The point of "immunity" is so that the lower-level criminals lose their 5th Amendment rights, and are therefore compelled to present evidence against their boss. The 5th Amendment in the USA states "Right against self-incrimination", but if you have immunity, you cannot self-incriminate.
So once you sign that immunity document, you can be compelled to speak anything in court. Even if you "forgot", once you sign over, you can be __forced__ to talk.
So yeah, I'm not entirely sure if "immunity given to group X" is a big problem? Its how courts work, its how we pin down the ringleader. Its often less important to get the lackeys, and more important for the officers to focus on the bosses.
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Without the presentation of this evidence, you never get a guilty plea. Remember, in the USA's court system, you need to __prove__ the defendant of wrongdoing.
That means you either need to convince people, or force people, to present evidence in court that's helpful to your case. These people are often insiders, and immunity is extremely useful for getting around 5th Amendment issues.
Would you not see any problem if (still using the article example) Weinstein was given immunity to report on his own rapes?
Also it compounds the rage as it was what happened to all the banks in 2008, all the air cias after 1st covid, etc.
Weinstein is the boss. So you'd never give him immunity to the case, he's the target.
If Weinstein had a close "ally", who was less important for justice but important to testify for the case... even if that "ally" had crimes associated with him, you'd want to give that "Hypothetical ally" immunity. _THEN_ you force the ally to talk (if the ally fails to talk in court, you throw him in jail for contempt of court, and take away their immunity).
This article is about immunity from civil lawsuits - not criminal convictions.
Honestly, with Weinstein in jail, I could care less that people can't sue him for all the nothing he now has.
Firstly, I don't necessarily agree that you could never get a guilty plea. The government has lots of resources and the threat of scrutinizing you and going after you for years is a significant pressure. For sure this can be abused, but my point is only that this blanket assumption that the government just has to grant immunity or throw up its hands seems like a false choice.
Secondly, total immunity is a pretty broad guarantee though. Why not trade a maximum penalty for that evidence, instead of no penalty at all?
Realistically speaking government resources is still limited. They can bring the hammer down on Julian Assange because he's a high profile person they want to make an example of, but that approach isn't scalable for every mid level manager that they want to investigate.
Because of 5th Amendment issues.
If there's a penalty associated with talking about evidence, then they'll just plead the 5th Amendment. Only with total immunity can you bypass the 5th Amendment and _FORCE_ them to talk.
The prosecutors need the win. The smart move is to extract every bit of value.
Lets say Weinstein was the target. Then all the executives around Weinstein are the lackeys. So you offer immunity to the lackeys (aka: the executives in the inner-circle) so that you get Weinstein.
Offering immunity to the low-level janitor doesn't do any good. You need someone high-enough that they're in the "inner circle" of the target. Someone with real dirt on your target.
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Its very common in criminal court to give immunity to mob bosses, to get dirt on even bigger mob bosses.
Making an article saying "Only mob bosses get immunity" is counterproductive. That's the damn point of the grant-immunity system. You grant it to criminals to help catch other criminals.
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Lets put it this way: lets say there's some innocent bystander who happens to know what is going on. Police / Investigators don't even offer immunity to them, because they committed no crime, so there's no point offering immunity. You just ask the innocent dude to come to court and answer a few questions / testify on what they know.
From civil lawsuits. They can still be charged criminally.
Someone can correct me if I am wrong, but when you go to bankruptcy court, you actually have to reveal all of your finances and justify why you need to declare bankruptcy? You can't just preliminarily declare bankruptcy in anticipation of damages - you actually have to damages assigned by a court.
And it seems like a huge waste of everyone's time in the bankruptcy process if the judge says "oh yeah - anyone can now tack on a lawsuit and I'll see you back here every single time".
This is a story about insurance claims in bankruptcy. To the degree there is scope for reform, it's in exempting insurers from liability in cases of sexual misconduct. The downside: there will be less cash and a longer route to settlement for victims.
Their personal liability stems from their Board seats. That’s squarely in the purview of most D&O policies.
Some of the stuff in the article strike me as totally fine though. Like complaining that a legal settlement has too much legalese in it. Like, really?
