I’d like to see a cite that 95% of the people sent to prison didn’t have a trial.
I’ll assume the claim that 95% of the people in prison are innocent black people from Houston, Texas who were railroaded by The Man was only intended for rhetorical purposes and let that one slide.
IIRC generally only felony convictions result in “prison” time. Misdemeanors, if there is incarceration, generally result in time in jails as opposed to prisons.
The discussion of lesser include offences reminded me of a court case here in Saskatchewan several years ago.
A fellow was on trial for murder. The jury came in and delivered a verdict of not guilty. The judge thanked them for their service and discharged them. Some of them left, and then the foreman said something to the clerk: “didn’t the judge tell us we could convict of manslaughter?” Clerk tells judge, judge calls the jurors all back. Turns out he’d moved too quickly in dismissing them and hadn’t asked if they had a verdict on the lesser included offences; jurors had been waiting to be asked about that.
Upshot was that the judge ruled that once the jury was dismissed, that was it - the court that had tried the case was dissolved, and he coudn’t now ask the jurors if they had a verdict on the lesser included offence, so the accused was outta there.
I believe the SCC upheld the trial judge on his ruling about the effect of dismissing the jury.
You do realize there’s a big difference in statistics on felony convictions and statistics on imprisonment, right? A large percentage of people convicted of felonies do no prison time.
Yes I do; no need to be patronizing. I got no dog in this hunt. Just trying to be helpful.
I was once forced to defend myself, and did so a bit too well. I was not hurt but the other guy didn’t do so well. This was all witnessed by a cop. He let me go without charging me, citing me, or even detaining me. He even had to threaten the other guy with jail because of his behavior.
The prosecutor would not allow me to file an assault charge on the other guy, they said it sounded mutual (it was not). So the other guy gets a lawyer and hauls me into court on 2 misdemeanor assault counts (I maced the guy before he got so close that I had to hit him).
I thought I had little chance of being in real trouble because it was witnessed by a cop who basically sided with me. Wrong. The cop was probably a week away from mandatory retirement at the time of the incident. His memory sucked. My attorney read his statement and told me that my story and the plaintiff’s were closer together than the cop’s story was to either.
The judge was a notorious hard ass. He told my attorney that he thought the counts should be felonious, and promised that if it went to trial and I lost, I would “see the inside of a jail cell”.
Being a poor student, I had little choice other than to accept a no contest plea deal to 1 count of negligent assault. I had never been in trouble before in my life, and haven’t since (this was 10 years ago) yet the judge still saw fit to give me the maximum sentence: 80 hrs community service and 3 years probation.
Innocent people get railroaded like this everyday. Far too many judges get jaded by all the actually guilty people they see everyday. Innocent until proven guilty my ass. I should have taken it to trial in retrospect, but my attorney advised me to take the bargain. Oh well.
I can’t think of any good reason for there to be a rule on the books that says that the Judge’s saying “case dismissed” actually constitutes the case as dismissed. A legal system would work just fine if this were treated as a (fallible) intent to report a fact, counting prima facie as certification of the intended fact, but overturnable upon appeal.
This looks like a perfectly plausible and coherent way for a legal system to work to me, and its hard for me to see why a legal system should be as your story implies the one in Sasqetchewan (sp?) is.
-FrL-
Sorry, it was not my intent to sound patronizing.