By your logic, are you also saying the United States makes a mockery of the criminal justice system?
So if you get convicted of a crime in the US, then you’d better pray to God that it isn’t handled by the DA.
If the DA is able to construe a set of charges carrying a maximum multi-year or even multi-decade custodial sentence, and when the option of not even being able to be considered for parole can be added as a condition of your sentence — no matter what kind of prison behavior you show, or how you respond as a prisoner to rehabilitation or reconciliation programs — then the plea bargaining process itself begins to seem a lot like an extrajudicial and unconstitutional trial of the kind one is surprised a moral society would endorse.
Anyway I don't know how much you are helping the USA here in your argument. A deal in the US is often like:
"Look, kid. With this deal, you get 1 year in prison. If we choose to prosecute, you are looking at 30 years to life. Your call. Remember, you have a [kid|mother|girlfriend]."
Who would risk going up in court, even if you maybe didn't even do very much? It's basic economics. The risk is too great that jury is going to hate you, no matter what you did or didn't do. Better take the bargain and cut your losses.
Settlements, for civil cases, not so much, and I think it's an overall positive.
USA has 95% convictions based on plea deals, so the investigation is only complete enough to convince the accused that he is isolated enough in his jail that he won’t be able to build a defense, but the accusation is never formally proved, it’s just the accused who agrees to admit crimes. Examples vary, for example pharmacists who are legally authorized to sell legal cannabis have been convicted because they couldn’t bring proof.
In France we have jihadists who get freed, rapists who get away with it because they are recently immigrated and « don’t have the western codes » (true quote from the judge), people who get French nationality after having assaulted a policeman; We also have people in jail for way lighter offenses, but who are public cases with lots of media pressure.
Although I’m all for a severe justice system, and process-based justice, I’m not convinced half of the convicts are there with a proven proof from the accusation ; rather, they couldn’t defend themselves.
One issue Ghosn mentioned is that his trial(s) was being delayed possibly until next year and beyond with his Japanese lawyer telling him that the whole thing could last up to 5 years.
Now, remember that the Japanese judiciary initially wanted to keep him in jail until his trial(s) and that the conditions of his bail were practically 'house arrest' with very limited contacts with his family and the world.
If I were 65 years old (as he is) and risked potentially having to stay years in jail/house arrest without trial in a foreign country and then risked up to 10 years in jail after that in a country that has a 99.6% conviction rate I would do whatever I could to get the f# out of there (whether I was guilty or innocent).
He had the means to do it and he did it. On a human level I cannot blame him.
Do you have any evidence to support that this is actually a good idea?
Or is it just revenge porn you’re after?
Given how inhumane it is, yeah, I think I would have tried to escape too
The fuck, why? Not at all obvious that this is illegal, and even if that’s the case it’s not at all obvious that this would be sufficiently illegal to justify arrest (and presumably extradition, which generally requires dual criminality).
Would you expect friends helping bail jumpers to be treated like this elsewhere? That’s not usually (ever?) the case.
With respect to two US citizens mentioned in the article (and there may be more), they may be extradited should Japan makes the request. The US does have an extradition treaty with Japan and the crimes mentioned above are within the purview of the treaty.[1]
[1] https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/volume%201203/v...
The federal Harboring statutes do not appear to cover skipping bail (until an arrest warrant is issued).
>obstruction of justice
Obstruction of justice is a much more complicated topic, but I don't see any statute that would clearly fit this activity.
>aiding and abetting [the escape]
Would require the escape itself to be a crime in both jurisdictions, punishable with deprivation of liberty of more than one year.
IANAL, but I'm curious and able to read. The justice manual on justice.gov is a helpful resource.
- 18 U.S. Code § 1073. Flight to avoid prosecution or giving testimony [1]
- 18 U.S. Code § 752. Instigating or assisting escape [2]
- 18 U.S. Code § 1071. Concealing person from arrest [3]
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1073 [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/752 [3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1071
Therefore it's not clear to me if skipping bail is covered by any of these laws (until after an arrest warrant is issued due to that bail violation).