[bmelton]

And that's why, god bless 'em, good defense attorneys are the real safety net for all our freedoms, no matter how many guilty clients they get off.

Logically speaking, circumstances have allowed for the outcome of this case to be aided by iPhone data. Practically speaking, the reason they're pushing so hard in this case is because the guy is utterly indefensible -- he's a guilty-pled drug distributor, and there are undoubtedly few who would defend him. Just as sure, there are people somewhere who would prefer justice be meted as painfully as possible, and anyone who defends this guy would be a pariah in their eyes, but sticking up for the rights and fair treatment of the guilty is the greatest thing you can do to assure your own rights and fair treatment in the future.

[harshreality]

What's so indefensible about distributing drugs—meth in this case? If the defendant had been a doctor, and a customer^W patient said the right magic words about behavioral problems they were experiencing, desoxyn is legal to prescribe for ADHD.

I have no love for meth, and I have no love for street drugs with their unknown purity and potentially toxic adulterants, but asserting that the defendant is indefensible smacks of a pro-drug-war bias that mystifies me.

[TeMPOraL]

GP probably meant indefensible in the context of the law, not as a moral opinion. Defendant wasn't a doctor, customer wasn't a patient, and magic incantation was not uttered, therefore it was illegal under current laws.

[Falkon1313]

What he pled guilty to was illegal, but that's irrelevant to indefensibility because he pled guilty.

Saying that he is utterly indefensible is saying that, because he is guilty of something illegal, instead of losing some freedoms, laws and rights no longer apply at all. Although we have no evidence of anything else to charge anyone with (which legally we need to conduct a search), we might find something if we can look. That's illegal and immoral, but we can and no one will stop it because they don't want to be seen supporting him. That seems to be the sense of indefensible meant.

The crime and it's result is one thing. Setting a precedent for free-range witch-hunts is another; those have a bad history.

[bmelton]

I mean to the community at large, many of whom might point at the failed war on drugs as something the government got wrong, but still want to castigate the guy "distributing meth to the children".

To capture what I meant, I should probably have said "because the guy is utterly indefensible ... in the eyes of most."

The point though is that it is those cases in which everybody (or enough of everybody) agrees that the defendant is "bad" and must be "punished" that our rights take the biggest hit, because so few object to a warrantless search executed on a guilty meth distributor, or pedophile, or terrorist, or whatever other bogeyman is accepted as belonging 100% to the out-group.

[fleitz]

When you have more people in labour camps than North Korea anyone who gets anyone off in the US should be thrown a ticker tape parade