In the case of LEOs or prosecutors, I think many give up the search for truth and give in to the us-vs-them mentality. The cognitive dissonance and pressure of group dynamics make it almost a certainty.

There is huge power in law enforcement and prosecutorial discretion. Yes, some parts of the job have to be strict for safety purposes. There are many other parts that don't.

I've had prosecutors and police know that our rights were violated as part of a citation. They did not care. Cop lied multiple times in court and was caught. IAD merely gave them a warning. The LT of the troop made a bunch of BS excuses - either he's actually that stupid or he's lying too. Filed a complaint about an incompetent magistrate whow also violated due process rights - judicial board doesn't care. Prosecutor instructed the court not to talk to us which prevented us from securing remote accommodations for our witness - the Bar didn't care. Civil rights lawyer said our rights were violated, but unless there was substantial monetary damages, the system doesn't care and would likely see it as frivolous.

Nobody cares. Nobody protects your rights. If nobody can enforce your rights, do you even have them at all? All the trooper/prosecutor/magistrate/judge had to do, was drop/throw out the case. They had the discretion, and even the responsibility, to do that. Their mentality was the problem. We were guilty in their mind because if we were not, that would make them participants in a broken and unjust system.

Defense & prosecution aren't on a search for truth, they are on a search to make the best possible case for & against you, respectively. That's their role in the system. Law enforcement (officers, investigators) I would hope to be on the search for truth.

Yes, as an adversarial system they are to make the best case. However, it still must be truthful.

The trooper didn't care about the truth. He lied in court... twice. We mentioned a third party witness at the scene - they never questioned them. There was no statutory definition of a term. The dictionaries had only one open ended definition for the term. We wrote to the state agency that is the authority in that area to see what guidance they have on the activity - they said it's legal (even if they didn't, the rule of strict construction requires ambiguity to be favorable to the defense). The people in the system didn't care. The trooper also knew that the other party committed a crime, but declined to charge them. What a one sided system... again, truth doesn't matter when they treat you as guilty until proven innocent.

Purely theoretically, prosecution should search truth. By law, they should follow exculpatory evidence too, give all evidence to defense and few other rules. Not saying they do, in practice they are rewarded for breaking those rules.

But, in theory it should be different.

They also aren't allowed to hold known incorrect charges against someone when that incorrect charge carries pretrial restrictions that the correct charge does not. In my experience, you are absolutely right that they do not follow these laws/rules. I highly doubt that they added the trooper's name to their Guiglio list even after I provided evidence that the trooper lied in court related to two separate facts.

> Defense & prosecution aren't on a search for truth, they are on a search to make the best possible case for & against you, respectively.

The most important things prosecution does are: decide who to prosecute, decide when to ask for bail, decide what sentence to ask for. This all has a lot more to do with societal values than making a strong case.

>> our rights were violated as part of a citation. >> unless there was substantial monetary damages

I take it that this was not a criminal prosecution that might result in actual jail time. Was it a minor traffic offense? Part of the "thick skin" i mentioned above is a pragmatism re the "rights" of individuals in minor cases. Highschool teaches us that every trial is the same, that beyond-reasonable-doubt, perjury and and all the rights apply to everyone in ever case. The reality is that absolute respect for such things is a limited resource. Impeach every cop with less-than-perfect testimony in a traffic case and you won't have any cops left to testify in murder cases. Give every drunk driving charge a full jury trial and the economy would stop as every able body would spend more time sitting in the jury box than working. Functioning within the system means working within those realities. Ideology dies a quick death when faced with the staggering number of charges brought each day.

"I take it that this was not a criminal prosecution that might result in actual jail time."

Criminal summary offense (dog off leash) which carries the possibility of up to 90 days in jail. Instead of charging the off leash offense, they wrote the charge for a dangerous dog. This incorrect charge carried with it pretrial restrictions only found under that charge (dog could not leave our property, etc).

"Part of the "thick skin" i mentioned above is a pragmatism re the "rights" of individuals in minor cases."

There is no such exception for ignoring rights simply because they feel it's pragmatic.

If they feel minor case isn't worth the effort to properly pursue, then it shouldn't be worth their time to pursue it at all. When you screw over enough people, there won't be any left to support the system.

"Give every drunk driving charge a full jury trial and the economy would stop as every able body would spend more time sitting in the jury box than working."

Um... they do have that right. The states fixed this, not by desecrating their rights, but by creating alternative and less severe programs like ARD.

"Impeach ever cop with less-than-perfect testimony in a traffic case and you won't have any cops left to testify in murder cases."

We aren't talking about less than perfect. We're talking about lies, or consistently making false claims (unreliable). For example, if the cop tells me he's going to amend the charge because he made a mistake 10 minutes before court, and then tells the judge he's amending it because he's cutting us a break... that's pretty egregious that he wants to hide his mistake to influence the court.

I've had first-hand experience with this but in the opposite direction. Had a cop cut me a break on a ticket and charge me with a lesser offense than the one I actually committed. When I went to pay the fine (this was a long time ago, before the internet) I was told the ticket hadn't been filed and so there was no fine to pay.

Fast forward a year and I get a court summons for this ticket. At this point I'm annoyed enough to fight it so I take it to trial. I argue that because a year has gone by, my Constitutional right to a speedy trial has been violated. This actually makes the judge (actually a "magistrate" -- still not sure what the difference is) look something up in a book before denying my motion with no explanation. Then the cop blatantly lies on the stand and says that he saw something that he could not possibly have seen. I have photographic evidence that proves that he could not possibly have seen what he claims to have seen. He is clearly lying to fulfill the statutory requirement for finding me guilty of this offense. Then the magistrate asks me point-blank if I was guilty. I take the fifth. Magistrate proclaims "the court will be finding you guilty". I pay the fine, enroll in traffic school, and proceed with my privileged-rich-white-guy life.

It's a pretty fucked up system even when you are on the non-shitty end of the stick.

>> Then the magistrate asks me point-blank if I was guilty. I take the fifth.

That's not the fifth. Pleading not guilty isn't considered a statement or an admission of anything. Nor can it be held against you in any way. We don't double down by charging every guilty party with "perjury" because they lost. That was done away with centuries ago.

I was being a little bit glib there. The judge did not literally ask me if I was guilty and I did not literally take the fifth. What she did was ask whether the thing the cop claimed to have seen, which he could not possibly have seen, nonetheless actually happened, and I said I could not remember because it had happened more than a year ago.

It was a very weird situation from a moral point of view because on the one hand, finding me guilty was not supported by the evidence, but on the other hand, letting me get off scot-free would have been even more unjust because the fact of the matter is that I did commit a fairly serious moving violation, and the only reason we were in court at all was that the cop decided to cut be a break and then took a long time to do the paperwork.

You said you had photographic evidence...were you not allowed to introduce it? Why does it matter if you can't remember if you have video proof?

I had proof that the cop could not have seen what he claimed to have seen, and that therefore he must be lying about having seen it. I did not have proof that the thing he claimed to have seen did not actually happen.

Yes...I'm confused about OPs story because, as far as I know, you can't just plead the 5th at various parts of a trial where it is not relevant. The judge would generally not move on until you plead something. Or they would hold you in contempt if you refuse to plead guilty/not guilty/alford/nolo contendere etc

Well, it's a magistrate. They tend to not know/follow the laws/rules in my experience. They aren't even required to have a law degree or even pass the Bar. I think in my state they only require 40 hours of training.

Based on their other comment it sounds like they said they didn't remember when asked by the magistrate if they committed the act, which isn't the same as invoking the fifth. Thwy also said they were able to prove the officer couldn't have witnessed the act they were testifying about. Then the magistrate found them guilty (based on false testimony?).

"I've had first-hand experience with this but in the opposite direction."

I think it's the same direction, unless I'm missing something.

Magistrates don't have to have a law degree nor pass the Bar. They tend to be very incompetent considering that they are the ones deciding the initial hearing for misdemeanors and felonies (although most of the time they deal with more minor things).

I asked a magistrate to dismiss a case with prejudice, and he thought I was calling him prejudice...

> I think it's the same direction,

Yeah, it depends on how you look at it. I was thinking about this:

> I've had prosecutors and police know that our rights were violated as part of a citation. They did not care.

In my case it's, "I had a cop decide not to cite me for violations of the law that I actually committed, only to turn around and railroad me for a less serious violation that he could not possibly have known whether I actually committed or not."

My point was just that net-net the system worked to my benefit despite the fact that my ostensible rights were violated.

Ah, I missed that they didn't charge you on the more serious infraction.

I've only seen it go the one way in my experiences. It just seems so odd to me that a system with such power has such limited controls/protections, and such common mistakes and abuses.

You need to share the actual details

As far as low-skill, high-pay goes, dockworkers unloading ships is up there with meatgrinder jobs. Your team gets paid for each lb / kg unloaded off the ship, and that sum is divided equally over each team member.

So the faster and more ships your team can unload, the more you're paid. That's the incentive.

I once got paid almost $1000, in just one day - but that day was 20 hours long, and you're pretty much beat to a pulp afterwards.

We had people come in, and leave before lunch. No pay in the world would keep them there.

Edit, for the curious - I tried to look up some footage of what it looks like:

This clip shows a nice and modern trawler, the unloading requires little manpower. See those long brown blocks on the palets? Those would be around 40-50 kgs / 90 - 110 lbs. https://youtu.be/Qi7VNBOJetA?t=115

This is more on par with what you'd usually see - the rooms would be stack to the ceiling with frozen packet/blocks. Those blocks are around 20 kgs / 45 lbs each. https://youtu.be/e7u-X8XR1hs?t=543

Here's a larger trawler - again - sometimes the fish will be stacked to the ceiling https://youtu.be/fQEwECzZL_s?t=2739

Unfortunately I can't seem to find any footage of the more usual scenario, where the blocks are just piled up at random.

"I once got paid almost $1000, in just one day - but that day was 20 hours long, and you're pretty much beat to a pulp afterwards."

Yah $1000 for one day is deceiving, how many days after that one day of work are you totally useless because your body is still recovering? I think you have to factor in the broader dip in quality of life that happens when you work 20 hours straight when you look at that paycheck of $1000.

> I once got paid almost $1000, in just one day

This is surprisingly high in that I would have assumed it would be far more cost-effective for the company to improve automation here and bring in more equipment to assist — intuitively, even if such equipment would be expensive, it couldn't be more expensive than the labor costs.

What industry was this?

Unloading frozen blocks of fish off factory fishing trawlers.

In short, these trawlers catch the fish (by trawling the ocean floor), produce the fish onboard (fish fillets), pack the product (in 25 and 50 kg blocks), and store them in large freezing rooms. Then when the capacity is full, they dock, and the product is unloaded. Usually some company offers this loading/unloading service. The product was the either placed in freezing warehouse, or loaded directly onto trucks.

The trawlers we unloaded, would usually carry 300 - 500 metric tons of fish. When I worked, we'd get around $0.03 pr kg fish unloaded, so a 300 metric tonne assignment would result in $9000 split on 10-15 people. Some days we'd unload 500-700 metric ton. That would be very long days - but the work had to be done, as the there were ships standing in queue.

The main problem with automation is that all the ships look a bit different, and there are so many edge cases there. Sometimes the blocks are frozen together, and you'll have to use a crowbar to get them loose. Sometimes the blocks have shifted due to rough seas. It can be a fucking mess, other times it's nice and straightforward.

The largest boats do have conveyer belt, so the longshoremen are just throwing blocks on the belt, and the other crew is on land putting said blocks onto pallets. But 9 out of 10 times, there's a crew in the freezer loading blocks onto pallets, and then the pallets are brought up from the ship, and sorted on land. People work surprisingly fast.

As for the vessels, it's just a cost of doing business.

I think the OP already said: dockworkers unloading ships -- that's the industry.

And to the extent that the cargo isn't containerized (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't), automation is harder than it sounds here: sequencing, unstacking, moving, and re-stacking irregularly-shaped, imbalanced, fragile, and dissimilarly-packaged objects requires lots of experience and judgement or things go awry very fast, and one mistake can cost a ton of time to deal with when something falls over, gets punctured, or gets in the way.

This is also true of movers (as in house movers). It's harder than it looks, at least to do well -- many cheaper companies write contracts such that they can screw up and customers have no recourse, which changes the economics a bit -- but the first-rate movers are expensive for a reason. Unless you're incredibly careful (which often implies going more slowly), bodies get wrecked and objects get broken.

As an aside, one proxy for a first-rate moving company is them having front-line employees who have been on the job for 5+ years. It's basically impossible for companies that cut corners because no one survives that long. Firms like Gentle Giant out of Boston (I have no stake in the company, I just know them well)) have a stable of long-term employees, many of them athletes, because they're incentivized to do a good job while not hurting themselves. And they're expensive (but not necessarily more expensive than cut-rate firms if you factor in the risk of damage, and/or the likelihood of being fairly reimbursed if something is damaged).

That actually sounds like a great way to workout while getting paid! Do they accept short/temporary/irregular stints?

It is not a workout. It is repetitive work, the same motion literally hundreds and thousands of time. You will be injured far sooner than you will get in better shape.

If you want a job where you can be paid to get in shape, join a military reserve force.

Great workout ends when biologically convenient and leads to less damage on body. These jobs fairly often destroy peoples bodies.

> Pediatric oncology

My father in law does this, in a developing country no less. Bless his soul, he's a very kind man. But it's incredibly taxing. Not just the treatments but there are many cases where children die and there's nothing you can do about it. And it doesn't stop, even when he's on vacation, he has patient's families calling/texting him.

I've been at dinner where someone will walk over and say something like "you saved my brother/daughter/sister/son's life." Or sometimes my wife and I will meet someone who will recognize she's his daughter and day the same. Hopefully that makes it worth it.

Sat down at a bar once and the woman next to me was a pediatric oncologist, basically just crying into her beer about how she wanted to quit. It wasn't just sad-- it was an incredibly interesting conversation that I still remember about a decade later.

I haven’t spoken to a lot of doctors, but a lot of nurses I know are desperate to leave the field.

The last doctor I spoke to was the most condescending man I met in a while, unfortunately, he was also my surgeon.

I think it is important to have some empathy for surgeons, despite the commonness of arrogance and the mostly absurdly high compensations they receive. Their work is to intentionally mutilate people and their skill is to make it so that the mutilation will improve health. It is an incredibly dissociating job, taking you out of all standard relationships to the body and other people. It takes years, sometimes decades of training to become skilled enough to lead operations, and even short breaks are known to significantly diminish skill and outcomes for patients. The stress level is unfathomable for lay people, and the distance it creates in them from other people is not a sign that they’re assholes but the remnant of the sacrifices they had to make to fulfill our idea of what they have to be. I know not all surgeons are arrogant in the way you and then I have described, but I always feel sad and caring for those people who are wrecked enough by the process to become so socially inept and disconnected from the people around them.

I agree with this 100%. The more a matter of life and death a particular field of medicine is, the more I understand people who work there to be "cold" and "uncaring". Not because they are assholes, the exact opposite. I think people in these fields have to sacrifice a great deal of their humanity to be able to do their job and save lives.

What we don't see are the undoubtedly countless cases where their pour every last drop of their will to save a person, and it just fails and the patient dies. Through no fault of the doctor. Imagine having to carry that burden. To always question whether the person who was put in your care died because you could've done better.

In fact, I think this is an unimaginable burden to carry. I certainly wouldn't be able to do it. I'd break long before that. For this reason alone, these people will always have my very highest regard.

> Pediatric oncology. ... Or criminal defense attorneys/prosecutors.

Not detracting from the point but, in either case, this person is not going to be on the breadline as a consequence of quitting his/her job. They will get a similalrly high paying and high prestige job the next day.

Aren't legal jobs drying up? I've heard a lot about how it's not the golden ticket everybody thought it was 20 years ago.

What high paying jobs do doctors get that aren in medicine?

There are a lot of jobs in medicine that aren't pediatric oncology.

An oncolgy specialist can get many jobs as a doctor, although not as a specialist as such.

Outside of being an actual doctor, many more than a recently unemployed warehouse worker.

> Or any law enforcement.

Please don't equate healthcare workers with law enforcement. Healthcare workers have an astronomically harder job and actually make society a better place.

How many healthcare workers get literally murdered on the job? Anyone that's had been a cop for more than a couple of years will personally know a colleague that was murdered at work. Not to mention the constant number of victims they will encounter. Outside of certain fields most healthcare workers aren't dealing with dead and dieing patients everyday. For many cops in some cities there are multiple fatality call per shift.

I think in terms of difficulty, law enforcement has much more skin in the game- both jobs have to deal with potential guilt from screwing up but if a surgeon misjudges a situation pretty much the worst outcome is that they get sued and in egregious cases lose their job. Whereas in law enforcement you're more likely to have adversarial interactions with armed people, drunk drivers, etc where your own life is in danger.

Based on my (definitely incomplete so feel free to fill in any blanks I have!) knowledge of places that don't have formal law enforcement, it's impossible to make a good faith argument that they're better places because of it.

Prior to 2020, health work was probably safer, but since then over eighty thousand health workers have died of Covid worldwide: https://www.who.int/news/item/20-10-2021-health-and-care-wor...

If the world is unlucky enough to experience another pandemic someday, health workers will be expected to risk their lives once again during the period where no vaccines or good treatments exist.

Law enforcement in the United States is a fairly safe job. Adversarial interactions with armed people and drunk drivers are sadly part of many more jobs, and generally the most dangerous behaviour a cop will engage in is driving.

I have a friend who used to be a cop in Dallas. He's a dentist now.

He says he makes many times the money with much less stress. Being in law enforcement in this climate seems like a pretty rough job to me. And that's not to excuse bad law enforcement behavior (of which there is plenty) either.

"Actually make society a better place". << What do you suppose your world would look like with no enforcement of any laws?

Just met one and she was the nicest person, just very careful and reserved, used to the toughest decisions. On the upside kids get cured more frequently than adults.

> A working day surrounded by kids undergoing painful treatments, particularly when you are the person prescribing those treatments, grinds down one's soul.

This is why psychopaths are overrepresented in such professions. I guess it makes it easier to cut into people, and to make dispassionate decisions.

edit: are the downvotes because you think I'm implying this is a bad thing? Am I wrong?

> dispassionate decisions.

if they are able to make choices dispassionately that is objectively best for the patient, then it makes them good doctors. The only problem is how does one judge whether they made the decision in the best interest of the patient, when normally, this judgement is based on a proxy metric like sympathy?

didn't downvote, but I wonder if you have a study showing the stats. Before I've heard that psychopaths are over-represented in politics, as CEOs, as lawyers, as law enforcement, and as criminals. Now also, evidently, in pediatric oncology?

Oh okay I see. When I said "such professions" I meant all of the ones the parent had mentioned: medicine, lawyers, law enforcement. And like you said CEOs and politicians can be added to the list. I know I read something about surgeons in particular having an overrepresentation of psychopaths, but I don't have them handy. I'd imagine it could be true for pediatric oncologists as well for the same reasons, but I don't have any studies to back that up.

ok understandable, although I think probably everyone jumped to the same conclusion I did as you quoted from the section most pertinent to pediatric oncologists, and I think that was the profession most central to the parent comment.

I was thinking this would be a eusocial use of psychopathy.

> Pediatric oncology.

That job must be nightmarish for anyone who isn’t a full-blown sociopath. I’m not a particularly empathetic person and I couldn’t start that job let alone stay in it for years.

Edit: > One of the attractions of pediatrics is, surprisingly enough…

This is the opposite of surprising. I imagine one of the appeals of pediatrics is significantly fewer of your patients die. That’s why pediatric oncology is particularly striking, it’s dealing with high numbers of deaths in a cohort where they are otherwise quite rare.

Death is a virtually unavoidable part of working in medicine. One of the things I've heard over and over again from physicians is dealing with the first handful of deaths during medical school clinical rotations or internship after graduation. There's the second-guessing: what else could I have done to save the person's life? The healthy response seems to be becoming at peace with the fact medicine can't fix everything, accepting that nothing more could have been done given the current state of the field, and that those patients got the best chance they could have had at more meaningful life.

One of the attractions of pediatrics is, surprisingly enough, that there's less death as kids tend to bounce back from the kinds of things that would kill adults.

I know a doctor who works in pediatric oncology. (She is a singer in a metal group, too.) And a nurse from the same pediatric oncology department.

Neither is a sociopath and both told me that as of today, the job is much more rewarding than even 20 years ago. Most of their little patients leave the hospital in remission and deaths have steadily gone down during their careers. It is almost sacrilegious to say that aloud, but childhood cancer seems to be inching towards a "mostly solved problem" status. Contemporary long term survival of kids diagnosed with cancer is hovering around 80 per cent.

Interestingly, 70% of veterans who experience traumatic combat experiences will not have PTSD. 30% of veterans who experience the most severe traumatic combat experiences will not have PTSD.

Human beings are very resilient. Or at the least, there is a sub-population of us who are that way.

I like to think of myself as being in that sub-population because I have few triggers despite experiences that others might call traumatic: violent home invasion, car crash and roll over, nearly being run over by train.

I remember reading that PTSD rates are influenced a lot by perceived levels of control over the situation. It is not just how violent it was, but also whether you felt helpless.

PTSD is complicated.

"That job must be nightmarish for anyone who isn’t a full-blown sociopath."

Why do you have to be a sociopath, if you have the guts to help people, who need help? Even or especially if they are children? Sociopaths would do it for the money and prestige. A doctor with empathy mainly to save those that can be saved and ease the suffering of those that cannot. No need to insult or stigmatize them, because they can do, what you cannot imagine.

Are you saying that watching children die from cancer is fun and easy? To me it sounds like a nightmare. It’s obvious that I think that the persons who take that on are bearing a great burden. I don’t fault those that choose to lay it down. Do you?

"I don’t fault those that choose to lay it down. Do you"

I fault those, who say anyone capable of doing a emotional hard job, must be a sociopath.

Pretty bold statement to claim most pediatric oncologists are sociopaths. You took a big shit on some of the admirable people in our society

I didn’t claim that. I claimed it must be nightmarish, by which I obviously meant extremely emotionally taxing. Are you saying most pediatric oncologists aren’t emotionally taxed? The only ones who aren’t must, by definition, be sociopaths. Please try to not be offended by a tautology.

There was a young woman in my high school and University class, she was a bit strange. Extremely bright beyond her years, sociable, and got along well with both the teachers and most of the students. There was always something a bit off with her though. From early high-school, as soon as “career” talk got more serious, she had only one job that she claimed she wanted to do, “Pediactric Oncology”. Some of the teachers were also taken aback by her fervor and intensity, but also her consistency. Last I checked she’s in Med school somewhere prestigious, I’m sure she’ll be a great doctor, and that a lot of children will get the attention they deserve, but something worries me about the whole situation.

Oh no, was a person "a bit strange"? Were they "a bit off"? Think of the children!!!

It seems especially ugly to see that here on HN. I grew up as the "a bit strange" person in a small midwestern town. It sucked. it wasn't until I got the fuck out and got into tech that I got to be around other nerdy, non-neurotypical people like myself that I finally felt like I could breathe.

If you have a complaint about somebody, fine, make it in clear and precise terms. But this scary-scary vagueness looks to me like standard-issue neurotypical bigotry.

Hear hear! It’s really easy to paint someone as “a bit off” and imply without implying.

It’s important when noticing instances of this to request further clarification.

well sure, but on the other hand you don't know anything about the person under discussion. They are essentially a small very vague figure from fiction given the level of specificity you have for her. They are not having their reputation besmirched or anything, because nobody knows who they are, and thus probably don't require a rousing defense.

I would like to push against the notion that expressing ableist beliefs, as long as they don't affect the actual person who is a target of the ableism, doesn't deserve calling out. These sorts of expressions of opinions interact broadly with the community as a signal of acceptable and unacceptable ways to view people. Expressing this sort of callous willingness to imply someone one doesn't know all that well is dangerous simply because they have behaved some way differently also has the secondary effect of exampling that members of the community here are willing to describe strangers as dangerous if they don't conform to expected behaviors. This signals to nondangerous, different people that they are in danger of being labeled as dangerous, which is stressful for folks who just want to talk popcorn intellectual subject matters on an orange site.

It's similar to eg. why lgbtqia+ people have distinct memories about feeling unsafe in communities where "smear the queer" is a recess schoolyard game.

Nope. I know that I was that person on the other end of hopelessly vague casting of suspicion. And I know that a lot of people nod and get suspicious themselves.

I'm not concerned about the woman in question. I'm concerned about everybody else who gets treated poorly because they're "a bit strange". And because of that, I'm concerned every time I hear that sort of "different equals scary" talk, as it normalized poor treatment of perfectly good people.

This is an ableist viewpoint. For example, if she had a close childhood friend, cousin, family member, or she herself had experience with cancer, that would both cause trauma-based behaviors (such as being "a bit off") as well as explain her hyperfocus into going into pediatric oncology from a young age.

It sounds like you didn't know her very well and still judge her as dangerous.

Speaking of criminal prosecutors, I'm binging Law and Order (the OG). I completely understand it's a dramatization of real life but I never understood how complex the process is and how much they actually lose. You'd think the State/People have the upper hand at every turn and most of the time they do, but the amount of process, discovery and overcoming the reasonable doubt burden on their (relatively) limited budgets is a marvel. I know he's fake but I have a ton of respect for the Jack McCoys of the world.

Prosecutors do a lot of work, but the idea that they lose a lot is questionable. In the federal system, more than 90% of defendants plead guilty, and only around 1% of defendants take a case to trial and ultimately win. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/11/only-2-of-f...

The numbers in state courts may vary, but in NY they are similar to the federal system. https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/New_...

Obviously a guilty plea still requires work, and maybe a lot of it. But in terms of outcomes, they rarely lose.

Yes true, I was more thinking when things went to trial. Pleas make up a large share of outcomes. I was just more surprised at how badly things can go wrong in the process which ends up with a dismissal or acquittal; whether that's police process, evidentiary, testimony, etc.

The troubling part is the prime tactic is to get people to plea. One of the methods employed is to massively overcharge where the defendant is looking at say 20 years if they lose at trial vs 5 years if they plea. Most people plea, even if they are innocent. Many prosecutors overcharge even when they have a weak case. It's not justice, it's the system protecting its existence.

It's estimated 2-10% of the incarcerated population is innocent or wrongly convicted.

Yes and I believe that is death row inmates who's conviction gets a lot of scrutiny. Imagine how many inmates who plead to get a lighter sentence who were facing 20 years for something they didn't do. As far as the government is concerned, a guilty plea is a win, regardless of actual action. They get to show that they deserve their jobs.

"Obviously a guilty plea still requires work, and maybe a lot of it. But in terms of outcomes, they rarely lose."

Right, but this is the result of:

1. Selection bias (prosecutors only prosecute a case they have a great chance of winning).

2. Negotiation (prosecutors will charge for lesser crimes than those they believe were committed, in order to gain agreement to a plea deal).

The percentage alone doesn't tell you much about how hard it is to gain a conviction. It tells you a lot about how willing prosecutors are to prosecute a case that they may not be able to win.

Most defendant can’t even afford a couple hundreds (thousands?) dollar in term of extra resources (this includes non-monetary aspects like their own time) to defend themselves. So no matter how limited the budget of a department is, the State would still outbudget the defendant by several orders of magnitude, so don’t feel too bad for them.

(I don’t disagree with you, just adding a small point)