[jordan0day]

I don't know, I think there have been some high-profile cases where a lot of time and money was spent by the government, but the result was either no conviction, or a conviction of a much lesser charge.

Now, since as you say, this was a large multi-national operation, I don't know if all those charged will be extradited to the USA, or if they'll be tried in other countries. I really have no idea about laws & procedures around the globe, but if they are extradited to the USA, I wouldn't count the MegaUpload folks out just yet. It's probably very dependent on how much of their assets are frozen, which will affect how much of their money they can spend on legal representation. (I say unfortunately, because it seems to me that in an ideal justice system, everyone should have the same level [high!] of representation, rather than some being able to "buy" better lawyers).

[bostonpete]

So capitalism is good except when it comes to lawyers...?

[saucetenuto]

Yeah, pretty much. One of the essential principles of Western democracy is that everyone should be equal under the law, that what is a crime for a peasant should also be a crime for a noble. If you can use money to purchase better legal outcomes (through e.g. better legal representation), that principle is undermined.

[jordan0day]

Basically what saucetenuto said.

In the USA at least, much of our government could function nearly the same regardless of if our market system is completely laissez-faire capitalism, or hardcore communist. In fact, you could argue that government and its' systems, like the judicial system should be completely devoid of any possibility for profit motives. Since, as saucetenuto states, those undermine the system.

Now, I don't want to get into an argument about whether good lawyers deserve to get paid better than bad lawyers, etc. But I don't think I'd want to meet the person who sees the justice inequality between rich and poor defendants and thinks "All is as it should be."