Jason Brown may be only 36 but he has just racked up his 41st driving offense in operating a vehicle on a suspended license. That’s right, 41 times. This time he was pulled over after police said that he was driving erratically and they found marijuana in the car as well as heroin and cocaine on his person.
Brown from Long Island allegedly gave a false name at first but was soon in the books with what must be close to a record for such violations. He now faces charges of aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, criminal impersonation, unlawful possession of marijuana and criminal possession of a controlled substance. The concept of an “aggravated” unlicensed operation is a bit new to me but I suppose if there is such a thing it would occur sometime before a 41st arrest.
The case illustrates the difficulty in dealing with recidivists of such minor offenses. Society does not want to jail such individuals long-term for minor violations but there is clearly no deterrent for people like Brown in the existing punishment. (I am also curious when a license stops being “suspended” and someone like Brown simply has no license).
New name, “paper tiger.”
Mespo has been noticeably absent since his aiming problem on the Georgia death sentence, and In Cold Blood, attempted “gotcha.”
I just Googled NY criminal and injury attorney. A boat load of them. This is a stupid assertion by a guy w/ a bug up his butt because I’m tough on attorneys. Are these attorneys “good” that pop up w/ the Google search? Well, there are a boat load of bad attorneys everywhere, so I don’t know. But, I have said here many times, you want an attorney who specializes in your need. But to assert there aren’t thousands of attorneys in every state that handle both criminal and injury cases is stupid, on its face. Mespo was fact checking me and pissed on his leg. Well, “another one bites the dust.”
LOL. Who the hell still uses Yellow Pages. Few under the age of 40. Better idea, Google “Wisconsin criminal and injury attorneys.” I stopped counting @ 100, there are many more.
Good for him. He obviously knows that driving is a right and not a bought permission from your master. We need more people like this IMHO.
Alan Tiger, thanks. I thought that assertion didn’t sound right. Some folks say things that eminate from ‘guess work’ and expect everyone else to believe them, lol.
it has been said that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
in this case, the proof is in the reading.
i invite anyone who has read this thread to open your local yellow pages. go to “lawyers.” look at the advertisements. how many of them claim to be experts at *both* criminal law **and** accident law?
q.e.d.
alan tiger, In Wisconsin, where we are burdened w/ too many incompetent attorneys due in large part to the archaic diploma privilege still in place, this is common practice. It appears you are a barrister in NYC, a state w/ a strong bar exam requirement. In my 30 plus years of working cases in Wisconsin, I can remember @ least 40-50 cases I worked where a criminal attorney represented his client in a civil lawsuit. There is one attorney in mind who alone is responsible for ~8 or so of these “switch hitting” cases that I worked. This is just me! I have spoken w/ other insurance defense attorneys and PI’s who confirm my experience is not an aberration. Here’s where we do agree. The good criminal defense attorneys, and good plaintiff’s attorneys do not do this. But you see, we have big beer barrels in Wisconsin w/ many diploma privileged bozos clawing for clients. You missed the heated debate we had on diploma privilege in Wisconsin, the last state w/ a full diploma privilege for UW and Marquette grads. New Hampshire has a limited version. All other states did away w/ this abusive practice long ago.
First of all it’s in N.Y., so they aren’t going to give him a stronger consequence. This instance shows how a constant slap on the hand does not deter people who are obstinate and have anarchist tendencies.
Sheriff Joe would send him to tent city for a spell and after 2 or 3 repeat offences, he would spend a spell in jail.
Gigi De La Paz
Well
Why can’t anyone see that just maybe some jail time might work for someone who is always out carousing like that. duhh. What is with these arguments that he is a poor misguided soul. Come on!
@Gigi De La Paz
“First of all it’s in N.Y., so they aren’t going to give him a stronger consequence. This instance shows how a constant slap on the hand does not deter people who are obstinate and have anarchist tendencies.
Sheriff Joe would send him to tent city for a spell and after 2 or 3 repeat offences, (sic) he would spend a spell in jail.”
I’m afraid that uber authoritarian Arpaio has yet more legal problems. It seems that this federal judge doesn’t want to just let Joe be a law unto himself.
http://www.kqed.org/news/story/2015/02/13/156138/arizona_sheriff_joe_arpaio_facing_more_legal_troubles
Gigi De La Paz – Sheriff Joe would not send the man anywere. He houses them after they have been arrested and/or convicted. He is not the judge.
a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing.
nick spinelli writes: “It’s not unusual for the attorney who represents these plaintiffs on personal injury suits is also their criminal attorney.”
indeed, that is *most* unusual. any lawyer who scrounges for both civil and criminal cases is either 1) a rookie, or 2) the bottom of the barrel.
good civil lawyers regularly refer criminal cases to lawyers who know criminal law. this is in anticipation of return situations where good criminal lawyers regularly refer civil cases to lawyers who know tort law, in exchange for a part of the fee.
In Wisconsin, and I believe most states, there are occupational driver’s licenses. The driver’s license allows the driver to drive to work, pick up children, go to doc appt. Now, they don’t issue these to repeat serious offenders. But, if the offenses are just too many parking tix, too many speeding tix, fines etc. the DMV routinely issues the licenses. Again, one must be skeptical of what they’re told. People lie to save face, rewrite history, or manipulate. If a person doesn’t have an occupational license they are either serious law violators, or lazy. Most probably the former.
alan tiger, The backward and alcoholic state of Wisconsin has no dram shop statutes. For those not familiar, dram shop laws go way back to England I believe. They generally state it is an innkeeper, tavern keepers duty to not over serve a patron. In Wisconsin, the tavern owner is only liable in the case described by alan tiger, if a bar patron is underage, gets drunk @ a tavern, and injures a person.
Here’s one that takes in several issues. Like alan tiger, the attorney who hired me was defending a restaurant in an injury lawsuit. An illegal alien employee of our restaurant drank @ the bar after getting off work as a cook. He got drunk, and injured a woman driving another vehicle. Now, our cook had a driver’s license but it was obtained w/ phony documents. I ran his SS # and it belonged to a deceased man in Chicago. The driver’s license showed the cook being 20 years old, putting us on the hook for damages. But, our cook claimed he was really 22 years old. He provided me what was purported to be his real birth certificate from Mexico showing him of age. But, the cook got spooked and fled back to Mexico. I don’t know how the civil lawsuit ever settled. I do my work and then move on to the next case.
I worked with many women who were in that deep hole of accumulating fines because of losing their license and then being caught driving without one. These women all had children to support didn’t get welfare and needed to work. There were times that the buses weren’t running and they needed to be present for their shift or else they faced discipline at work. I picked up many staff members over the years on my way and out of my way to work.These people are caught between a rock and a hard place.
Here is another perspective on the matter.
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/08/04/driver-license-suspension-debt-bondage-for-modern-times/
Darren Smith
Okay
This is what everyone is missing here. I think Darren is very smart and has got it. I know a young man, From Ferguson (lolol) that had allll kinds of violations like this. I bailed him out twice and admonished him that he needed to go to school and stop being a “wigger” you all can google that and realize that I am not prejudiced please. Well, he didn’t stop and finally got in trouble with drugs in the car. They put him in jail and he went to school in jail and church and he now is married with a child and…… go figure it out duuuhhhh 😉 😉
“Society does not want to jail such individuals long-term for minor violations.”
Really? People are thrown in cages for years because of drug possession. Any rational individual understands that treatment and counseling are the best way to assist individuals with a health problem. Or what about Guantanaamo detainees that have been cleared? Not even minor violations by them… how long have they been in a cage?
@Paul C. Schulte
“Ken Rogers – and your point is?”
My quite obvious point is that the US is *already*, in greater numbers than any other country on earth, “actually send[ing] people to prison for this crap.”
Ken Rogers –
Really??? So you are equating rape, murder, kidnapping, drug dealing, etc. with the 41 traffic violations. Now I can see where Obama sees letting all illegals free. A murder is no worse than running a red light.
@Paul C. Schulte
“Really??? So you are equating rape, murder, kidnapping, drug dealing, etc. with the 41 traffic violations. Now I can see where Obama sees letting all illegals free. A murder is no worse than running a red light.”
Your straw man hasn’t a leg to stand on.
” He [Jason Brown] now faces charges of aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, criminal impersonation, unlawful possession of marijuana and criminal possession of a controlled substance.”
Now, see the following:
“Composition of the Federal Prison Population – Mostly Non-Violent
“More than half (55%) of federal prisoners are serving time for a drug offense, and 13% for a violent offense.
“Nearly three-fourths (72.1%) of the population are non-violent offenders with no history of violence.
“One-third (34.4%) are first-time, non-violent offenders.
“More than half (55.7%) of persons sentenced for a drug offense in 2002 fell into the lowest criminal history category (Category 1) of the sentencing guidelines, and in 87% of cases no weapon was involved.”
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_federalprisonpop.pdf
“Treatment patterns play a direct role in understanding the process by which drug offenders are sentenced to prison. As we have previously seen, three-quarters of the drug offenders in prison have no history of violence, but a substantial majority (53.6% of the 74.4%) have had prior drug or non-violent convictions. Thus, while some drug offenders have been sentenced to prison only after repeated convictions for drug offenses, from a policy perspective one needs to examine whether appropriate resources had been devoted to treatment alternatives or other offender services and supervision on these prior occasions.”
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/dp_distortedpriorities.pdf
County Jail Populations
“Who is Really in Jail?
“Despite the public perception that jails are full of dangerous, hardened,
or incorrigible criminals placed there as punishment for their crimes, national data on county jails present a different picture. County jails primarily house pretrial defendants (Chart Two). According to national data, two-thirds of jail National Association of Counties inmates are in an un-convicted status, up from
just over half in 1996.
“Overall, data show that of all the un-convicted inmates in jail on any given day, almost 35% have been charged with violent offenses, 22% with property offenses, 23% with drug charges, and 20% with public-order charges.”
“A study in 2007 by the North Carolina Governor’s Crime Commission and Justice Analysis Center collected data on 10 pretrial services
programs operating in the state (either county or privately-run by a nonprofit). The following outlines the cost comparisons they found:
“The average daily number of individuals on pretrial release: 174
The average length of stay on pretrial release: 118 days
The average costs per person on pretrial release: $6.04 per day
The average cost of jail: $57.30 per day
Total cost of pretrial release for 118 days = $123,870
Total cost of jail if they had not been released = $1,175,131
Average annual savings to counties: $1,051,261
“Pretrial services programs provide for public safety and can protect alleged victims and the community-at-large by monitoring defendants awaiting trial. According to national data, over-all rates of appearances in court and the ability
to remain arrest-free while on release have varied only slightly over the last two decades. Court appearance rates have consistently been between 76
and 79 percent for those released pretrial. Their ability to remain arrest-free while pending trial has ranged from 79 to 87 percent for both misdemeanors and felonies. For felonies alone, the arrest-free rates are even higher, ranging from 87-90 percent over the last 20 years. Programs that meet national professional standards and that are held accountable provide an invaluable service to the county.”
naco.org/newsroom/pubs/Documents/Health,%20Human%20Services%20and%20Justice/Jail%20Population%20Management%20Guide.pdf
Jason Brown will likely be joining a majority of non-violent inmates in a county, state, or federal prison, adding to the toll of imprisoned American perpetrators of victimless crimes.
The comment in question had more than two links. I corrected it Ken so that it would post.
Ken Rogers
I have posted here several times about how jails are not just cages but places to be rehabilitated after a crime is comitted People can get schooling and save money from job related activities. These are circuitous. posts of yours.. That man had 41 DWIs with drugs which makes him a hard case. People know that they are going to go to jail if they do wrong. They know right from wrong.
Lets cut through the mustard here. He needs to go to jail. Serve some time an hopefully be rehabilitated. If he gets beat up, there are hospitals around and medics there. Just like in real life. If he didn’t like the odds or you don’t then , these odds should not be but they do.
Ken Rogers – you are trying to solve the wrong problem. Your stats have nothing to do with our perpetrator. If you have been arrested 41 times for driving on a suspended license, some part of the criminal justice system is not doing its job.
@Paul C. Schulte
“Ken Rogers – you are trying to solve the wrong problem. Your stats have nothing to do with our perpetrator. If you have been arrested 41 times for driving on a suspended license, some part of the criminal justice system is not doing its job.”
The problem I’m “trying to solve,” in concert with many others whose thinking isn’t radically compromised by an authoritarian mindset, is a criminal justice system that imprisons more people per capita than any other country in the world, the majority of whom are non-violent “offenders,” and the statistics I cited have everything to do with “perpetrators” such as Jason Brown.
Ken Rogers – you have yet to offer a solution, just statistics. What, specifically, is your solution for Jason Brown?
Paul C. Schulte
He never has a point — he just rattles like that.
@jsteensrud
“I understand it costs us over One Million a year to house one prisoner. Could that money be used to rehab/educate/teach a skill, etc., outside the prison system?”
Below is a link to an eye-opening (and heart-rending) report that addresses much more than the cost to taxpayers ($63.4 billion) of the highest incarceration rate in the world:
“A report by the organization, “The Price of Prisons,” states that the cost of incarcerating one inmate in Fiscal 2010 was $31,307 per year. ‘In states like Connecticut, Washington state, New York, it’s anywhere from $50,000 to $60,000,’ he said.
“Yes – $60,000 a year. That’s a teacher’s salary, or a firefighter’s. Our epidemic of incarceration costs us taxpayers $63.4 billion a year.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-cost-of-a-nation-of-incarceration/
@Paul C. Schulte
“Maybe it is time to actually send people to prison for this crap.”
The US already has more people imprisoned in greater numbers per capita than does any other country in the world, including China and Russia.
“Incarceration in the United States is one of the main forms of punishment, rehabilitation, or both for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the largest prison population in the world,[3][4] and the second-highest per-capita incarceration rate, behind Seychelles (which has a total prison population of 786 out of a population of 90,024).[5][6] In 2012, it was 707 adults incarcerated per 100,000 population.[7][8][9][10][11]
“According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails at year-end 2011 – about 0.94% of adults in the U.S. resident population.[8] Additionally, 4,814,200 adults at year-end 2011 were on probation or on parole.[12] In total, 6,977,700 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2011 – about 2.9% of adults in the U.S. resident population.[12]
“In addition, there were 70,792 juveniles in juvenile detention in 2010.[13]
“Although debtor’s prisons no longer exist in the United States, residents of some U.S. states can still be incarcerated for debt as of 2014.[14][15][16][17] The Vera Institute of Justice reported in 2015 that jails throughout the United States have become warehouses for the poor, the mentally ill and those suffering from addiction, as such individuals lack the financial means or mental capacity to post bail.[18]
“According to a 2014 report by Human Rights Watch, ‘tough-on-crime’ laws adopted since the 1980s have filled U.S. prisons with mostly nonviolent offenders.[19]
“This policy failed to rehabilitate prisoners and many were worse on release than before incarceration. Rehabilitation programs for offenders can be more cost effective than prison.[20] According to the Brennan Center for Justice, falling crime rates cannot be ascribed to mass incarceration.[21]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
Ken Rogers – and your point is?
“randyjet
Bill, you are the only person I have seen who thinks that ANY person here said the guy was an illegal. The observation was that the guy simply was doing what over 8 million illegals are doing RIGHT NOW! Thanks for opening your mouth and removing ALL doubt about your intellect”
ROFL! actually you Randy drifted//brought up illegals. However, I do much appreciate how you immediately turned to a personal attack. As I said, this board always cracks me up.