New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed

There&#x27;s an inmate in LA County jail who has been there 9 years awaiting trial on attempted murder. He is completely and totally institutionalized. A very nice guy but intimidating.<p>Cops can arrest you for any reason, and if you can&#x27;t make bail, then they place you in jails with convicted violent felons, some on murder trials.<p>In LA jails, you have to be racist. Depending on your pod and program, you have special requirements.<p>You often have to fight, especially if you are black or Hispanic. If there&#x27;s a brawl inside the pod, you have to fight other races or you will be beaten by your own.<p>I sat in a tiny room for 11 hours with 50 inmates, half of which had face tattoos and were gang members. A room where inmates had been beaten to death and the others just cover up the cameras.<p>Multiple times I wasn&#x27;t called to court, they were &quot;dry runs&quot;. Mental torture and real risk required just for due process.<p>These types of systems only create more criminals.<p>The deputies act like psychopaths, taunting and roughing up inmates. But not as bad since now the FBI has cameras watching them.<p>The person who interceded in my misdemeanor case and put me in jail was the former head of California Homeland Security.<p>His lawyer, also a former federal prosecutor, was in every court appearance lobbying the prosecutor. He also represented the Chief of Police, the City Council and the Sheriff.<p>Their boss is a secretive billionaire whose former lawyer became the new Supreme Court Justice this year after he lobbied He is a very powerful person who hires former federal officials as political mercenaries.<p>This all happened because they wanted to protect a wealthy sex predator. In 2-weeks, the Homeland official is actually testifying for the sex predator for his civil trial. He is presumably testifying against my credibility.

There are many cases of defendants&#x27; right to a speedy trial being trampled. I&#x27;m not completely convinced this is a particularly great example of that.<p>He was arrested while on parole, which is why he didn&#x27;t get out on bail. Many of the delays came from his side. If it had gone to trial, the prosecution would have only had to prove he was guilty by a preponderance of the evidence. So the long time in detention could have just been a strategy.

While I agree it&#x27;s unconstitutional to park someone in jail for eight years without bail or a trial, this particular guy is probably ecstatic at how it all worked out:<p>&gt;As a parolee with a previous drug charge to his name, Smith was looking at a sentence of 20 years to life if convicted as a habitual offender, according to one of his lawyers.

I would hope that these days no rational individual could support jail time for <i>any</i> non-violent drug crime, with the possible exception of cross-border smuggling, which treads on some different areas of the law.

The concept of bail negatively affects the poor. Washington DC has a new system where they got rid of the bail system.<p>They have 2 options: RoR (release on your own recognizance) and hold until trial.<p>Although not perfect, this is much better than a bail system.

I live in New Orleans. The judge, Flemings-Davillier, is well known as a tool of the district attorney, Canizzaro, who employs dirty tactics like fake subpoenas.<p>For more on Orleans Parish justice, google &quot;Give me a lawyer dog&quot;

Sadly, this is common in India. In India there are people in jail for decades, without even a trial[1].<p>There are just 15 judges per million people in India as compared to around 110 judges per million in US.<p>----<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hindustantimes.com&#x2F;india&#x2F;38-years-in-jail-without-trial&#x2F;story-mKpSuk0mtGjuii6dDQ3DsK.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hindustantimes.com&#x2F;india&#x2F;38-years-in-jail-without...</a>

The court system claims it doesn&#x27;t have enough money while over half the criminals&#x2F;defendants are in for drugs.<p>Theres a very simple solution here.

If the relevant prosecutor goes to jail for 1-2 years, they&#x27;ll learn not to do that the next time.

It&#x27;s pretty obvious what happened here. Everyone involved basically assumed he was or would be found guilty and didn&#x27;t see an issue with him sitting in a cell for &quot;just a few more months&quot;

The government should pay back-salary to anyone with a case dismissed in this manner. This would cause queue back-pressure that would focus the system on high-value targets at the front of the queue.

If you have so many people in jail awaiting trial that judges have multi-year backlogs to try cases, that says a lot about the justice system... but more importantly, what does it say about the laws themselves?

Stop being poor. That&#x27;s the only solution.<p>Because you can go back in time 30 years and find articles like this or fast forward 30 years and find articles like this. Its not going to change.

This is outright extorsion for bail money.

I think we have to be careful given the article only looks at one side. While in this case it took an absurd turn and is a clear case of &quot;lock this dude behind bars: we don&#x27;t like him&quot;, it is not always that simple.<p>I would give as an example the patent trolls. They abuse of the court and fill motions after motions (or dismiss early) for the sole purpose of making their case expansive to defend against. A knowledgeable inmate or greedy public defendant could use the same tactics and delay the case only for the deadline to pass. If it can turn a life sentence into a 24 months one, then procrastination and delays are the quickest way out of jail.<p>That being said, for recurrent inmates, the failure of the system is definitely in the rehab process. In some US states, it seems like the legal system exists only to sustain itself, its elected officials and the industries (lawyers, penitentiary, investigators, forensic) that runs it. This case is apparently a blatant example of bureaucracy indifference. If the fact were shown in their face, they would blame the weather or the defendant own motions to have his rights taken into account. I am not a socialist, far from it. However when it comes to absurdities such as this, it is a clear sign that a proper social net is necessary to avoid a slippery slopes where the incarcerated population will grow and grow and grow. So do the expanses associated with it. Better solve the problem instead of the consequences.