I mod a worryingly growing list of communities. Ask away if you have any questions or issues with any of the communities.

I also run the hobby and nerd interest website scratch-that.org.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • cannot be set higher than an amount that is reasonably likely to ensure the defendant’s presence at the trial

    That is a sentence that you can really roll over in your head. It does not necessarily also mean an amount within the resources of the defendant. I watch a lot of hearings, and something I’ve seen at least a few times is a set of allegations and past facts (usually something like multiple failures to appear in the past, and/or fleeing from police) in a situation where the actual charge being bailed on has a statutory requirement that bail be offered. The judge doesn’t want to let the person out on bail, so therefore sets the bail at $1 million or something which is functionally the same thing as not giving them bail.

    Usually this triggers a motion for a hearing about the bail amount by the defense lawyer to argue down the amount, but if the court date on the charge is earlier than court date for the motion, it becomes a moot issue.








  • #8: Police

    State police enforce state level laws, and Federal agencies enforce federal laws.

    The whole semi-autonomous thing. If a state and the Feds both have their own laws against something they could each try to arrest somebody, but there could also be a situation where one might not have a law while the other one does. For example , weed is still illegal under Federal law. The Federal government has mostly chosen not to enforce these laws, but it could. Many states have legalized weed to varying degrees.

    So there could be a situation where somebody is smoking weed in a state that has legalized it. The state police have no power to arrest that person, but the Feds do.

    I’m sure this has all made it more confusing.



  • Alcohol sales vary hugely between states. In some states, you can get hard liquor at Wal-Mart while in others you can only get it at state run stores.

    The rules about licensing mean some areas gas stations usually don’t even sell beer, while in other places they have giant walk in beer freezers.

    Some states or counties have dry laws where they don’t sell alcohol on Sundays, or maybe no hard alcohol, or maybe you have to wait until noon to be able to buy it.

    It’s all over the place.

    As for the Wal-Mart machineguns, I think you’ve gotten enough replies on that detail, but again gun sales are something with huge variety. Some states have put restrictions in place where a Wal-Mart theoretically could still sell guns but doesn’t because of the hassle, and gun stores end up being few and far between, while other places basically just have the Federal minimum in place.