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DC gun law in action
WashPo has the story. Second offender arrested with guns. Prosecutor in a typo doesn't list his name in the criminal complaint, court says rewrite it and come back in the morning. In the morning there's a failure to coordinate, officer is doing the paperwork but doesn't know court wants it now. Rather than wait, the court dismisses the charge.
New charges are filed, but before the guy can be found, he kills someone.
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Looking at it from the defendants point of view, how long should you have to stew while the state gets it's act together?
My guess is that this was a judicial temper tantrum because the state wasn't squared away.
It sucks that criminals get released when they shouldn't be, but it also sucks when people become part of the system and the deck is stacked against them.
I'm gonna split the difference here. No, the judge should not have released the defendants because he was miffed at the tardiness. A little discretion may have been called for. However, if the DA and the Police felt the defendants were such a threat, they should have hustled their ass to get the paperwork fixed. Everyone knew the timeline that had to be worked within. Assuming the judge will grant an extension is a bit of a gamble.
Look, there is plenty of blame to go around. The criminal justice system is a joke and everybody involved knows it. Too many perps, not enough money to process them, not enough good employees, most of the people in the system are basically badly paid clericals, the clericals system in D.C. is a tragedy (you go live there on a GS-7/9 salary), etc. etc. etc. In DC, good attorneys are almost fungible, but good support staff are hard to find.
Look at the bright side, the person who got killed probably needed killing.
I don't think this has anything to do with the gun ban except that criminals can easily get weapons when they want.
The other story is the incompetence of the DC law enforcement system, from LEO's to courts, in dealing with violent felons. Such behavior goes unpunished to much, so that few offenders "see the light" and decide to change their path.
And the judges seem to think this is fine.
I suppose we eventually will get to the point of the UK where self-defense is a prosecutable offense and parole is denied to people who are a "menace to burglars" (the Tony Martine case).
Orwell was an optimist...
And this is why judges have absolute immunity.