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You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Criminal Justice / A Programming Note on the Dept. of Justice.

A Programming Note on the Dept. of Justice.

by MisterDancer|  September 20, 20226:51 pm| 32 Comments

This post is in: Criminal Justice, Open Threads, Racial Justice, Lock Him Up...Lock Them All Up

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I am not a Lawyer. I am, however, a Programmer — also known as a Coder — by education, and trade.

And it occurs to me that the debate over Garland’s DoJ (in)action, is a lot like the debates on writing code.

Balloon Juice readers have years of experience with applications built on code that means well, but has real flaws. Watergirl (among many) has done amazing work to keep the ship here, upright, in the face of some real “oops” in the areas of technology this blog requires.

Yet the level of coding you need to keep a blog up, is not the same level you need to keep an airplane up. The risks for the former coming down are, well, very obviously different.

So, too, the risks around the work centered on Former President Trump and his acolytes. I can only imagine — again, as a non-lawyer — how much work it takes to ensure these cases don’t fall out of the air.

And yet: that’s Justice.

Justice — real Justice, not the stuff we get on TV, or in my fave comic books — isn’t Vengeance. It isn’t swift. It sure as hell isn’t satisfactory from an emotional POV. I’ve not met a lot of Public Defenders, but they don’t strike me as a happy go-lucky bunch of people. Delivering people from poor decisions — including jailing them over those decisions — is work.

Justice takes time. And that means toxic people have chances to disrupt it. To derail it. To shutter it. We saw that with both how the Muller Investigation didn’t have the best start, and certainly was torpedoed in the ending, assisted by a GOP-addled Fourth Estate unable to process nuance and deflection.

I’ve seen something like rushed Justice, in the code that built wobbly Applications. So much of what we’ve built this Internet on is rushed, for a host of reasons. That rush makes it easy to exploit — again, as so many here will recall, just recently.

Garland cannot afford exploits. The code — the legal arguments — this DoJ writes, must be solid. Not solely, as some many has said, because of Democracy being on the line — rather, the reputation for impartial Justice in America, is on the line.

That is the reputation that these Authoritarian Asswipes should fear! Good laws, and wise enforcement, are critical to protecting Democracy. Bad laws? Well, from Dred Scott to Dobbs, we’ve seen how they rip up the landscape of Democracy.

And that is why it pains me to also say this: far too much of what happens in courtrooms in America, is Not Justice. And that’s relevant, as well.

We have overloaded these Courts with Injustice, friends. Put aside, for a moment, the decades of court-packing; we talk all about that here.

We don’t talk, as much, about the hellscape of Mandatory Minimums. Of law after law designed to target groups of people already marginalized. Of laws that fine you real money, in ways that drain already-thin coffers.

We don’t ponder how many Justices are just fuckin’ corrupt, and often prejudiced in their corruption — but empowered by that Black Robe to spread misery amongst those they hate, trapped in vicious cycles of bigotry, seeing too many flawed people, people who are themselves scared and angry and lack any real support.

Much less — and outside the scope, to be sure, of this essay — those whose lives are taken before Law Enforcement can even process them into these systems of….Justice.

Arguably: our drain of national empathy? Accelerated with our “wars” against “crime”.

So I welcome seeing, for once, something like true Justice. The bits and slices of slow, meticulous, and professional work. The quick glimpses into tracing crime down, of ensuring only people the DoJ thinks are highly relevant, are brought in. And although I don’t welcome seeing so many of us Good Folx in pain over how that justice is being attacked — or, yes, silent — my gut says this vision of hopefully-impartial work in our legal system? Far rarer than it should be.

To me? To my heart grown sin-sick and angry over a system built to crush me and mine? This is better than a lifetime supply of Dick Wolf Production shows!

I’m sure there are flaws in the DoJ’s approach. I’m sure there are legitimate criticism of their secrecy, and overall legal strategy.

Yet I’m not sure I’m the one to make them. After all, I’m not a lawyer.

 

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Reader Interactions

32Comments

  1. 1.

    MisterDancer

    September 20, 2022 at 6:57 pm

    NOTES: Thanks for reading!

    I’ve been musing on this for a while, and I know it’s…a lot, potentially. It’s meant in the spirit of providing a view to the last few years, and esp. everything post-Insurrection, that comes from a different place than some commentaries I’ve read.

    And it really is meant to be an opinion. Not proscriptive; if you’re angry at Garland, you may keep that anger! This is just my personal view, and one that hopefully succeeds in acknowledging the many injustices so many encounter daily, while keeping the bigger picture in frame.

    I don’t know if it works. :|

    I do know I may not be around to reply much, as I gotta cook dinner and get some reading done. I’ll do my best!

  2. 2.

    Ben Cisco🎖️🖥️♦️👌🏽

    September 20, 2022 at 7:05 pm

    THANK YOU!!

    This is on point and BRILLIANT. Would that more people grokked what you are saying here.

  3. 3.

    geg6

    September 20, 2022 at 7:07 pm

    A-fucking-men.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  4. 4.

    Another Scott

    September 20, 2022 at 7:08 pm

    @MisterDancer: It’s a great piece.  Thanks for posting it.

    Relatedly, via Popehat:

    This is why bad law matters and can't be fixed by prosecutorial discretion. This should be an express exemption in the law, when the images are of the sender. This is a badly written law and a prosecutor who chose to prosecute it. https://t.co/uFN3n0vdql

    — Scott Greenfield (@ScottGreenfield) September 20, 2022

    (Points to a story about at 16 year old girl who was charged with child porn offenses for sending pictures of herself.)

    Getting the law right is very important. But ultimately it’s the people in power and responsibility that matter. Good laws won’t restrain monsters on their own. We need sensible people writing the laws, prosecuting the laws, interpreting the laws, and reforming the offenders.

    (This is why I’m skeptical that there’s some magical reform of the Electoral Count Act that will somehow save us in the future. Yes, the rules matter, and updating the Act is good, but when people in power are willing to ignore the rules and the norms, well…)

    Thanks very much.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  5. 5.

    persistentillusion

    September 20, 2022 at 7:15 pm

    Said with beauty, MisterDancer. White cis normies miss a lot that you’ve articulated from a life-long experience.  As a white cis formerly normie, I am sorry and would like to apologize for my modest, powerless part in it.

  6. 6.

    SeattleDem

    September 20, 2022 at 7:15 pm

    @MisterDancer: I agree completely about the difference between a quick hack and a bullet-proof system. Most of my time in IT was developing the hotel functions of a medical center (reservation, registration, assignment, and billing). We could afford a few hiccups because an unbilled charge was our problem, not the patient’s. A wrong address because auto-complete picked NE instead of NW for the street number was easily fixed. When I took over systems that were patient-care related, we needed a completely different mindset. Dispensing the wrong drug because the auto-complete suggested something that sounded similar could be fatal. Justice seems to have a similar need for accuracy. Sending someone to prison without taking the time to follow all the leads, test all the DNA, or question all the witnesses is reprehensible, even if the case against seems open and shut. In the case of Orange Julius, I find it hard to accept that what is reprehensible in other cases is still unacceptable here, but I’m more patient than I was 50 years ago,

  7. 7.

    satby

    September 20, 2022 at 7:20 pm

    Justice — real Justice, not the stuff we get on TV, or in my fave comic books — isn’t Vengeance. It isn’t swift. It sure as hell isn’t satisfactory from an emotional POV.

    Just wanted to reread that again. Because it’s true. The vengeance and satisfaction we think we’ll feel at the end of a court case, even a successful prosecution of wrongdoing, usually ends up being a grim, exhausted and bittersweet feeling. I believe TFG will go down eventually. But after that long and harrowing battle there will still be so much damage to repair.

  8. 8.

    dexwood

    September 20, 2022 at 7:21 pm

    Nicely done. A sensible viewpoint.

  9. 9.

    Citizen_X

    September 20, 2022 at 7:21 pm

    Powerful piece of writing, Mister Dancer. Bravo!

  10. 10.

    narya

    September 20, 2022 at 7:22 pm

    Thank you for this. I’ve been a Garland fan, I must admit, and I am not surprised at what we’re seeing now. I am also pleased, not least for the reasons you mention: this is real life, and it’s important to try to get it right, both in the immediate sense but also in the sense of a notion of justice.

  11. 11.

    japa21

    September 20, 2022 at 7:22 pm

    Amen. Omnes is in complete agreement with you, I am sure.

  12. 12.

    RSA

    September 20, 2022 at 7:23 pm

    @MisterDancer:

    I’m a computer scientist (maybe by implication, not a good coder), but I think I understand your perspective. Here’s my interpretation, for what it’s worth: In our respective fields we spend a lot of time trying to align the complexity of the real world with a set of rules: a programming language, say, or a logical formalization, or a legal system.

    There are holes everywhere. They may be due to oversights (programming errors, representational limitations, legislative ambiguities). We can fix those. But the holes may instead be due to the practical constraints of not being able to find everything that some malicious actor is trying to exploit, in advance. A lot of our political system seems to have been built on the assumption of good faith. It may be a house of cards–we’ve been watching a stress test over the past few years.

    So when we see a careful case made that makes connections to the strongest pillars we have… Yes! It’s to be admired and not taken for granted.

  13. 13.

    Josie

    September 20, 2022 at 7:30 pm

    Thank you, MisterDancer. I do believe that, if these miscreants can be brought to ground, it will be Garland who does it. It is so hard to be patient in the face of so much injustice in the system, but he seems to be a person with a capacity for the patience, legal ability, and willingness to put in the work. Keeping him off of the Supreme Court could turn out to be McConnell’s biggest mistake.

  14. 14.

    FastEdD

    September 20, 2022 at 7:32 pm

    I’m not an attorney either, but I think about that stuff because my brother is and we discuss it.

    What is the ultimate purpose of laws? Can we legislate morality? I don’t know. I think of the legal system as a way of equally maintaining the Golden Rule, do unto others and so on. I do know that morality as defined by one religion surely should not be imposed on the rest of us, or cops become clergymen with guns, a horrible thought.

    One thing I remember from a book by Al Gore is how laws are written about quantifiable things-the sink should be 36 inches above the ground, the poverty level is defined as X dollars a year. In some ways that is the only way a law can be written, by defining want you mean in numbers. In practice it doesn’t always work. The real world is not so easily defined. Sentencing guidelines are like that too. They take discretion away from judges who should have discretion sometimes.

    I would like to think THE LAW is an objective thing that will level the playing field for all of us. Merrick Garland’s ideal of an objective system of laws is admirable, but I have too many experiences of it being a subjective mess, a lottery of judge shopping and chance. Institutionalists like the current AG and my attorney brother have more faith in the system than I do.

  15. 15.

    LeftCoastYankee

    September 20, 2022 at 7:32 pm

    Here here (or is it “hear hear”?)!

    Thanks for the reminder that the efforts spent on the volume of cases designed to immiserate the vulnerable is work not being done on punishing the well-protected assholes.

  16. 16.

    Dan B

    September 20, 2022 at 7:33 pm

    Very well put, thanks!

    In terms of Garland’s investigation of TFG I keep gaming out what would happen if the DOJ messes up the case.  TFG and his increasingly Qanon base would have the glorious leader in place and would gladly attack whoever he raged at.  Doxxing and Swatting would become everyday.  And it would expand far beyond the entities that TFG pours his venom upon.  Librarians are already under seige for God’s sake.

  17. 17.

    Another Scott

    September 20, 2022 at 7:41 pm

    @LeftCoastYankee: (The latter.  It’s like “listen up!” in agreement with the speaker.)

    🤪

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  18. 18.

    Anonymous At Work

    September 20, 2022 at 7:43 pm

    “Law & Order” gets the law right but nothing else.  Every other police procedural is wrong on almost every level.  Feel free to quote me.

  19. 19.

    H.E.Wolf

    September 20, 2022 at 7:44 pm

    Adding my thanks and appreciation for this thoughtful and profoundly insightful post.

  20. 20.

    RSA

    September 20, 2022 at 7:47 pm

    @Another Scott:  (The latter.  It’s like “listen up!” in agreement with the speaker.)

    Just today, from a crossword puzzle site, I’ve learned that this pattern of repetition (“Hear, hear”) is a concept with an excellent name: epizeuxis.

  21. 21.

    WaterGirl

    September 20, 2022 at 7:50 pm

    MisterDancer, this is your first post in a very long time, and I am betting that either Anne Laurie had her post scheduled in advance or that she didn’t see your post when she put hers up.

    Your post is thoughtful and interesting and it deserves more than 3 minutes at the top of the blog.

    So I suggest that you wait an hour and then change the publication time so it’s at the top of the blog where people can see it this evening.

  22. 22.

    scav

    September 20, 2022 at 7:55 pm

    @RSA: and, Oyez Oyez in courts is the same thing — Hear ye! Hear ye! — muddled from old French / Anglo-Norman.

  23. 23.

    RSA

    September 20, 2022 at 8:00 pm

    @scav: Cool.  I’ve always wondered about oyez but never looked it up. Thanks for the prompting. I’m fascinated by etymology and language in general.

  24. 24.

    kalakal

    September 20, 2022 at 8:04 pm

    Hear!Hear! Well put.

    Sticking with the programming analogy the Law is the ultimate Legacy System. Bits of it have been around forever, some bits nobody knows why they’re there but you daren’t touch them as it might break something, bits of it are rushed kludges, other bits have suffered mission creep, some bits are beautifully designed, some bits written by idiots, some bits are malicious, some noble etc etc. To add insult to injury  it’s even written in more than one language.

    Garland has an immensely complex situation and a political minefield to navigate. He only gets one shot and he has to get it 100% right.

  25. 25.

    Leslie

    September 20, 2022 at 8:29 pm

    Thank you, Mister Dancer. We need as close as we can get to real justice; not just a reckoning for the blatantly lawless among us, but the unsung, quiet kinds of justice that too often elude the marginalized. To continue your analogy, the code needs a lot of debugging.

  26. 26.

    LeftCoastYankee

    September 20, 2022 at 9:26 pm

    @Another Scott:

    That makes much sense.  Thanks!

  27. 27.

    planetjanet

    September 20, 2022 at 9:28 pm

    This is an excellent, thoughtful post and I appreciate the way you prompted me to think more deeply.  I completely agree with your concept of Justice and the degree of care that is being taken by DOJ.  Thank you.

  28. 28.

    Laura Too

    September 20, 2022 at 9:30 pm

    @MisterDancer: Wow, thank you. I am in awe, you have moved me to tears. I have no way to match your eloquence.

  29. 29.

    TheflipPsyd

    September 20, 2022 at 9:53 pm

    Thank you for not only the eloquence of your words but also providing hope: it often is easier to give up when justice doesn’t happen immediately. Harder to recognize that real justice takes time and patience and must occur within the rules of the justice system. Hold Trump accountable for his actions by making him actually have to face the system rather than  repudiating the system. After his joke of a presidency, conventional wisdom said he would not serve any consequences. Seems now I read more and more that conventional wisdom sees a strong possibility of actual real consequences, like indictment.

  30. 30.

    AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team

    September 21, 2022 at 2:47 am

    Well said and on point. I think the recent and growing actions bear out the wisdom of what you say.

    Justice is not spectacle, and although I think Dems could use a bit more of that, the Justice department and small j justice are not the place to make up for that.

    Hope all is well with you as we move into Fall.

  31. 31.

    trnc

    September 21, 2022 at 7:09 am

    Thank you, MisterDancer. All well said, and a nice analogy.

    Setting aside the excellent analogy for a minute, I would point out to anyone still inclined to make “Merrick isn’t doing anything” comments, his DOJ was working on DT’s theft of classified materials for months and we didn’t know jack squat about it. Just because we can’t see everything doesn’t mean nothing is happening.

  32. 32.

    O. Felix Culpa

    September 21, 2022 at 8:35 am

    @kalakal:

    He only gets one shot

    For Mnem, obligatory.

    MD, thank you for this thoughtful post, and your points about the slow grinding of justice and the injustice our system too often perpetrates and maintains. We have to keep working towards a more perfect union, and boy, is it a hard but worthy slog.

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