[johngalt_]

This makes me distressed and angry. The last time I felt like this was when I read an article telling about several cases when cops raped women through "body cavity search". Unfortunately, there are several other cases of extreme injustice and evil acts committed by people who are not and will not be punished.

An idea that has been on my mind is to create some sort of virtual wall of shame. It would put the name and picture of those people who have done such terrible things and have not paid for their crimes. It would spam their emails and social media accounts with messages. It would send emails and messages to their relatives and friends. It would create ads targeted to where those people live telling their story. The goal is to do everything in order to not let such crimes be forgotten and to not let those people live normal lives again, at least in the virtual world.

I don't know if I will ever put this plan in practice and I know it is a dangerous idea, but each time I read something like this it makes me more willing to start this idea.

[jlavine]

It's not just a dangerous idea. It's an unjust one that foregoes due process. It's vigilante justice, like witch hunting in early modern Europe and N. America, lynching in the Jim Crow era Southern USA, and the Hollywood communist blacklist in the 1950s. Just because ruining people's lives via social media is en vogue at the moment doesn't make it right. How could you possibly know whether claims you've read are true before you decided to ruin the lives of the accused?

[logfromblammo]

You can't cry "due process" for those people who have abused the system to deny due process to others.

The only reasonable counter to those offenders is an investigative report by a professional of the fourth estate that has a reputation for ethical practices. Which is to say an investigative journalist rakes the muck and publishes the embarrassing story. But those seem to be of a breed that is dying with the newspapers.

The amateur crowdsourced journalists/influencers the likes of which come from Anonymous and SJWs and Antifa and Black Twitter may be the only ones who care enough to even do a cursory investigation. And they are unlikely to meet any reasonable standard of fairness, due to unaligned incentives.

The only solution that preserves fairness is for those in the official legal system to police themselves and relentlessly attack the corruption occurring within their own ranks. If that does not happen, or worse, if it happens and those who fight corruption and blow whistles suffer damaging retaliation from it, then the corrupt should have no reasonable expectation that they will be treated fairly, nor those who present the appearance of corruption, or complicity with corruption. There are no good cops as long as bad cops retain their impunity. There are no good judges as long as the decisions from bad judges stand unexamined and unchallenged. There are no good lawyers as long as injustice persists.

The system we have to ensure that the innocent are protected from witch hunts, kangaroo court, and drumhead trials is as vulnerable to subversion as any other, and replicating it in parallel in order to prosecute that subversion seems inconvenient at best. And yet "we investigated ourselves and cleared ourselves of all wrongdoing" is so depressingly common.

[Hasz]

You can't have selectively applied due process. Due process must be applied to all without qualification for it to have any semblance of balance and impartiality.

Muckraking is fine (there's no law that says everyone should be nice to you) -- but there needs to be a line drawn between investigative journalism and libel, a line the New Yorker has pretty much always stayed on the right side of.

As for

"There are no good cops as long as bad cops retain their impunity. There are no good judges as long as the decisions from bad judges stand unexamined and unchallenged. There are no good lawyers as long as injustice persists."

-- that's an incredibly binary view. By that logic, the whistle blower is just as bad as those he blows the whistle about! There must be a gradient of good to evil, with everyone lying somewhere between ideals. I think it is a mistake and general disservice to lump the imperfect whistle-blower, advocate, and reform-minded cop/judge/lawyer in with his crooked brethren. Not only does is tarnish his or her reputation, but it also blemishes their contributions toward a more perfect system.

[meric]

More than that, the gradient of good and evil exists in everyone, across activities, across time. Many of the most evil people have done good deeds in their lives, and many of the best people have done bad deeds also. A bad cop or bad judge can yet become a good one.

[logfromblammo]

That seems most likely only after a term of incarceration in a facility focused on rehabilitation--which simply never happens in the US, not for commonplace criminals, and certainly not for cops and judges.

When the existing system for due process fails in this manner, should there be a reasonable expectation for due process in whatever ad-hoc process that arises because justice is not being served? I don't think so. If your job is to provide due process, and you undermine that, then you deserve all the vigilantism that comes your way because of it.

When you abuse the legal guardianship system to rob people of their family, and rob their family of their money, you should count yourself lucky if all that happens to you is that you get convicted in the regular legal system and go to prison. Those judges that granted this woman highly abusable levels of power after two minutes or less in an ex-parte hearing have filth on their hands, too.

If you want to save people from vigilantism, you have to be willing to send them to prison through the regular legal system. If you give them de facto impunity, people will find other ways, less fair and impartial, to punish them.

[dragonwriter]

> A bad cop or bad judge can yet become a good one.

A bad cop or bad judge is also a bad citizen, and they generally deserve the opportunity to become a good citizen. But the standards for admission to the trust involved in law enforcement or judging should be high, and if you’ve proven yourself untrustworthy in such a role, any reentry should take extraordinary proof of reform before it is considered, and it may simply be a better use of social resources not to leave that door open at all.

[dragonwriter]

> By that logic, the whistle blower is just as bad as those he blows the whistle about!

If whistleblowing matters at all, then bad cops don't have impunity, and the statement doesn't apply.

OTOH, if whistleblowing is an empty gesture...