace (basically a traffic ticket). He was able to do that because he knew what to bargain for based off of similar cases in my state.
However, if it doesn’t get worked out pre-trial, that negotiation process still happens in the court room. When I met my lawyer, he mentioned a recent case he handled where the defendant had committed murder. There was no question that he did it, but the lawyer was proud that he was able to convince the court that his defendant was not of sound mind, which was the difference between going untreated and spending twenty-to-life in a state prison or spending that time getting treatment in a mental ward. While the latter isn’t exactly a cushy place to be, it is certainly better than being mentally unstable in gen pop.
Strong disagree. Murderers should be locked up, and the not-of-sound-mind defense is a weak excuse, and too often looked towards as a nice clean way to get away with murder.
Being locked up because you are insane and a threat to other is being locked up. The difference is there is no need to keep you in jail for a set amount of time as a deterrent. They keep you in the institution until you have been declared sane. Which could be much less than the jail term for a similar crime or until you die.
You probably have "not of sound mind" and "temporary insanity" confused.
I disagree. That no nuance stuff does exactly what you are wanting to avoid.
Aside from that, the law must take into consideration one’s ability to reason because that is the method in which a jury finds facts.. based on reasonability. You wouldn’t convict someone who suffered from a mental handicap to a punishment that was equal to someone who did the same with full faculties, right?
There absolutely are. I work as a paramedic and among other things we have a contract with the state run secure mental health facility which has people who are civilly committed, but also people who have been adjudged not fit to stand trial.
It's also not entirely easy to get found not fit to stand trial - it's not just you and your lawyer and a friendly psychiatrist - the prosecution has the right to call its own mental health professionals and they are required to have access to the defendant, and more.
It's not a good plan to try for an insanity defense if you're of sound mind: being incarcerated due to an insanity plea is often indefinite and frequently in worse conditions than being in prison.
> Michael Clayton : Mr. Greer, you left the scene of an accident on a slow week night, six miles from a state police barracks. Believe me. If there's a line, you're right up front.
> Mr. Greer : I can get a lawyer any time I want. I don't need you for that. We're not sitting here for forty five minutes for a god damned referral.
> Michael Clayton : I don't know what Walter promised you but...
> Mr. Greer : A miracle worker. That's Walter on the phone twenty minutes ago. Direct quote, okay, "Hang tight, I'm sending you a miracle worker."
> Michael Clayton : Well he misspoke.
> Mr. Greer : About what? That you're the firms fixer? Or that you're any good at it?
[explodes in anger]
> Mr. Greer : The guy was RUNNING. In the STREET! You take that, you add the fog, you add the light, you add the... the angle. What the fuck is he doing running in the middle of the street at midnight? You answer me that, huh?
[Mrs. Greer throws a glass across the room, there's a long pause]
> Mr. Greer : What if someone had stolen the car? Huh? Happens all the time.
> Michael Clayton : Cops like hit and runs. They work them hard and they clear them fast. Right now there's a DCI unit pulling paint chips off a guard rail. Tomorrow they're going to be looking for the owner of a custom painted hand rubbed Jaguar XJ12. If the guy you hit, if he got a look at the plates? It won't even take that long.
[the phone rings]
> Michael Clayton : There's no play here. There's no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker, I'm a janitor. The math on this is simple. The smaller the mess the easier it is for me to clean up.
yeah from 201 years to only 100. this is still a win. he better hope his lawyer knows some silicon valley people and can hook his client with some life extension
He donated in roughly equal measure to Democrats and Republicans.
But those donations were hidden, he claimed: “Despite Citizens United being literally the highest-profile Supreme Court case of the decade and the thing everyone talks about with campaign finance, for some reason, in practice, no one can possibly fathom the idea that someone actually gave dark. All my Republican donations were dark.”
The reason was cynical, if realistic: “Reporters freak the fuck out if you donate to a Republican,” he told Fong. “They’re all secretly liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight, so I made all the Republican ones dark.”
Pardons are up to the individual president and Biden is notoriously stingy with them. He's only granted 6 out of thousands of petitions, mostly for drug charges. For context, Trump granted 237, many for securities fraud and related crimes. Obama granted 212 pardons for all sorts of things, but generally preferred commutations (>1700).
I think presidents typically grant pardons right before they leave office. So you can’t look at Biden stats until he’s out of office.
If you look at Trump [0] he granted 6 pardons his first full year year in 2017 and 116 in 2021. Similarly, Obama granted 0 in 2010 and 142 in 2017. Bush had 0 in 2002 and 32 in 2009 (although his highest year was 44 in 2008).
So Biden is not stingier than Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, First Bush, and Reagan from similar points in their career.
Presidents usually wait until the very end of their final term before _really_ issuing pardons (so questions about the really eyebrow-raising ones, and every president has at least a few, don’t dog them for the rest of their time in office). I would bet big money Biden issues just as many as Trump, Obama, Bush et al once it’s all said and done.
> Pardons are up to the individual president and Biden is notoriously stingy with them. He's only granted 6 out of thousands of petitions, mostly for drug charges. For context, Trump granted 237, many for securities fraud and related crimes. Obama granted 212 pardons for all sorts of things, but generally preferred commutations (>1700).
Super disingenuous framing here. Compared to modern presidents Trump's grants of clemency still remain distinctly low by comparison (only both Bushes went lower). Also the majority were not people convicted of "securities fraud and related crimes". You can see the detailed list over at wikipedia here:
I was really trying to avoid a political debacle here by making an attemptedly neutral comparisons between Biden and both Obama and Trump. You're right though, I was referencing the relevant OPA pages for each of the recent presidents ([1], [2], [3], [4]). As the wiki page you've linked notes:
"however, Trump frequently bypassed the OPA, and the majority of his executive clemency grants were made to well-connected convicts who did not file a petition with the OPA or meet the OPA's requirements. [...] Of the pardons and commutations that Trump did grant, the vast majority were to persons to whom Trump had a personal or political connection, or persons for whom executive clemency served a political goal."
And yeah, that kind of bears out the point that SBF could probably find better places to put his money. But just for fun I went through the OPA lists semi-manually:
Biden hasn't pardoned much of anyone.
Trump pardoned 5 people who are specifically described as having been convicted for securities-related matters, namely Chris Collins, Andrew Worden, Drew Brownstein, Greg Reyes, and Michael Milken to top it off. That's not including the other people (e.g. Paul Erikson) who were involved with related financial crimes, but whose descriptions don't specifically call out securities convictions, as well as others that weren't pardoned through the OPA like Shapiro and Stitsky. Given how rarely these sorts of crimes are convicted, I think that's appropriately described as "many".
Obama pardoned two people for securities issues, Jimmy Mattison and Scoey Morris, but as both were convicted of counterfeiting (a vastly different kind of crime than SBF) I think we can ignore them. Robert Hobbs and Brian Sledz probably count here. I'm unable to find details about Robert Schindler to know for him.
Bush Junior pardoned Richard Miller, plus a couple of embezzlers and counterfeiters.
I might have missed some. Do you mind double-checking?
