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Nursie | 17 days ago

I would argue it also belongs in decisions of whether to convict and what to convict someone of.

The law cannot encode the entirety of human experience, and can’t foresee every possible mitigating circumstance. Given the fact of a conviction regardless of sentence can have such a huge impact on someone’s life, I think there is room for compassion and good judgement in multiple places.

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fluidcruft|17 days ago

You're describing sentencing. Conviction decisions are mostly made by juries.

Nursie|17 days ago

In systems I'm familiar with, magistrates handle a lot of the minor criminal cases without juries, and civil cases don't usually have a jury either, which covers probably a majority of all court cases.