<story><title>Google tracking a bike ride past a burglarized home made the rider a suspect</title><url>https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hypersoar</author><text>My sister is a lawyer who works with poor clients with criminal cases (though not a defense attorney). She believes strongly that most people are better off with their public defender than with private council. I asked her if she could square this with the general perception that the criminal justice system is stacked for with wealthy, she answered that the, most of the time, the &lt;i&gt;connections&lt;/i&gt; matter more than the actual money. There are a lot of bad private lawyers out there, and it&amp;#x27;s hard for most people to tell them apart from the good ones. For a lot of us here, if we suddenly need a lawyer, then we&amp;#x27;ll ask our friends and family to help us find a good one. But if you don&amp;#x27;t know anybody who knows anybody who knows a lawyer, what do you do? Look at online reviews? If I were freaked out about criminal charges, needed a lawyer &lt;i&gt;now&lt;/i&gt;, and didn&amp;#x27;t have my connections, it&amp;#x27;d be up to blind luck. That&amp;#x27;s the reality for most criminal defendants.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ll hire private council and think that because they&amp;#x27;re paying for it, it&amp;#x27;s better. But it&amp;#x27;s often not. For a typical defendant with an aggravated assault charge, a public defender has handled dozens of similar cases before. Moreover, they&amp;#x27;ll have done it with your judge and your prosecutor. A private lawyer probably won&amp;#x27;t have that. Granted, this probably holds a lot less for the HN comments section.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll add that there is no right to defense council for civil cases. These can have consequences just as dire as a criminal case, as in immigration or eviction proceedings. An indigent defendant with no lawyer has a very poor chance. There&amp;#x27;s a movement to create this right [1]. The current Supreme Court, however, seems more likely to weaken &lt;i&gt;Gideon v. Wainwright&lt;/i&gt; than expand it.</text></item><item><author>freeAgent</author><text>This article brings up one of the biggest problems I have with our justice system.  When someone is falsely suspected or accused of a crime, they typically have to hire a lawyer and take time off work and out of their lives.  This can cost thousands of dollars that many people can&amp;#x27;t really afford to spend.  The police or court may eventually say, &amp;quot;oops, our bad,&amp;quot; but the accused typically has no way to recover what they spent on their own defense.  The whole situation is asymmetric given that investigators, courts, and prosecution don&amp;#x27;t have to spend personal funds to conduct investigations and try people in court.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ALittleLight</author><text>Responding to the point about what you are supposed to do if you need a lawyer and don&amp;#x27;t know any - I needed a lawyer once and didn&amp;#x27;t know any.  I first read about what I was accused of, I read the relevant parts of the law I was accused of violating, and then I googled and read whatever I could about the crime.  I then looked up local lawyers and read their websites and bios and googled them to see if there was anything to read about them.&lt;p&gt;Background research done I created a list of lawyers I wanted to talk to and called them one by one and discussed the case over the phone.  The crime I was accused of was somewhat rare and none of the five lawyers I called were familiar with it.  I could tell fairly quickly that several of the lawyers were, for lack of a better term, bullshitting me about their familiarity with crime because I had first done the basic research so I had some understanding of what was reasonable to say about it.  One lawyer was obviously reading passages from wikipedia verbatim to me, which I recognized having recently read the same wikipedia article myself.  Another lawyer didn&amp;#x27;t seem to listen to me - after hearing my story he confidently assured me he could get the charge reduced... to what I was already charged with.  Others just didn&amp;#x27;t seem that competent.&lt;p&gt;The lawyer I ultimately went with was a former prosecutor, which I liked because I figured it meant he would know the other prosecutors, and he was the only one who, when I called him, said &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t know much about this.  Let me do some reading and call you back.&amp;quot;  I immensely respected that more than the people who tried to pretend like they knew what they were talking about.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, we had an extremely successful result and now if anyone I know ever needs a lawyer, I have one to recommend.  It may be a bit harder if you don&amp;#x27;t have connections, but there is no reason why the average person retaining a lawyer can&amp;#x27;t go through the effort of finding one they are comfortable with.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google tracking a bike ride past a burglarized home made the rider a suspect</title><url>https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hypersoar</author><text>My sister is a lawyer who works with poor clients with criminal cases (though not a defense attorney). She believes strongly that most people are better off with their public defender than with private council. I asked her if she could square this with the general perception that the criminal justice system is stacked for with wealthy, she answered that the, most of the time, the &lt;i&gt;connections&lt;/i&gt; matter more than the actual money. There are a lot of bad private lawyers out there, and it&amp;#x27;s hard for most people to tell them apart from the good ones. For a lot of us here, if we suddenly need a lawyer, then we&amp;#x27;ll ask our friends and family to help us find a good one. But if you don&amp;#x27;t know anybody who knows anybody who knows a lawyer, what do you do? Look at online reviews? If I were freaked out about criminal charges, needed a lawyer &lt;i&gt;now&lt;/i&gt;, and didn&amp;#x27;t have my connections, it&amp;#x27;d be up to blind luck. That&amp;#x27;s the reality for most criminal defendants.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ll hire private council and think that because they&amp;#x27;re paying for it, it&amp;#x27;s better. But it&amp;#x27;s often not. For a typical defendant with an aggravated assault charge, a public defender has handled dozens of similar cases before. Moreover, they&amp;#x27;ll have done it with your judge and your prosecutor. A private lawyer probably won&amp;#x27;t have that. Granted, this probably holds a lot less for the HN comments section.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll add that there is no right to defense council for civil cases. These can have consequences just as dire as a criminal case, as in immigration or eviction proceedings. An indigent defendant with no lawyer has a very poor chance. There&amp;#x27;s a movement to create this right [1]. The current Supreme Court, however, seems more likely to weaken &lt;i&gt;Gideon v. Wainwright&lt;/i&gt; than expand it.</text></item><item><author>freeAgent</author><text>This article brings up one of the biggest problems I have with our justice system.  When someone is falsely suspected or accused of a crime, they typically have to hire a lawyer and take time off work and out of their lives.  This can cost thousands of dollars that many people can&amp;#x27;t really afford to spend.  The police or court may eventually say, &amp;quot;oops, our bad,&amp;quot; but the accused typically has no way to recover what they spent on their own defense.  The whole situation is asymmetric given that investigators, courts, and prosecution don&amp;#x27;t have to spend personal funds to conduct investigations and try people in court.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>berberous</author><text>Finding a good lawyer is hard, but to your point about public defenders having more relevant experience, there’s a simple heuristic: ask the lawyers you interview what direct experience they have. If you have an aggravated assault charge, and your potential private lawyer has done many DUIs but only one of those, move on.&lt;p&gt;A public defender might not be _bad_, but in many jurisdictions they are egregiously overworked. Their case load is so over burdened they don’t have the time to do a thorough job. I’d much rather take my chances with a paid lawyer.</text></comment>