Forum: Story Recommendations

@LonelyDad

LonelyDad the story you were thinking of is:

The Fall Guy

by

The Wanderer (aka Denham Forest)

Thanks. I started trying to find it, but got sidelined into looking into some of the other stories that came up. Right now I am refreshing my memory of 'Aftermath' by Frostfyre. It is a sequal to 'Acceptance', which really needs to be read first. 'Aftermath' is a stand-alone story, but 'Acceptance' would fill in some of the blanks and clarify a few things.

And also "Les Misérables", and "The Fugitive".

Yea, but at least The Count of Monte Cristo is on SOL...

You might consider "Minus One" by Bruce Bretthauer although I don't believe it is on SOL. On SOL it would under Prince von Vlox.

It is neither here nor on BeyondTheFarHorizon. The only place I can find it is as a published book on Amazon.

Yeah, well... It isn't meant literally.

It just means that to be convicted, the prosecution has to convince twelve people too stupid to not be in a jury that you actually are guilty.

IIRC france is one of the countries that the accused has to prove a negative (nobody ever accused the french of making sense, or realizing that proving a negative is nearly impossible) because they presume guilt. Much like the media does. And your employer/business associates, friends, acquaintances, neighbors...when you're accused of such 'crimes' as sexism, racism,....all the shit the left loves to accuse anyone who doesn't agree with them of.

If you're referring to innocent until proven guilty I'm pretty sure it is meant in the literal sense I know it is not always practiced.

I mean it is practically the basis of criminal law I know there can be overwhelming evidence and a defendant can be considered guilty and remanded in custody due to the nature of the crime but the defendant must be considered innocent until proven guilty because you are in a legal sense innocent until you either plead guilty or are convicted by a jury of your peers or the magistrate depending on what type of court you are in or what type of crime or misdemeanor committed.

Sorry rant over if that is not what you meant then sorry

Actually it's just in respect to the burden of proof at trial. The court of public opinion, and treatment by the media is not required to assume innocence. The fact is there are legal systems that presume guilt until proven otherwise, and the only real difference is that burden of proof.
Think of it as equivalent to NFL replay reviews - the presumption of guilt or innocence is like the original call on the field, and requires conclusive evidence that the call on the field was wrong. So if there isn't enough proof to be sure, with presumptuous of innocence there'll be a Not Guilty verdict while presumption of guilt means when there's doubt there'll be a guilty verdict.
Another way of looking at it is one system tries to avoid type one errors while the other tries to avoid type two errors.

If you're referring to innocent until proven guilty I'm pretty sure it is meant in the literal sense I know it is not always practiced.

Try it is never practiced in the US. Even though Ben Franklin said

That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.

Once you are arrested you are treated as if you did the crime. You have your mugshot taken and along with what charges you are accused of goes in to a data base for all to see and even if charges are dropped the arrest stays on your record unless you have the $$$ to have it removed.

So now that you have been arrested and booked they put you in a cell until you see a judge where he sets bail. If you can't afford bail or bond you get put back in a cell till you come up with the money or when trial starts which can take months or even over a year. During that time you lost your job, most likely your house and just maybe your family all because a cop thought you were guilty of something. And here's the kicker, you can't sue him for destroying your life. You can sue the Dept. the city. But the cop walks away just fine.

If you can't afford bail or bond you get put back in a cell till you come up with the money or when trial starts which can take months or even over a year.

Try decades.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/us/alabama-kharon-davis-speedy.html

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/06/12/the-man-who-spent-35-years-in-prison-without-a-trial

But the cop walks away just fine.

If you're a white guy, this is true. Otherwise you sue him for violating your civil rights

Otherwise you sue him for violating your civil rights

You can sue them but most times the doesn't pay a cent. It's called Qualified Immunity.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-qualified-immunity-and-what-does-it-have-do-police-reform#:~:text=Qualified%20immunity%20is%20a%20judicially,violate%20%E2%80%9Cclearly%20established%E2%80%9D%20law.

You can sue them but most times the doesn't pay a cent. It's called Qualified Immunity.

And if you do manage to get past QI, they are generally indemnified by their department, so the individual officer still won't pay a cent out of pocket.

You can sue them but most times the doesn't pay a cent. It's called Qualified Immunity.

And if you do manage to get past QI, they are generally indemnified by their department, so the individual officer still won't pay a cent out of pocket.

So what is the solution to this problem? Eliminate Qualified Immunity? I've heard a lawyer proclaim a legal truism: Never sue anybody who has no money. If a jury finds the policeman at fault and the policeman has no money, how does the injured party (or family) get compensated for their loss? What if it's the other way around, and it's the policeman who is the victim and the perpetrator has no money?

If a jury finds the policeman at fault and the policeman has no money, how does the injured party (or family) get compensated for their loss?

As I said, the officer is indemnified by their department. Indemnification does not mean that the plaintiff doesn't get paid, it means someone other than the nominal defendant pays the award.

Ultimately the injured party gets compensated by the tax payers.

Despite political bullshit claiming so, Qualified Immunity doesn't give a free pass to government actors.

Read the cases on this issue and look at real life application of the doctrine.

The whole "Innocent until proven guilty" is one of the biggest lie in the US.

That I'll agree with. One of my sisters ran into that problem. She wasn't even in the country the same 'year' she supposedly shot the accuser. She didn't even know she'd been accused until she was arrested re-entering the US.

75 grand and three months of shit later, she was free of it. The money, grief, and time never to be recovered. All they needed to do was verify she wasn't even here, but they were too damn lazy to do even that.

sufficient evidence to justify laying a charge

If you go to a grand jury, prosecutors could get away with indicting a ham sandwich. (Most people on the grand jury assume that the prosecutor would only bother prosecuting people that he's sure are guilty, and that even if someone innocent goes to trial that that jury would acquit. And yes, the people on the grand jury aren't selected because they're intellectuals.)

Most people on the grand jury assume that the prosecutor would only bother prosecuting people that he's sure are guilty

Actually, it can go the other way with a grand jury as well, where the prosecutor manipulates things to insure a no-bill from the grand jury.

Most US states no longer require a grand jury for all felonies.

In my state there are only 2 cases where they bother to pull out grand juries: they want to use the grand jury secrecy shield to investigate political opponents, the local DA wants political cover for NOT charging cops publicly caught breaking the law.

the local DA wants political cover for NOT charging cops publicly caught breaking the law.

That was the Breana Taylor case where the DA wouldn't let the Grand Jury even vote on any murder or manslaughter charges on the cops.

I was actually surprised that the DA in the Breana Taylor case didn't go for a no-bill. Or maybe he did and the Grand Jury wasn't buying it.

It is unethical for a prosecutor to present a case to a grand jury unless the prosecutor believes that there is sufficient evidence to convict the person of a crime. I'm not saying that rule is always followed but it is the standard that they are supposed to follow.

I'm not saying that rule is always followed but it is the standard that they are supposed to follow.

And in the US, generally with prosecutors, there is zero enforcement of those standards and every prosecutor knows it. Misconduct might get a case tossed, but there are no personal consequences for the individual prosecutor.

It is unethical for a prosecutor to present a case to a grand jury unless the prosecutor believes that there is sufficient evidence to convict the person of a crime.

What does a prosecutor gain by presenting a case without asking for a bill from them? The proceedings are sealed and anyone found leaking gets nailed worse than a MAGA hat at a Antifa/BLM protest.

What does a prosecutor gain by presenting a case without asking for a bill from them?

Political cover for a case that the DA doesn't want to prosecute, but that a significant chunk of the voters he hast to face come election time want to see prosecuted.

That political cover only happens if the deliberations are made public. Even that is supposed to remain confidential. Or are you implying selective leaks. :)

Now I'm sure our great public servants would never stoop so low as to violate their oaths of office with such craven behavior. Right?

That political cover only happens if the deliberations are made public. Even that is supposed to remain confidential.

You are wrong.

Yes the deliberations are supposed to be secret, but the verdict is not.

The political cover comes from the DA being able to point at the no-bill verdict from the grand jury and saying "See, the grand jury returned a no-bill verdict, there wasn't any case to prosecute there".

Far from being necessary to the political cover, breaking the secrecy on the grand jury deliberations could wreck the political cover the DA gets from the no-bill verdict by showing the public that the DA deliberately threw the case.

Basta. Un momento, por favor.

You're saying that the verdict, whether yea or nay, of the grand jury can be made public while deliberations can't. My understanding is that no-bills remain under the secrecy cloak while true bills don't.

Which would make sense for true bills as they're likely to result in a prosecution. I thought the no-bill restriction was in place to protect the privacy of the individual. At least in my locale (Michigan). Admittedly, not an attorney so I could have it wrong. If so, then I've been operating under false assumptions for decades.

You're saying that the verdict, whether yea or nay, of the grand jury can be made public while deliberations can't.

Yes. Look around at cases where they take cops before a grand jury. After, DA's routinely publicly point to the fact that the grand jury returned a no-bill.

What happens in the grand jury proceedings is secret. Neither the existence of the grand jury nor the verdict are covered by the secrecy rule.

Leaving no-bills under secrecy would be stupid.

The fact that there was a grand jury is publicly known. A no-bill would be obvious from the fact that the case doesn't move forward to trial.

A no-bill would be obvious from the fact that the case doesn't move forward to trial.

If a prosecutor told the grand jury about a case, explaining why he thought there should be no indictment, and did not ask the grand jury to indict, and therefore the grand jury was not given a chance to return either a true-bill or a no-bill, the prosecutor could still truthfully say publicly "the grand jury heard the case and did not indict."

The point was that in a state that no longer requires a grand jury for all felony indictments it's not really possible to keep a no-bill confidential.

Which would make sense for true bills as they're likely to result in a prosecution. I thought the no-bill restriction was in place to protect the privacy of the individual. At least in my locale (Michigan).

Maybe Michigan is one of the few states that still uses grand juries for all felonies.

In which case, like the feds they probably maintain a grand jury for months and use a single grand jury to hear multiple cases, in which case keeping no-bills secret might make sense.

However in most states where the use of grand juries is no longer routine, they have to specially seat a grand jury to hear a particular case.

The existence of the grand jury isn't secret, and because it's use isn't routine, keeping the identity of the target of a grand jury investigation secret simply isn't practical.

Witnesses called to the grand jury are not allowed to talk about what was said in the grand jury chamber. They are not sworn to secrecy over the fact that they were called to testify before the grand jury.

In those states, maintaining the secrecy of a no-bill just isn't possible. A no-bill becomes obvious from the fact the case doesn't go to trial.

Witnesses can say anything they want about their testimony in a grand jury. It's the jurors, prosecutors and staff present who are required to maintain secrecy.

They want to prosecute, but are afraid of political fallout. They can simply shrug their shoulders, and say "It was the Grand Jury that decided to go forward with this, not me."

Then they hand the case off to a ADA that they want to have as a loyal attack dog, because that ADA's career will forever depend on his boss' protection after making political enemies...

indicting a ham sandwich

"The phrase comes from Sol Wachtler, the former chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals. In 1985 he argued in an interview with the New York Daily News that grand juries should be eliminated from most felony cases:

Wachtler, who became the state's top judge earlier this month, said district attorneys now have so much influence on grand juries that "by and large" they could get them to "indict a ham sandwich."

The "ham sandwich" line was later immortalized when author Tom Wolfe quoted the judge in his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. Wachtler, who is Jewish, subsequently told the blogger Barry Popik "that he regrets that he didn't say 'pastrami' sandwich."