High conviction rates are not bad. A low rate would likely mean that lots of innocent people are being made to face trial. Alternately, it could be a sign of incompetence.
It is easy to make the rate low: prosecute based on mere suspicion, or have the prosecutor be a person who barely graduated from law school.
Re:Second Canadian 'missing' in China
by paraditedc on Thursday December 13, 2018 @01:40AM
(#18670328)
Well things just got more ridiculous now that your comment is being downvoted. HN is weird sometimes.
Whenever you post something negative towards China then your post usually end up at -2 ~ -5 before slowly climbing up again. I personally don't care about karma but I do care about text becoming less readable, so it's unfortunate that it's so easy to game the system.
Independent, not sovereign [1]. The branches can check each other, but a judge over whom the President has pretty much zero power will decide if Ms. Meng is guilty or not.
For example, one of Trump's nominees recently voted to keep existing case law regarding Planned Parenthood in place [2]. This disappointed conservatives. But there isn't anything the President can do except complain about it.
> didn't Trump himself say that he can intervene in Ms. Meng's case?
Trump says lots of things. His Justice Department can decide whether or not to bring the case. That's prosecutorial discretion, and it's devastatingly powerful. But in the end, if Ms. Meng is to be convicted, an independent judge presiding over a jury must agree with their case.
(It's not all rosy. The U.S. federal conviction rate is over 90% [3]. Better than China's 99.9%, but nothing to phone home about.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_independence
[2] https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2018/12/12/wh...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate#United_States
[4] https://qz.com/246696/chinas-criminal-conviction-rate-is-99-...
Side note: You asked an honest question. It's ridiculous you're getting downvoted.