Man charged with first degree murder released, then kills someone else

heel79 said:
I would not quibble. But if there are people accused if white collar crimes in prison and murderers and rapist walking around because there is no jail space, that is the issue.
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Either no jail space, not enough investigators, Assistant DA’s, Public Defenders, judges…..,
 
haroldminer said:
That’s just a punishment for people without money.

Home arrest accomplishes the same goal without bankrupting someone. Unless that’s the point.

It is interesting how certain people get large bail amount and others don’t.
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Electronic monitoring is useful and definitely has its place. It costs the defendant about $16/day to stay out and hopefully work a job; as opposed to costing society $50+/day to keep them in jail.

When it works, it works. Occasionally, it's a huge benefit to the defendant, as in when the victim accuses defendant of pretrial shenanigans and the ankle monitor proves otherwise. I've seen that happen numerous times.

When it doesn't work, it's a disaster. Superior court judges do their best to determine when EM is the right call, but they don't bat 1.000, as evidenced by the story in the OP.
 
SmilingJack said:
Link?(Percentages maybe?)
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Oh I don't know. As I said there are more than 100 accused murderers, probably[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)] close to 150, out on [/COLOR]bond[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)] in this county. There are 480 in a jail that I thinks holds 400. So that [/COLOR]to[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)] me is a problem.



[/COLOR]
 
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Scientific Mapp said:
Electronic monitoring is useful and definitely has its place. It costs the defendant about $16/day to stay out and hopefully work a job; as opposed to costing society $50+/day to keep them in jail.

When it works, it works. Occasionally, it's a huge benefit to the defendant, as in when the victim accuses defendant of pretrial shenanigans and the ankle monitor proves otherwise. I've seen that happen numerous times.

When it doesn't work, it's a disaster. Superior court judges do their best to determine when EM is the right call, but they don't bat 1.000, as evidenced by the story in the OP.
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Why should electronic monitoring cost the defendant dime one?

It’s saving the local jurisdiction money and he’s still innocent until proven guilty.
 
haroldminer said:
That’s just a punishment for people without money.

Home arrest accomplishes the same goal without bankrupting someone. Unless that’s the point.

It is interesting how certain people get large bail amount and others don’t.
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I'd bet the poor person would rather pay the 10% of bail, and be able to go back to work the next day, than be on house arrest and likely be unable to work.
 
Zoo_View said:
Why should electronic monitoring cost the defendant dime one?

It’s saving the local jurisdiction money and he’s still innocent until proven guilty.
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Because being out on EM isn't a right; it's a release condition. It's not fundamentally different from any other release condition a judge might impose on a defendant pretrial - don't have contact with the alleged victim, don't go back to the marital residence, wear a cam device, don't possess firearms, comply with drug or mental health treatment, go to inpatient rehab, etc. In every case, the burden of compliance is on the defendant, not the state.
 
ZenMode said:
I'd bet the poor person would rather pay the 10% of bail, and be able to go back to work the next day, than be on house arrest and likely be unable to work.
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Why wouldn’t they be able to work?

Having to pay to go to work, so American.
 
heel79 said:
Prisons should be for violent criminals. Put people in prison for drugs, nonviolent and white-collar crimes to work to the benefit of the community.
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Aren't the facilities to house violent criminals quite different from non-violent/white collar offender? eg: max security prison block vs work camp.
 
haroldminer said:
Why wouldn’t they be able to work?
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It's possible they could if they're permitted to by the judge. It's also possible they may not be able to.
Having to pay to go to work, so American.
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Clearly you know that you aren't aren't paying to go to work. Had you not been arrested and accused of a serious crime, your life would be BAU from a legal/work perspective.

You are putting up money to ensure you come back for your court date.
 
ZenMode said:
It's possible they could if they're permitted to by the judge. It's also possible they may not be able to.

Clearly you know that you aren't aren't paying to go to work. Had you not been arrested and accused of a serious crime, your life would be BAU from a legal/work perspective.

You are putting up money to ensure you come back for your court date.
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Destroying someone’s life over being arrested, whether they are guilty or not, is peak America.
 
haroldminer said:
Destroying someone’s life over being arrested, whether they are guilty or not, is peak America.
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Judges have discretion to set bail and adjust monthly costs for home arrest costs according to the income and/or financial situation of the suspect.
 
Icky Mettle said:
As someone who represents people charged with murder, let me first say that a trial within six months of an arrest is WAAAY too soon. You need time to go through discovery, conduct an investigation, consult with experts, etc. And on top with that, we have a lot of other cases to deal with. The state usually has everything it needs pretty early on and has vast resources that the defendant does not have. The defense starts off behind the 8-ball. Having a trial so soon in such a case would be very unfair to the defendant and would prejudice him/her. The defense needs time.

One thing that a court should factor in when it comes to bond— and judges in NC often don’t because they want to get re-elected— is the strength of the evidence. I had one guy sit in jail for three years on a murder charge despite the case against him being extremely weak. While there was probable cause to support the charge, there was no way the state would be able to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The state eventually dismissed after we rejected numerous sweetheart deals. I had another case where my client was charged with murder on a very weak set of facts. He did make bond so at least he didn’t have to sit in jail. But he was on house arrest. It took six years for the state to dimiss his case (the pandemic impacted this to some extent).
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This is good information. I’m just having a hard time wrapping my head around some of it. Is there a waitlist for experts or something? I feel like if someone says “I need this blood spatter analyzed”, that could be done in a day or two. Also, so many of these cases seem cut and dry. I’m not privy to the details of this person’s murder case, but it seems to have involved a shooting that stemmed from a custody dispute. Assuming that the necessary experts were available immediately to do whatever analysis needs to be done, how does that take 6 months? Is it something that could be addressed by training more SMEs?
 
2ManyBlueCups said:
This is good information. I’m just having a hard time wrapping my head around some of it. Is there a waitlist for experts or something? I feel like if someone says “I need this blood spatter analyzed”, that could be done in a day or two. Also, so many of these cases seem cut and dry. I’m not privy to the details of this person’s murder case, but it seems to have involved a shooting that stemmed from a custody dispute. Assuming that the necessary experts were available immediately to do whatever analysis needs to be done, how does that take 6 months? Is it something that could be addressed by training more SMEs?
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The Staircase is a great documentary showing the kind of defense someone with deep pockets can get - it would have been even better if they wove in a similar case of someone using a public defender and shown them in the Durham jail while awaiting trial and being pushed by their own counsel to take a lousy plea deal.
 
2ManyBlueCups said:
This is good information. I’m just having a hard time wrapping my head around some of it. Is there a waitlist for experts or something? I feel like if someone says “I need this blood spatter analyzed”, that could be done in a day or two. Also, so many of these cases seem cut and dry. I’m not privy to the details of this person’s murder case, but it seems to have involved a shooting that stemmed from a custody dispute. Assuming that the necessary experts were available immediately to do whatever analysis needs to be done, how does that take 6 months? Is it something that could be addressed by training more SMEs?
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It's not so simple.

First of all, we lawyers are handling more than one case at a time. I am in private practice, and in state court I handle only cases in which I am retained. That is, I don't take court appoined cases in state court, but I do in federal court. I try to keep my caseload manageable, but I still have approximately 40 cases that I'm handling right now. Lawyers in the public defender's office probably have more cases at once. And those who make a living relying mainly on court appointed cases likely have over 100 cases at once. (The majority of people charged with serious crimes have court appointed lawyers.) And of course assistant district atorneys are dealing with dozens of cases at once. Within a 6-month period, I might have to go to trial in other cases, have hearings in other cases, prepare for trials and hearings in other cases, spend time in court for administrative matters, prepare briefs for various cases (the process leading up to the filing of an appellate brief can or post-conviction motion can involve hundreds of hours), meet with clients, review all kinds of materials related to cases, travel to different places-- sometimes hours away-- to appear in court, do all the other work that goes into handling cases, and of course take calls from and meet with potential clients so that I can continue to make a living. With everything else that we have to do, it would be extremely difficult to prepare and begin a trial in a murder case (or in cases involving some other very serious felonies) in just six months. There's just too much at stake.

Now, starting at the beginning of a case when a defendant is arrested, I typically don't get the first discovery packet until 3-5 months after the arrest. So my understanding of the state's evidence is fairly limited unitl then. And there's usually additional discovery that comes after that. Now you may think discovery should come faster, but keep a few things in mind. First of all, in cases involving serious crimes such as murder, the police investigation is typically ongoing after the arrest. So after the defendant is arrested there is still a lot more evidence and information being gathered. There are also items being sent off to labs, and due to the volume of items that get sent off to labs, it can be months before those items are analyzed and lab results are returned. Then also keep in mind the detectives investigating the cases are dealing woth dozens of other cases and the assistant DAs handling the cases are also dealing with dozens of other cases. So it takes time for them to organize the discovery so that it is ready to be handed over to the defense. And again, after we receive our first batch of discovery, we usually receive additional discovery over time as the investigation continues or as lab results become available. And these days, cell phone dumps and cellular data add A LOT more to the mix.

Now even if we lived in some amazingly efficient world where we could get all necessary discovery within 30 days, there is still a lot to do after that. Once we get discovery, we have to go through it. Discovery these days can be voluminous with hundreds and often thousands of pages of documents to go through and hundreds hours of media to go through. Keep in mind, we're dealing with multiple cases at once, so we have go through all that stuff in a bunch of different cases. Our own investigations may start before we get discovery, but we need discovery to really dig in with our investigation. The investigations can involve a lot of things, but one big thing is tracking down potential witnesses and then setting up interviewes with them. Tracking them down can take weeks. Once you track them down, they may not be available for interviews until a few weeks later. Sometimes your PI is trying to track down/interview as many as 30-40 potential witnesses. The investigations also involve digging up a bunch of types of information. Sometimes you need to subpoena various items and it can take weeks to get those items. Sometimes subpoenas are challenged and you have to have a hearing on it.

With regard to experts, you first need to consider what types of experts you might need. Then you need to find the expert and either hire the expert or have the expert appointed. The expert will need the relevant discovery. The expert needs time to review the relevant discovery and other necessary materials. Keep in mind the expert also has a number of other cases they are working on, and they won't be able to complete their review and analyses until at least a couple months later. Then you need to schedule time to conference with them. You may have multiple experts in a case. Somestimes the experts will tell you that your client is SOL and they can't offer anything helpful. But when an expert may be helpful and you might want to call them as a witness, you'll need them to provide a report that you have for your review and that you have to hand over to the assistant DA handling the case. It may take another month or two to get that report from the expert. Sometimes, once the assistant DA gets the report, they may bring in an expert to counter your expert's opinion. They have to provide that expert's report. So you might have to wait on that. Once you get that you need to schedule time to go over that with your expert.

Then once ypu trial approaches, you begin trial prep. That entails a lot of things. Among them, organizing exhibits, preparing direct and cross examination, preparing opening statements and at least beginning work on closing arguments, coordinating with witnesses, drafting and filing pretrial motions, preparing arguments for pretrial motions and other issues that you anticipate arising druing trial, researching and organizing case law, etc. For serious felony trials, you typically want to set aside two weeks (if possible) where the main thing you do is focus on trial prep for that case.

And then you start trial. Trial for a serious felony, such as murder, is geneerally going to last at least one week and sometimes as many as four weeks. While you're in trial, you don't really have time to focus on anything else. You're in court all day for trial, and you're working on things related to that trial early in the morning before you go to court and then into the night (and sometimes the wee hours of the morning) after you leave court. So during that time yo don't really get to work on other cases, meaning if every case you have is going to get resolved in six months or less, you're really behind.

That's just some of it in a nutshell. And on top of all that you need time to read and post on message boards.
 
Zoo_View said:
I agree that we shouldn’t be putting drug users and most non-violent criminals in prison.

I advocate that most white collar criminals should go to prison. A fine, community service, and probation isn’t sufficient punishment.
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Random joe can break into a store at night and steal a 500 dollar tv and serve time. Wells Fargo can access 10 million folks accounts and steal 2 billion dollars and pay-a 400 million dollar fine. Like every couple years
 
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