[lbo-talk] Drug war as a joke...

andie_nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Mon Dec 17 01:43:57 PST 2012


It's one thing when you are talking about a poor, half-educated criminal defendant denied timely represented or represented by a vastly overburdened public defender. When you are talking about a bank with billions in assets represented by the best lawyers money can buy (I've been one of them) in a context when no large firm has been prosecuted for fraud, money laundering, or financial malfeasance under this administration, its is absurd to talk of extortion of a hapless innocent.

Quite aside from the fact that it is a reasonable assumption in the modern world that all banks and brokerage houses are guilty even if proven innocent, and just sticking to the due process standard and the relative balance of power between the parties, I think it is more than reasonable to think that that HBSC is guilty if the crimes it confessed to and for which it escaped prosecution and punishment.

Personally I think Wall Street bankers deserve Chinese justice simply based on their occupation. You are a Wall Street banker? Yes. Guilty. Sentence, death by shooting. To be carried out immediately. (And make them pay for the bullet.) of.

Ourselves I'd defend them vigorously if they'd pay be, just as I used to. But that wouldn't alter my opinion Bout their guilt and appropriate punishment. Btw in 15 years in the law I have encountered only one criminal defendant where the evidence, excluding confessions, was even insufficient, and I think he was guilty anyway.

Sent from my iPad

On Dec 16, 2012, at 4:41 PM, Bill Bartlett <william7 at aapt.net.au> wrote:


> At 2:07 AM +0000 15/12/12, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
>
>> great column by Matt Taibbi
>>
>> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213
>>
>> Joanna
>
>
> Matt Taibbi seems to assume that because the bank confessed, they are guilty. But this is the USA justice system - where confessions are extorted from the accused, where the presumption of innocence is long dead and a fair trial is no longer available.
>
> This is the reason all those poor people are able to be persecuted. They can't get a fair trial in America. They are blackmailed into confessing, under threat of an even more draconian penalty. That's how the system works.
>
> So now prosecutors have discovered that as well as of extorting drug dealers and drug users (and anyone else they think is guilty of something) they can also extort vast sums from foreign banks? How nice.
>
> Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the bank is innocent. Its laughable to imagine that a big international bank is innocent. But two wrongs don't make a right, extortion and blackmail are vile crimes when committed by gangsters, but far worse crimes when committed systematically by a state authority.
>
> Bill Bartlett
> Bracknell Tas
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



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