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I hate musicians!

#123
lowfreq33 said:
I did entertain the thought, but I never seriously considered it. I'm not personally in favor of pot being illegal, although I'm not really a smoker myself. If I wanted to be a hardass I'd just fire the guy. I just hate doing that. I was a boss when I worked in restaurants, and firing people was absolutely the worst part of that job.

And I'm sure we'd work together just fine, I'm Italian so we're practically paisanos.
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Right on my dago brother! Glad to hear the drummer thing seems to be working it's way out.
 
#124
Bert Slide said:
HA! Spoken like someone who has been on only one side of the bar in a courtroom. There is little "Justice" in many courtrooms. When I was young and foolish I was tried before two different courts on similar misdemeanor charges I won't go into.

First time was in a city where I had no connections. It was the late 80's and the court told me I made too much money to qualify for a public defender. I was making $200 a week at the time and could barely feed myself, much less afford a lawyer. They threw the book at me; max fine, weeks of community service.

Second time was in my hometown. My cousin, fresh out of law school, acted as my attorney. When I showed up in court, the sheriff on duty in the courtroom was my Mom's boyfriend. He was suprised to see me since I hadn't told my Mom I had been arrested. After explaining the situation to him, he quickly got my case switched to a different courtroom because he said I had drawn the "hanging judge." In the other courtroom the first thing the Judge said when my cousin and I came before him was "I know your Daddy and I know your Daddy, what the hell are you boys doing in my courtroom." Then the judge, my cousin, my Mom's sherrif boyfriend and the DA went into the back room. Shortly they came out and I pleaded guilty to Disorderly Conduct(a much lesser and unrelated charge) and received a mere $100 fine.

Please noone take likely subjecting another to the court system, esp. in an unfamiliar city.
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Actually, I've been on the other side with different traffic tickets in different places, years before I had the cop job.

When you say there is little justice, it depends. Some judges are tough and some are lenient. As often as I've been in court and seen different cases by me and other other officers, I see a lot more leniency than toughness. Yes, having a good defense attorney is better than representing yourself if you don't know what's going on and you're knee deep. They can help their client get a felony lowered to a misdemeanor, especially if it's first offense. Or if their client pleads guilty, they work every angle to request lowered or dropped fees and fines and decreased jail time, request for work-release, and even request to let their client to turn themselves into for jail after a couple of days instead of immediately so they can take care of personal things. Things are even more lenient in family/juvenile court when a teenager is convicted, unless it's a violent crime. One day, a judge dropped all tickets written by this one cop because he was stuck in circuit court (one court higher than general district) and he couldn't make it back into general district court for all tickets that he wrote for that day and time.
 
#125
placedesjardins said:
Actually, I've been on the other side with different traffic tickets in different places, years before I had the cop job.

When you say there is little justice, it depends. Some judges are tough and some are lenient. As often as I've been in court and seen different cases by me and other other officers, I see a lot more leniency than toughness. Yes, having a good defense attorney is better than representing yourself if you don't know what's going on and you're knee deep. They can help their client get a felony lowered to a misdemeanor, especially if it's first offense. Or if their client pleads guilty, they work every angle to request lowered or dropped fees and fines and decreased jail time, request for work-release, and even request to let their client to turn themselves into for jail after a couple of days instead of immediately so they can take care of personal things. Things are even more lenient in family/juvenile court when a teenager is convicted, unless it's a violent crime. One day, a judge dropped all tickets written by this one cop because he was stuck in circuit court (one court higher than general district) and he couldn't make it back into general district court for all tickets that he wrote for that day and time.
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You either totally miss my point or you are agreeing with me. Sure there are some judges that are more lenient in general and some situations where most judges are more lenient. I am not equating leniency with justice. Justice is the even-handed enforcement of the law. In my cases I was treated entirely differently not just because I had a lawyer, but because of family connections. In the first case my penalty was draconian, in the second it was a slap on the wrist with a little wink/wink nod/nod thrown in.

Do you believe the poor man, even with an overworked, underpaid, sometimes even uncaring and incompetant public defender will receive the same outcome in court as a wealthy defendent up on the same charge? Do you think OJ would have had a snowballs chance in hell of a not guilty verdict if he were a poor man with a PD? Do you think it is just that we put petty thieves in jail while white collar criminals walk or go to minimum security country clubs? And to bring it back toward the topic; do you think a musician busted for possession who might have say long hair and wierd clothes or a mohawk and tats and piercings might just have a hard time with some police and judges in some parts of the country?
 
#126
Bert Slide said:
You either totally miss my point or you are agreeing with me. Sure there are some judges that are more lenient in general and some situations where most judges are more lenient. I am not equating leniency with justice. Justice is the even-handed enforcement of the law. In my cases I was treated entirely differently not just because I had a lawyer, but because of family connections. In the first case my penalty was draconian, in the second it was a slap on the wrist with a little wink/wink nod/nod thrown in.
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Yeah, I'm agreeing with you.
A judge can be more harsh if the string of cases before him had all defendants acting like jerks so the last couple of accused on the docket will possibly get the harshest treatment. Same judge on another day can be lenient.

Bert Slide said:
Do you believe the poor man, even with an overworked, underpaid, sometimes even uncaring and incompetant public defender will receive the same outcome in court as a wealthy defendent up on the same charge?
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Depends. A public defendant usually is not incompetent. Underpaid and overworked? Maybe. Assistant district attorneys and cops don't make a ton of cash either so there's no real empathy from me on that. Cops and assistant district attorneys are government jobs, so like any other civil servant job, their salaries are available for the public.
Public defendants are willing to take on clients who qualify for a court-appointed attorney, because they are also paid by the courts, it's not pro bono. These same attorneys are also seen working cases where the client is paying. When you work in the same county and courtrooms for years, you see the same defense attorneys.

Bert Slide said:
Do you think OJ would have had a snowballs chance in hell of a not guilty verdict if he were a poor man with a PD?
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Probably not, but look at Casey Anthony's attorney and what he accomplished. It depends.

Bert Slide said:
Do you think it is just that we put petty thieves in jail while white collar criminals walk or go to minimum security country clubs?
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I don't think you understand the prison/jail/corrections world. If a person is convicted of a misdemeanor crime that is not a federal crime, as in your petty thief example, he goes to county jail if the jail sentence is less than a year. Usually petty crimes do not result in a sentence of over a year. White collar criminals also go to county jail when their sentence is less than a year for a non-federal crime. An example would be embezzlement. If the sentence is more than a year, he goes to state penitentiary. He doesn't go to a country club minimum security penitentiary. I was also a county sheriff's deputy at a county jail. This one guy got convicted of a felony, what you might call a white collar crime. He started his sentence off in the county jail, but he later got moved into the state penitentiary. He wasn't treated any differently than someone who committed a violent felony and is sentenced with over a year in jail. Huh... go figure.
If he is charged with a federal crime and it was a white collar crime, he goes to a federal minimum security prison, not super max or other maximum security federal prison, like Martha Stewart.
White collar criminals don't walk. If you see enough white-collar felony cases, you see that we are in America, not a third-world country where judges can get paid off or in a movie where a rich tycoon gets away scot free.

Bert Slide said:
And to bring it back toward the topic; do you think a musician busted for possession who might have say long hair and wierd clothes or a mohawk and tats and piercings might just have a hard time with some police and judges in some parts of the country?
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Depends. I treated everyone the same. Poor, rich, well-dressed, cheap clothes, old, young, male, female, white, black, pretty, ugly, etc. I just did my job and let the judges be lenient or harsh. I can't say that for every cop.
Judges will also be as even keel for everyone regardless of looks. That's their job. But if the defendant's attitude is awful and he or she doesn't respect the judge's court, that will weigh against that person heavily.
If you were in court every week for years, then you would know. You've been in court only a limited number of times and as the accused, so your view of how defendants are treated is also limited.

Considering you got off on one of your crimes because of the judge and your connections, I think you would hard pressed to say it was wrong for the judge to have been lenient with you, and he should have convicted you just like any other musician, who might have long hair and weird clothes, or a mohawk and tattoos and piercings, or maybe a musician who is clean cut and wearing a nice suit. Because that would have been equal justice for all.
 
#127

Considering you got off on one of your crimes because of the judge and your connections, I think you would hard pressed to say it was wrong for the judge to have been lenient with you, and he should have convicted you just like any other musician, who might have long hair and weird clothes, or a mohawk and tattoos and piercings, or maybe a musician who is clean cut and wearing a nice suit. Because that would have been equal justice for all.

Actually I am saying it was wrong for the judge to treat me differently because of family connections. Of course I wasn't complaining about it at the time. It taught me a valuable lesson about the importance of having friends in high places.

I'm sure you are a good cop and most judges are fair. My point is not to insult law enforcement and the judicial system. People are people and to expect them to always mete out justice evenly is a pipedream. I just wanted to point out that anything can happen when facing charges in a strange town. To suggest that you turn someone in for smoking a little weed because they messed up some gigs and it would be an easy way to get rid of them is just such a foreign concept to me I had to respond with my anecdotes. That drummer doesn't deserve the hassles and financial outlay involved with being arrested because he came to a gig unprepared and high. To try and solve your problems with him that way is extremely petty, childish and downright mean-spirited.

I rest my case!
 
#129
lowfreq33 said:
White collar criminals don't necessarily walk, but their sentences are often laughably short. There's a thing going around comparing a banker who embezzled 30 billion who got 40 months with a guy who stole $100, felt bad and turned himself in and got 15 years. It happens.
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I have a hard time buying that so I googled it. The $100 guy was convicted of robbery, which requires use or threat of violence so he wasn't just a petty thief.
 
#130
lowfreq33 said:
White collar criminals don't necessarily walk, but their sentences are often laughably short. There's a thing going around comparing a banker who embezzled 30 billion who got 40 months with a guy who stole $100, felt bad and turned himself in and got 15 years. It happens.
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I knew a guy who got sent up in the 80's for embezzling thousands. I think he served 1-2 years. He was sent to a prison facility on a military base. Since he was an engineer they put him to work on some projects. He said they had pretty much full run of the base and even bought liquor at the PX and took it back to their rooms.

Might be tougher now but there's a whole lotta Wall Street criminals that are not only walking around now but enjoying huge bonuses.
 
#132
lowfreq33 said:
That's correct, and 15 years for armed robbery isn't unreasonable, but 40 months for embezzling 30 billion is a joke.
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Turns out it wasn't embezzling it was fraud, it was 3 billion and most of that was losses that banks like Deutsch Bank incurred by acting on the fraudulent statements.

The guy, Paul Allen was a co-conspirator and was charged not with fraud but with aiding and abetting (i.e he was an accomplice). He cooperated with prosecutors in nailing the guy who headed the plot - the chairman of the mortgage company where Allen was CEO. He got 40 months but prosecutors were only looking for 72 months in any case. The guy who actually masterminded the scheme got 30 years.

That sounds about right to me.

There are absolutely cases where guys who can afford top shelf lawyers get better deals than guys who can't - no different than health care. This really isn't one of those.
 
#133
Gaius46 said:
Turns out it wasn't embezzling it was fraud, it was 3 billion and most of that was losses that banks like Deutsch Bank incurred by acting on the fraudulent statements.

The guy, Paul Allen was a co-conspirator and was charged not with fraud but with aiding and abetting (i.e he was an accomplice). He cooperated with prosecutors in nailing the guy who headed the plot - the chairman of the mortgage company where Allen was CEO. He got 40 months but prosecutors were only looking for 72 months in any case. The guy who actually masterminded the scheme got 30 years.

That sounds about right to me.

There are absolutely cases where guys who can afford top shelf lawyers get better deals than guys who can't - no different than health care. This really isn't one of those.
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Man, why you gotta ruin things bringing facts into the equation? :)
 
#138
Yep. Spent two days in Peru Illinois, and I'm the proud owner of a new transmission. Right now I'm sitting outside my apartment waiting for maintenance because we can't find the house keys. It's 1 am.

Doesn't matter though, because this ordeal is over, our regular drummer is back for the next run, and I got a call from the agent today that we're booked for a week at a beach resort/amusement park/water park. Free admission all week, and a pretty good bit of money. No, it's not Six Flags :)

I deserve it. A lot.
 
#140
Bert Slide said:
I fail to see how the po-po or the court system should be involved in this situation at all. Maybe I'm living in another era but to narc on a fellow musician just because he messed up a few gigs would seriously violate my personal code of honor. There are much better ways to handle this. Maybe some of you guys could form a TB NARCS Club so I know better which musicians to avoid working with.
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Hehe :D Well said..

To the OP: I think the best advice you have gotten so far is just what you said you knew you had to already in your first post: grind it out and then never work with him again.

I understand your pain tho :(
 

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