I remember reading a couple years back, when some judges in Louisiana were exposed systematically discarding legal petitions from incarcerated plaintiffs into trash cans, without reading them. Totally nulled out any access to courts, any possibility of justice, for thousands of people.
Judges in PA were just selling kids to private prisons.
"Ciavarella disposed thousands of children to extended stays in youth centers for offenses as trivial as mocking an assistant principal on Myspace or trespassing in a vacant building.[3] After a judge rejected an initial plea agreement in 2009,[4][5] a federal grand jury returned a 48-count indictment.[6] In 2010, Conahan pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy and was sentenced to 17.5 years in federal prison.[7] Ciavarella opted to go to trial the following year. He was convicted on 12 of 39 counts and sentenced to 28 years in federal prison.[8] Conahan, who had been released to home confinement in 2020, had his sentence (due to end in 2026) commuted in 2024 by President Joe Biden."
Thousands of innocent kids in cages, and Mr. Biden actually pardoned that judge as a "nonviolent offender". I think I'll never forget that particular pardon, the obscenity of it. It, just, inverts the ideals behind the reform movements, turns them upside-down in mockery.
His constituents petitioned him about the crooked jails, and... Biden heard them; and freed the jailer.
He was already on house arrest and was going to be free of that by 2026.
The willingness to take the optics hit to allow him a little more freedom, a little earlier makes me question what everyone else is leadership is doing, they must really relate to him.
Pardons like that one really fuel the conspiracy theories about how many executive actions in the Biden admin, particularly toward the end, were really carried out by the former President.
https://www.propublica.org/article/louisiana-judges-ignored-... ("Louisiana Judges Systematically Ignored Prisoners’ Petitions Without Review" (2023))
It's the type of story that sensitizes you to awareness of the pattern.
That the victim in the OP story got access to an attorney of any color—even dragon-purple—actually puts them above the median.