This is my primary reason for supporting drug legalization. I am not sure why more people do not see the massive damage done to society over all, and the massive risk even non-drug users have to being abused. I can point to countless cases where people have been arrested for legal activity, one case where a family was harassed because they visited a garden store, and had loose leaf tea in their garage that triggered one of those field tests.

When ever this issue is debated the supporters of the drug laws often claim only people that want to get high support legalization, I have no desire to use drugs, I want to have my rights protected, and not be railroaded by a flawed legal system or have my house raided under flimsy "evidence"

Yeah, there are layers of abuse here.

The Constitution supposedly protects us against "unreasonable search and seizure". To "combat drugs" we introduced the idea of civil forfeiture. The police, on very flimsy evidence, take your stuff and money, then sue it. If you try to show up and cite the Constitution, you're thrown out of the court because you are not being sued (your stuff is), and so you have no standing. Thereby doing an end run around the Constitution.

How prevalent is this? Well, let's put it this way. Today if your money is taken, it is more likely to have been taken by police using civil forfeiture, than by burglars. And if there is a legal fight about it, it is more likely between different police forces who are arguing about the division of the spoils than about whether, just maybe, it was wrongly taken!

>>Yeah, there are layers of abuse here.

100% agree, civil forfeiture is but one of the MANY MANY ways they have done clever end runs around the US Constitution.

>How prevalent is this? Well, let's put it this way.

Dont travel with cash more than 100 dollars or so.... if a cop finds it, it is gone.

A famous quote from Lysander Spooner talking about government abuse includes the lines ".The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side and, holding a pistol to his head," sadly today that is exactly what the government does... ohh what what 150 years of "progress" brings

This is depressing. I've always thought plea bargains should be disallowed for all these totally obvious reasons, but I can't believe they actually used to be before being allowed in. Hopefully plea bargains will someday once again be illegal.

I think this is true.

One thing plea bargaining does is make it cheap for muni's and counties to throw people in prison. But the money for prisons comes from State and Federal dollars.

> until 1970 plea bargaining was generally considered unconstitutional

I know that there was a ruling in 1970 that plea bargaining is constitutional. But was there ever actually a prior ruling that said the opposite?

> Today over 95% of cases are decided by plea bargains. For drug offenses it is around 97%.

> Whatever your opinion on our war on drugs, it is clear that a lot of people going to jail for drugs are actually innocent.

I don't see how this follows. Given the proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard needed for a conviction if I reject a plea bargain, I'd certainly never accept one for something I wasn't actually guilty of.

> I don't see how this follows. Given the proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard needed for a conviction if I reject a plea bargain, I'd certainly never accept one for something I wasn't actually guilty of.

Perhaps an important part of the puzzle is the fact that it requires a significant amount of money to defend yourself in a full court trial, as well a significant amount of time.

Time during which the defendant's life is, essentially, on hold.

Additionally, while in the eyes of the legal system, an actual conviction is required, in the eyes of the public, a mere accusation is rather damningly destructive. Business relationships get ruined, opinions formed ("would not have been charged if they were truly innocent"), et cetera.

> it requires a significant amount of money to defend yourself in a full court trial

Isn't the point of public defenders to protect people who don't have this amount of money?

> Time during which the defendant's life is, essentially, on hold.

Isn't this only true in cases where bail isn't offered?

> "would not have been charged if they were truly innocent"

Who's actually ever said anything like that?

First of all plea bargains as currently practiced have been ruled unconstitutional. For example Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532, 542-43 (1897)

Second, successfully defending a federal case takes an average of over a million dollars. And publicly talking about the case, for example to solicit donations from those you know to help you pay for it, is strongly frowned on my judges and you WILL be likely to lose because of it.

Third, if you choose to fight, you will face a sentence that is usually many multiples of the plea bargain. Considering the difference in resources available to you and the state, you are likely to lose. Even if you are innocent of the crime.

Fourth, it is true that the point of public defenders is supposed to be to protect people. But they are part of the system. Public defenders typically have dozens of clients at a time, and the more efficiently they can process them, the better they do. The vast majority of the time this means efficiently negotiating a good plea bargain for you, and convincing you to take it. A public defender who lightly lets you exercise your right to trial will quickly fall behind on your other clients, so they try to avoid that.

Fifth, people who are out on bail are very much not free. They typically must suffer arbitrary inspections, follow curfew, avoid being in a variety of places where other criminals might be, and so on. You aren't behind jail bars, but you're still made to feel a prisoner.

I used to think as you do. But after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz committed suicide, I became curious and learned a lot about the system. And the more I learned the worse it looked.

> And publicly talking about the case, for example to solicit donations from those you know to help you pay for it, is strongly frowned on my judges and you WILL be likely to lose because of it.

I've never heard of such a thing, despite a lot of people crowdfunding legal defenses. Can you provide an example of it happening?

> you are likely to lose. Even if you are innocent of the crime.

I think this is our fundamental disagreement. I think it's very rare that an innocent person who goes to trial ends up being convicted.

> Fifth, people who are out on bail are very much not free. They typically must suffer arbitrary inspections, follow curfew, avoid being in a variety of places where other criminals might be, and so on.

I know curfews and inspections are ordered sometimes, but are they really "typical"?

> I used to think as you do. But after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz committed suicide, I became curious and learned a lot about the system. And the more I learned the worse it looked.

I thought Aaron Swartz actually did break the laws he was accused of breaking, and the reason that what happened to him was unjust was that the laws he broke were unfair (e.g., violating ToS being a felony). I see his case being an argument to repeal or gut such laws, and an argument in favor of jury nullification, but not to change how plea bargains work.

> First of all plea bargains as currently practiced have been ruled unconstitutional. For example Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532, 542-43 (1897)

That...is not an example. The Court in Bram did not have before it a question about “plea bargains as current practiced”. Or plea bargains at all, arising, as it did, out of a case in which the defendant had plead not guilty, been tried, and been convicted after trial.