https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/28/steve-bannon-going-to-prison-scotus-00165826
I feel like ‘because I travel there’ is not a good basis for getting a say about funding various organizations in the area but I’m not a law person
I’d rather trust Judith Sheindlin. Just heard today:
Judy Judy: What’s your defamation claim?
Scumbag plaintiff: He’s telling people in public that I lied in court.
Judy Judy: Well. you’ve already lied twice here under oath.
Cross posted from the Trans Youth thread. It begins.
I was told there are no consequences.
Wait, your telling me that disbarring an octogenarian that no one would hire as a lawyer isn’t a real consequence?
Holy shit. Alec Baldwin gets off because the prosecution and cops intentionally withheld potentially exculpatory evidence (they took in relevant evidence and then decided to bury it under a different case file). This likely means that the conviction of the armorer is going to get reversed as well.
Watching all these high profile trials shows just how shady prosecutors and cops are. It also really shows the value of good defense lawyers. If they weren’t rich, both Karen Read and Alec Baldwin would likely be in jail as the shady stuff wouldn’t have come to light.
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When you can afford a lawyer as a defendant, your chances of being convicted dramatically lower as you probably know.
Yup. Prosecution strategy is often just to pressure defendants till they settle. Much easier when defendant unrepresented/has only a public defender.
I have only done a few criminal matters (my law firm had a program where you could get experience as a federal defender), but you could definitely see a change in the tenor of the prosecutors when they realized that the defendant had obtained representation from a good law firm.
i’m guessing you dont necessarily mean it in any kind of derogatory way, but the smartest and best criminal lawyers i’ve worked with and/or against were mostly public defenders.
in my jurisdiction as prosecutors we used to laugh when the lawyers from “good” bigger law firms in the area tried to show up in our lowly criminal court, because criminal was like 5%-10% of their workload and they would normally get trounced due to lack of experience.
you pay for time. most of the public defenders i know would dog walk the tourists if they didnt have 100 more clients to see that same week.
eta- i remember when i was first starting out as an ada my buddy had a misdemeanor case against some rich defendant who hired the “biggest” firm (in quotes because in my area big is maybe 150attorneys), and they showed up with 2 attorneys and like 3 interns. so my buddy got all the misdmeanor ada’s to come sit in as well to jokingly even up the numbers.
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And that’s before you add Kurt Angle to the mix
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This is true, but the apex of criminal defense work is experienced federal prosecutors or public defenders who do 100% criminal work. They can put a lot more time and effort into cases.
You mean a rich white guy didn’t face consequences. I’m fucking shocked.
At least until trump is president. Then he is off to the Gulag
Why should an actor given a gun by an professional set armorer who told him it wasn’t loaded with live ammo, suffer consequences?
The issue with public defenders isn’t necessarily that they are bad (some of course are, but many are great), the issue is that they are so overworked with a huge caseload, that they just don’t have time to devote enough to most cases, and thus the prosecution has more leverage to get a settlement.
My sense was more that the prosecutors were bothered that their hope for a quick settlement was over. If you actually are going to trial, you’re right that it’s often better with an experienced public defender than a high priced inexperienced lawyer. But for pre-trial stuff, my experienced was that you are far better off with a lawyer that will actually spend time on your case - particularly for cases with lots of discovery.
I’m not a lawyer, but I watch a fuckton of legal dramas. What’s the deal with occasionally some poor dude gets accused of a crime and the judge points to the lawyer (star of the show) who is there for something else entirely and says “I’m ordering you to represent this guy” and they have to do it. I’m assuming that’s not total fiction. What is it actually like in real life?
I do not believe he should’ve been charged, let alone brought to trial.
With that said, devil’s advocate: if you shoot someone, “somebody else handed me that gun and told me the bullets weren’t real” is an explanation that deserves some scrutiny. You can absolutely make the argument that the person holding and firing the gun (although Baldwin denies pulling the trigger) has some duty to verify that they’re not firing live ammo. In Baldwin’s case, his position as a producer on the film (likely a vanity credit that is also related to skirting SAG wage rules by paying him as a producer rather than an actor) further muddies the waters.
Lots of things happen in film and TV that are blatantly illegal elsewhere - like in what other industry could somebody say “I am hiring for a job, but the person must be male and must be white?” But when casting roles that happens all the time.
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