1. He accepted what he knew was an illegal drug at the concert, and kept it, planning to 'give it away'. Who does this?
2. His passenger was carrying screens and a pipe, and he had an illegal prescription drug in his pocket. Why would he consent to a search?
3. He went to court and plead 'no contest'-this is equivalent to a guilty plea. Why not spend the time to tell his story? He gave the judge no opportunity to be lenient.
4. After getting on probation, he made no effort to educate HIMSELF on the rules. Instead, he operated on assumptions.
I'm not arguing that the drug laws are good or bad, but this guy screwed up.
I mean you can sit there comfortably from the throne of hindsight and easily see where he screwed up, but that does absolutely nothing to further the conversation.
Remember that he was in possession of a CII substance. That's plain and clear. There was no way out of it.
I don't think the option of pleading not-guilty, asking for a jury trial, and crossing your fingers hoping for a hung jury or jury nullification would have been wise.
I also see why the judge made him notify his employer, considering he was a bonded stock broker.
After that, the "process" took over.
You can say that about everyone and everything. We are, of course, masters of our fate.
> He accepted what he knew was an illegal drug at the concert, and kept it, planning to 'give it away'. Who does this?
Everyone who doesn't want to offend a friend, but at the same time, has reservations about taking whatever was given to him?
> His passenger was carrying screens and a pipe, and he had an illegal prescription drug in his pocket. Why would he consent to a search?
Fear?
You clearly have no experience dealing with an aggressive police officer. Neither do most people. So when they encounter one, they take a submissive posture and pretty much agree to everything without thinking.
> He went to court and plead 'no contest'-this is equivalent to a guilty plea. Why not spend the time to tell his story? He gave the judge no opportunity to be lenient.
Because nobody cares. Not your defense attorney, not the prosecutor, not the judge, nobody. They see dozens of these sob stories every day. They don't have time for it and they don't care. You broke the law, you're going to pay and you're going to pay the same thing the guy before you did.
Have you actually been to municipal/county court? I recommend you go. It's open to the public. Very educational. You don't have to stay long to figure out how things work.
> After getting on probation, he made no effort to educate HIMSELF on the rules. Instead, he operated on assumptions.
Which is what 99% of people do? Laws and systems should be designed for the worst of us to be able to live well ... not the best and brightest.
> this guy screwed up.
He most certainly did.
1. No officer, I do not consent to any searches of my property.
2. I'm sorry sir, but I have a constitutional right not to respond to your inquiry. I am exercising that right.
3. You smell marijuana? You may not search my property. (cop searches anyway - guess what? if he doesn't find marijuana, anything he does find is not admissible in court)
4. Defense Attorney: Just plead guilty, it'll be fine. You: No. Go talk to the prosecutor. Do your job. Get me a plea-bargain in writing and I'll consider pleading guilty. And before you hand me that piece of paper, all of you talk to the judge and make sure everybody is on the same page.
Also, every state is different, so make sure to know your local law! In New Jersey, they have something called PTI (Pre-Trial Intervention) for first time offenders. A much better option for those who know they're heading for the gallows. Know the law and don't trust people to give you accurate information! Even your defense attorney!
It's good to have some rehearsed answer to that question. Explicitly invoking the Constitution will work, but can be combative. As annoying as it is to my inner idealistic 25 year old, I try to be as obsequious and polite as I can to police officers; they deal with genuinely unpleasant people on an hourly basis, and being nice to them often works a kind of mental jiu jitsu on them. It probably never matters but I figure the habit might someday save me a lot of real trouble. Also, it gets me out of a _lot_ of tickets.
Can we oppose drug laws without surrendering our critical thinking faculties? I'd like to think we can.
For an otherwise lawful person to lose their career and most of the prospects for their near future, their schooling, a decent place to live, and be subjected to idiotic and hypocritical drug classes twice a week for a year, and then in turn to be given bad advice by their probation officer which leads to further punishments ... well, yes, despondency to the point of suicidal desires depends then entirely on the individual's emotional constitution. (Before you object to that, you should know that merely losing her job led to a downward spiral which has resulted in my mother attempting suicide three or four times -- that I know of -- and my father then attempting suicide just so that he wouldn't have to deal with her anymore.)
His record may have been expunged, but as he says in the article, that didn't matter once the various private background check organizations had gotten ahold of it.
I think the article did a pretty damn good job of a case study which should make "the system" look ridiculous and over-punitive in this instance. I think that the subject of the article made a good point when he said that it makes sense that many otherwise-lawful citizens might turn to illegal sources of income during a situation like this.
So I find him to be quite a sympathetic character. In what way am I surrendering my critical thinking faculties?
This person, on the other hand, "had his life almost ruined" because he went from stock broker to exactly that same kind of job after committing a felony. Note well: the rest of his punishment was "watching movies twice a week at Narcotics Anonymous for a year" and "9PM curfew for a year". The criminal record itself was expunged.
I think that you're understating the rest of his situation because it better suits your argument that his life wasn't ruined. For instance, yes, his record was expunged, however, as noted in the article, his record is still showing up in private background checks -- thanks in part to getting an extra year of probation after being charged with violating his probation because his PO told him it was OK to work late.
Had I not been as fortunate as I have been, that trashed credit report easily could have cost me the most lucrative tier of jobs available to me, because employers routinely screen applicants based on credit history.
Being screwed over by Sprint is not a felony. Similar screwups have no doubt cost thousands of people jobs.
I'm not sure what the appropriate public policy response to this situation is. We benefit enormously from employment- at- will. There are people on HN who will also convincingly argue that we benefit enormously from credit reports and credit scoring (among other things, the system we had before credit scores was overtly racist). It's a complicated issue and I have no glib answers to provide.
Someone else probably got his job, and paid the same taxes.
Whoa, what?
Wow, that's an understatement. He got his life ruined, plain and simple. I'm surprised he didn't commit suicide.
The hilarious thing is how counterproductive this is for the state. He was earning a significant amount of income, and paying income tax on that. After losing his job the state and federal governments lost thousands that he was paying them in income tax revenue in the short term, and in the long term his reduced earning potential over his lifetime will cost tens or hundreds of thousands. All this to punish someone who was a productive member of society and who harmed no one with his actions.