Lawyer X - Police

[capcom]

Shades of "Mississippi Burning"

[Baggers]

Shades of "Mississippi Burning"

What a great movie. Dafoe and Hackman... classic.

[Gointocarlton]

Not sure what you mean by 'manipulate legal proceedings'. A spy sent in to feed information to police seems sneaky, yet it may well be the difference between a crook continuing to harm people and sent to jail. Moral dilemma.

Illegal wiretaps may also deliver evidence of serious crime and hence bring the perpetrators to justice yet it, too, is sneaky and seemingly dishonest - as suggested by the name 'illegal wiretap.' Another moral dilemma.

An extreme example. I hear of a neighbour being a pedo... but he's a pillar of the community and is untouchable. All attempts to bring him to justice has resulted in the kid being shamed and accused of lying, so no more families come forward. So, I break the law by trespassing and put him under surveillance and see him violating a child so I film it.

How many moral dilemmas in that scenario? If I just film it and show the authorities, how many violations may occur in the interim - ruining a life or lives? Yet I obtained the evidence illegally. Would it be inadmissible? What if I smashed in the door and beat the crap out of him then reported it along with the film evidence? Illegally obtained film, breaking and entering, assault... I should end up in jail, but I stopped the crime, but it may well continue and I end up with a police record!!! Another moral dilemma.

Within the law we have dilemmas it would seem. Perhaps it's the letter-of-the-law, vs, the spirit of the law, vs equity? And when they clash? Holy mackerel! As Kermit said (as a metaphor), "It aint easy being green."

Baggers I'd like to say you handled your "scenario" very poorly. If I caught my neighbour in the act of violating a child, I would have strung him up to to a tree and called it in as a suicide. I find it abhorrent.

[Thryleon]

I see the Police and Lawyers as Yin and Yang, one cannot function without the other and therefore it is ridiculous to expect zero overlap. So there is irony when each portrays the other as a mortal enemy!
Does it function that way though?

Could you argue that a lawyer dropping a case is a tell, a defacto concession of client guilt!

[member=105]Thryleon[/member]  What is "Good" as in "Good vs Bad" Is bad the police leveraging a greedy and narcissistic lawyer to put a career "child killing drug peddler" off the streets? Some will no doubt claim the high ground, and advise us to turn the other cheek. Tell that to the parents who have watched a child die from a drug overdose!

Lawyers and socialists will argue against those actions and infer an anarchy of no limits is the ultimate destination, but I seriously doubt our democracy crumbles when a bad lawyer goes bad and the police leverage that event!

Removing access to lawyers by instilling paranoia might be the best thing to happen to the crooks, from a public perspective!

Maybe the public anger needs to be directed at those who award the appeals? A mighty deep and dark pit!

I dont worry about good vs bad when it comes to legality.

I trust the cops do everything within the law or the spirit of the law rather.

If not then we are screwed.

Likewise I expect legal counsel to act in my best interests.

If I can have faith in either then we have no legal system and we are left with a kangaroo court.

Let me put it to you differently.  The law is there to protect society.  Where people operate outside those laws they actually damage our society's frameworks, values, morals and ethics irrespective of the intention.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

They are asking questions they already know the answer to in order to prove someone is a thief, murderer and a criminal not the other way around.  The polices job is to gather evidence and then convict not to pervert the course of that investigation and therefore justice in the process.

Reading up on gobbos case she was getting crims off for finding errors in their cases built against people and that is entirely the point.  Who polices the policemen otherwise?

Note they are people and are fallible.  In gobbos case she needed them and in the first conversation with them she was recorded illegally despite her telling them not to and asking if it were being recorded.



Unacceptable.

This article summarizes the issues well i think.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theage....56hh9.html

[LP]

Note they are people and are fallible.  In gobbos case she needed them and in the first conversation with them she was recorded illegally despite her telling them not to and asking if it were being recorded.

Unacceptable

Sort of like a lawyer who continues to defend a crook they know is guilty!

Personally, I've never understood the defence of trivial legal technicalities, and they are often quite trivial like the guy who use to get people off speeding offences by exposing police cars were using the wrong brand of tyre. It seems to start with this premise. "There is this dodgy lawyer". Then the client of the dodgy lawyer who discloses that technical loophole is sometimes rewarded with eternal immunity via double jeopardy!

[Mav]

Don’t confuse the US system for ours. We’ve all seen shows where whole prosecutions fail because 1 breach of the suspect’s rights leads to all other evidence being thrown out as fruit of the poisoned tree.

In Australia, very few types of evidence are excluded automatically. Some examples are illegal telephone intercepts and confessions that were given involuntarily. And their exclusion usually doesn’t flow down the line to other evidence.

Then you have cases where evidence needs to be gathered according to strict guidelines; for example, the prosecution needs to prove the chain of custody of drugs seized or a DNA lab needs to show they took appropriate steps to prevent cross-contamination. Do you really think these are just “technicalities”? Particularly in the latter case, innocent people have been jailed because of sloppy work.

[LP]

Barticularly in the latter case, innocent people have been jailed because of sloppy work.

No doubt, but in those cases I wonder how many "good lawyers" knew about the real culprit and stayed mum while some innocent went to jail, if it happens just once it is once too many, and the penalty should be the heaviest available to the law. But would they prosecute their own?

In that case, if the police step over the line to find the dodgy lawyer, why penalise the police. It's the lawyer who has done the dodgy isn't it, how do police obtain justice for a victim in this instance?

The problem is the lawyer is too skilled at hiding the evidence in structures that can only be open illegally, something that in itself should be made illegal.

Should Gobbo be lauded for exposing the legal filth that protects hardened criminals?

I can't help but feel this is somewhat like the Trump prosecution debate, politicians in the US won't pursue Trump because they know in the future they could be exposed to the same prosecution risk, they want to reserve that escape route for their own future use!

[Thryleon]

No doubt, but in those cases I wonder how many "good lawyers" knew about the real culprit and stayed mum while some innocent went to jail, if it happens just once it is once too many, and the penalty should be the heaviest available to the law. But would they prosecute their own?

In that case, if the police step over the line to find the dodgy lawyer, why penalise the police. It's the lawyer who has done the dodgy isn't it, how do police obtain justice for a victim in this instance?

The problem is the lawyer is too skilled at hiding the evidence in structures that can only be open illegally, something that in itself should be made illegal.

Should Gobbo be lauded for exposing the legal filth that protects hardened criminals?

I can't help but feel this is somewhat like the Trump prosecution debate, politicians in the US won't pursue Trump because they know in the future they could be exposed to the same prosecution risk, they want to reserve that escape route for their own future use!

Whats really going to make your head spin is whether or not Gobbo acted knowing that she was perverting the course of justice.

Was her testimony that crucial to putting lots of these guys away?

They might have been able to lock them up anyway and all she has done is provide the key to get them out sooner.  After all she did voluntarily pervert the course of justice sighting stress as the reason.

[LP]

Whats really going to make your head spin is whether or not Gobbo acted knowing that she was perverting the course of justice.

Was her testimony that crucial to putting lots of these guys away?

They might have been able to lock them up anyway and all she has done is provide the key to get them out sooner.  After all she did voluntarily pervert the course of justice sighting stress as the reason.

This is sort of the point I'm creeping around, it's partially why I don't get the angst directed towards the police.

The media paint it as a police bungle that Gobbo just by "luck" finds herself in a situation in which the crooks get out and she is exempt from prosecution. When in reality those lucky structures are most likely there by design, as such she and the crooks are rewarded despite guilt!

[Mav]

Interesting twist on the Lawyer X issue and my previous posts about the FBI infiltrating civil rights and left wing groups in the 60s & 70s:

British women thought they'd found boyfriends who shared their beliefs. They were actually undercover police, ABC.