Whatever the original intentions of public defenders once were, now they essentially exist to convince defendants to take plea bargains so the ol’ wheels of justice can keep spinnin’.
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If you reverse the video he’s finding the drugs.
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So at least he’s not claiming to be psychic!
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This is wrong on so many levels.
Whatever was in that baggie should in no way result in a decade of imprisonment.
Even if this person were in the general proximity to the trash pile with the baggie, that shouldn’t in itself be enough evidence to put him in jail.
The war on drugs is and always has been a war on minorities and the poor. Our entire justice system has become a farce as a result. Treat drug abuse as a health problem and not a legal problem. Let the justice system deal with crime having actual victims.
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After watching the video of the police briefing (linked previously in the thread), this doesn’t seem to be the case. The police officials say that they found one bag that had the end tied in a knot, and that “knotted” bag made them think there was an unknotted bag in there somewhere. Also, the body cameras were turned off for about 5 minutes, then then were turned back on, and the unknotted bag quickly found with minimal searching. Seems pretty fishy to me.
Oh yeah, I don’t for one second believe that this was any kind of legitimate find. I was only suggesting that the officer claimed to have a good reason to look where he did to explain how he found it so quickly.
I wonder how true that is - I think most Americans are so inculcated with a false sense of how the criminal justice systems works (i.e. the ideal) by television and movies, that it doesn’t register that poor people simply don’t get to access that process at all. People really want to believe the system works the way it’s supposed to, and suspects can challenge the evidence against them, not that being poor means the quality of the case against you is usually totally irrelevant.
Hell, those videos could be totally staged, as was the case here. But even if they’re not, we’re already seeing cops, even without body cameras, playing to any video that someone might be making. Saying and doing things that aren’t intended for their colleagues, bystanders or the suspect, but for the eventual watchers of the video (e.g. shouting “stop resisting” when beating an unresisting suspect, in the hopes that it will create a seed of doubt in anyone later watching - and judging - them).
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Something like an update:
“The public defender’s office… is questioning the officer’s involvement in 53 active cases.”
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Sounds like maybe the DA’s office could use a little bit of a shakedown, too.
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Followup: Per NPR, pub-defs are now looking at ~100 cases.
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