Sep 28th 2011, 22:08:22
I highly doubt they would demonize you, especially since courts do no case related PR whatsoever - as a matter of fact, they utterly discourage it.
What the courts would do is would sentence you within the legal bounds of sentencing guidelines set up independently from your particular case to ensure neutrality and objectivity. Most likely, you would receive a slightly more lenient sentence based on an admission of guilt vs. forcing the matter to trial, but this is not always the case as it also depends on the type of infraction of the law, previous precedent, and circumstance leading up to a plea of guilty.
Lying will certainly take you a long way in the legal system - just so long as you don't get caught - however this is true in just about any profession. Even in mathematics, I'm reminded of the GE employee who claimed to have invented something or other fantastic (the specifics of it escape me at the moment, I believe it was something along the lines of achievable cold fusion). He presented empirical data to support his claim, had the math to back it up, and had everyone convinced that he had succeeded where hundreds of others had failed. It was not until a keen eyed reporter began examining the mathematics he had used, and noticed that the numbers were completely fudged (the reporter noticed identical numbers in a separate invention that he was claiming to have made, I think) that he was ousted as a liar and a fraud.
I don't know your particular circumstances, so I wouldn't presume to speak to them, however I would also be incredibly hesitant to place a system wide label on a system that serves 300+ million people based on a single case that I don't know the full details of.
I do have some experience with the flip side of the judicial system in the US as well, and even though I didn't like it at the time, in retrospect the judgment was fair and impartial and even though it did follow me for several years, it was not the judicial system following me, it was the perception of my criminal record in the eyes of folks who were much less objective than the system that it was created through.
For the record, I am utterly against mandatory minimum sentencing. I honestly do believe that it can ruin lives in situations where it is utterly unnecessary (as it sounds may have been your case). Unfortunately, we have yet to figure out a more objective and neutral way of dispensing justice while instilling some capability for leniency with sentencing, and any other current system is just far too susceptible to personal bias from judges.
What the courts would do is would sentence you within the legal bounds of sentencing guidelines set up independently from your particular case to ensure neutrality and objectivity. Most likely, you would receive a slightly more lenient sentence based on an admission of guilt vs. forcing the matter to trial, but this is not always the case as it also depends on the type of infraction of the law, previous precedent, and circumstance leading up to a plea of guilty.
Lying will certainly take you a long way in the legal system - just so long as you don't get caught - however this is true in just about any profession. Even in mathematics, I'm reminded of the GE employee who claimed to have invented something or other fantastic (the specifics of it escape me at the moment, I believe it was something along the lines of achievable cold fusion). He presented empirical data to support his claim, had the math to back it up, and had everyone convinced that he had succeeded where hundreds of others had failed. It was not until a keen eyed reporter began examining the mathematics he had used, and noticed that the numbers were completely fudged (the reporter noticed identical numbers in a separate invention that he was claiming to have made, I think) that he was ousted as a liar and a fraud.
I don't know your particular circumstances, so I wouldn't presume to speak to them, however I would also be incredibly hesitant to place a system wide label on a system that serves 300+ million people based on a single case that I don't know the full details of.
I do have some experience with the flip side of the judicial system in the US as well, and even though I didn't like it at the time, in retrospect the judgment was fair and impartial and even though it did follow me for several years, it was not the judicial system following me, it was the perception of my criminal record in the eyes of folks who were much less objective than the system that it was created through.
For the record, I am utterly against mandatory minimum sentencing. I honestly do believe that it can ruin lives in situations where it is utterly unnecessary (as it sounds may have been your case). Unfortunately, we have yet to figure out a more objective and neutral way of dispensing justice while instilling some capability for leniency with sentencing, and any other current system is just far too susceptible to personal bias from judges.
