Re: Ask Howard Treesong About Law or Lawyering
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1. Please provide your thoughts on conflict criminology strictly as it relates to crime being a busines for the state. There is, in my opinion, validity in the argument that some laws and sentencing strutures appear to be designed to ensnare and retain people in the criminal justice system.
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I don't generally think states have a business interest in imprisoning people, so I discount your proposition at a structural level. In contrast, I do think it benefits prosecutors to have high conviction rates and make names for themselves (e.g. Mike Nifong) and prosecutors tend, in my judgment, to take an adversarial rather than an objective view.
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2. Your position on capital punishmet. Although I believe that people can commit acts that remove their rights, including their right to life, due to the state's inherrent inefficiency (inequality of representation, potential for outside influence, prejudice etc.) I can not support the death penalty.
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It's a close question. On balance, I think I support it, but I do so on deterrence grounds -- because I think there's an empirical case to be made that a threat of death deters particularly heinous conduct and may end up saving lives. I admit that this empirical argument is impossible to prove and its pure-utilitarian premises are questionable. As a practical matter, the habeas death case law is highly political, highly technical, highly abstract -- and highly costly to navigate. As a general matter, I'd leave substantial authority to the individual states to govern this issue as they see fit. And I don't feel strongly about this one.
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3. What is the least amount of money over which you would kill someone?
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There isn't any. No amount of money would change my life sufficiently to even consider this proposition.
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4. Generally speaking, with regard to the legal system as a whole (including the criminal justice system), I think that most of the people working in the profession, most of the time, are doing the right thing. Agree/disagree?
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I generally agree. I don't think lawyers are categorically different from accountants, engineers, firemen, or anyone else in this regard.
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