TBH I find this “off with their head” mentality to be counter productive. Sure, if someone broke the law then administer justice. But it’s not addressing the root cause. What systemic weaknesses led to this scenario, and what systemic changes can we make to prevent it from happening again? That’s a much more productive discussion to have, although doesn’t appeal to our baser instincts and so won’t score easy political points.

Only where their actions were already criminal under the law. This is the problem. No-one should be above the law.

Something also has to be done about the unjust consequences of plea bargaining. Many were convicted on the basis that they admitted to crimes that they did not commit.

I think we also have to get rid of Magistrate's courts and private prosecutions. It's ridiculous that these still exist in a modern state that operates under the presumption of the rule of law.

The first step is transparency. Put every bit of evidence for every case on the public record so everyone can see it online.

Sadly, The System will not allow that. Truth is the enemy of The System.

Um, so? Then we need to allocate more resources to prosecute cases.

If I am falsely accused, I want my day in court. And I want it to be fair. The current system has problems on both fronts.

Yes. It's not a simple problem, but it literally means the justice system is failing to deliver justice to society. It's failing at its only function.

It's awful that our justice system creates this sort of mentality

The best that money can buy.

I think it is time for people to stop having faith in the legal system. It is dangerous waters to tread, but our current system is filled with abuses that are only allowed to continue because people maintain faith.

The *principle* is that one is innocent until proven guilty.

The reality is that not every person adheres to that principle in every situation when it comes their own internal judgement of people.

> I'm not interested in weakening this fundamental right to accommodate people who are uncomfortable admitting the fallibility of the police or our justice system.

The problem is that they aren't asking you to accommodate them. They already are there, perfectly accommodated, in the state of prematurely judging people's innocence.

The reality is that any policy has to work by improving this not ideal situation.

True, but the process for determining what criminal penalties should be is heavily based on "imagine you're the victim".

That's a great point. Accusers are not only incentivized to whip up a mob, but have virtually no downside. No skin in the game if they're wrong. That asymmetry needs to be resolved somehow.

Your ends may be laudable but your means are immoral. The ends do not justify the means.

> You're concerned with conviction of something harmful. The harm they committed was in the other crimes. They should evade punishment for that because they managed to hide it well?

You say they're evading punishment "because they managed to hide it well" but the fact remains that you were never able to prove they actually did anything worthy of being punished for in the first place. Don't you see the obvious error in that? The only thing you actually know is that their financial transactions were not documented to your satisfaction. In effect you're demanding that they prove their innocence, whereas in a just system one is innocent until proven guilty.

It's slimy but it's still the least bad system. The alternative is the state having sole authority in compensating the victims (judging from the fact this went to trial, my guess is that they would have paid the victims far less), or leaving it to non-profits (which have limited budgets and are up against tax-payer funded lawyers).

The minuscule punishment that can be visited on the people involved in things like this won't clean up a molecule of the damage done, and won't be a deterrent for people who would do it in future (or who are doing similar things now.)

Revenge isn't a cure, executing murderers never brings people back to life. The problem is a system that gives a small number of people the power to cause such widespread damage for a relatively tiny amount of personal benefit. The amount of damage that has been done for a $10K bribe, or to keep a $150K/yr job, etc. is immeasurable. It's not scalable to track down or filter out people who will put their personal security or comfort ahead of yours, or your entire town's. We have to accept that the way that power is distributed is dangerously uneven, and consciously prevent that.

Also, let's not kid ourselves. This story will fade and be forgotten, and the practices will continue. The ability to stop powerful people from doing what they want to do isn't dependent on the consequences of what they do, but on the power that you have to stop them. Power comes from solidarity. They have it, through their command structure, and we don't. The American mind has retreated into various competing fantasies and myths; there's no chance for solidarity among the victims of these types of material harms.

Well, I do have a simple one. You take each person that you can show that knew about the problem, propose a punishment proportional to the power they had, and send them into a judicial system where they can defend themselves before facing the punishment.

The fact that things do not seem to work this way is disconcerting.

Because bringing the quality of someone else's defense down does not solve the fundamental problems of the justice system.

The problem is that the justice system is unfair to the poor, PERIOD. And we need to fix that. The problem is not putting more rich kids in jail.

In my opinion, the better change is to remove things like prosecutorial discretion for juries. If the prosecution can't make the case without stacking the deck, he shouldn't be making it.

As you said, this is what's frustrating. More power should always be tethered to more responsibility. Their tacit authorization of these tactics should have put them on trial as well. But, the more frustrating thing is how quickly these sorts of abuses are forgiven and swept under the rug. It's as if once you get high enough up then society's sunk cost aversion kicks in and everyone suddenly finds it so hard to believe that someone they implicitly gave power to could have done something wrong.

My take is this presents an existential dilemma: what if the people we've given power to aren't the most worthy? It is easier to buy your way out of this by writing off an incident like this as merely a fluke.

The system is broken, and the brokenness is by design.

which is the very epitome of injustice. Prosecution should be about finding out the truth, and finding out parties responsible for a wrong (and force them to make amends somehow).

No, it's not, and the divergence between reality and this description is increasing, essentially monotonically, over time, with legal incorporation of “victim’s rights” into the criminal justice process.

That's not to say it shouldn't be as you describe, just that it isn't.