My ex wife who had a terrible problem with being violent pushed the envelope every time that she acted out or “snapped”. My remedy was to always walk away, to never engage her, even after having taken a beating. I’m smart enough to know what happens to people in these circumstances that engage.

One night, she was drunk and became belligerent. I decided to walk away and go to bed. For some reason I decided it was best to just leave. I knew how it always ended for me. I thought I was being sneaky and left in my work truck. As I was driving away, she apparently tried to stop me in the dark, while moving, and drunk .183 bac.

I never had an opportunity to clearly see her and kept driving. I had no idea she was injured. She called and said I ran her over. After pleading with her for an ambulance, after I promptly returned, she declined and I drove her to the hospital. She accused me of running her over intentionally. Fast forward and I’m on trial for felony assault/dangerous weapon and great bodily harm less than murder.

Every one of my motions was denied. No evidence about her violence and a previous attack on my vehicle was aloud. There was a no contact order and a ppo. For many months I endured her harassment about “taking the plea deal or else”, various love accolades, so many forms of contact and I never replied. The prosecutor and others in the court did not care about the harassment.

She was caught lying during the trial, thanks to body cam that was made available only after I complained about proper miranda warning. She admitted to the police she beat me but lied and denied it under oath until the cam video was played.

I had more plea hearings than usual and even the judge tried to get the two of us to mediate the case! It’s the people vs the defendant not the victim vs the defendant. I declined every plea down to a misdemeanor. I could never take a plea to something I didn’t do.

Everything about this was stacked against me. I was terrified. A law abiding citizen having never been in trouble. But In the end, Justice was served. I still feel the tingle of ptsd from the whole experience.

You don’t even want to know about the divorce, the many law suits, and counter suits. The legal system is a mess in my opinion. Someone who was comparatively negligent should not be allowed to sue for their own drunken stupidity and be rewarded.

I don’t care much for judges and lawyers anymore.

Perhaps we can at least agree that a reasonable Prosecutor in such a case should prosecute. And perhaps we can also agree that a reasonable Prosecutor will lose a fair percentage of such cases.

And my counterpoint was that if based on the admissible evidence the prosecutor can only be 50% confident that a jury will convict then that evidence does not objectively constitute “proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” and the prosecutor should not prosecute. (If he’s more than 50% confident of his chances at trial, then he should probably prosecute but offer a plea that would make it unreasonable for the defendant to take his chances at trial.) The only scenario in which a rational prosecutor could be personally convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty and yet still only be 50% confident of winning at trial would be the scenario, addressed above, in which the prosecutor’s belief in the defendant’s guilt is based on evidence which will be inadmissible at trial.

So, if he’s personally convinced beyond a reasonable doubt and believes the evidence is 50% likely to convince a unanimous jury, should he prosecute or not?

My hypothetical was never about someone who the evidence showed was 80% likely to be guilty. Of course you should never prosecute such a person. All of my hypotheticals were about people the Prosecutor was firmly personally convinced were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Again, this is my point: “I would argue that if a Prosecutor believes personally that the person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and the Prosecutor believes he has a 50% chance of convincing a unanimous jury of this, he should prosecute. And if he does so, he will lose about half of these cases.”