4 ms·

John Baker's quote makes more sense if you realize there is no judge or trial or defense in a grand jury indictment. A prosecutor just makes their case and pres

• fweespee_ch 11y ago
  > One hopes the majority of the indictments he refers to would be foolish to actually prosecute. https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSummary.pdf https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSumma... > According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2005), in 2003 there were 75,573 cases disposed of in federal district court by trial or plea. Of these, about 95 percent were disposed of by a guilty plea (Pastore and Maguire, 2003). While there are no exact estimates of the proportion of cases that are resolved through plea bargaining, scholars estimate that about 90 to 95 percent of both federal and state court cases are resolved through this process (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005; Flanagan and Maguire, 1990). A 95% plea rate makes indictment almost always a conviction [effectively]. If they don't plea, the prosecutor can drop the case. The only people who can defend this are the upper middle class [6 figure incomes] and the wealthy. http://www.reulandlaw.com/about/fee/ http://www.reulandlaw.com/about/fee/ For an example of rates, its 35-75k for a federal case.
  • andreyf 11y ago
    Another explanation for these numbers is that prosecutors are also resource-bound and risk-averse and prefer to go after cases they are almost certain to win. There are, of course, exceptions of all kinds, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev.