7 ms·

Plea bargaining needs to go, it's letting evidence that wouldn't stand up in court send people to prison.

by stuaxo 10y ago

MichaelBurge 10y ago
Alaska did this, and I don't believe their courts were too overburdened afterwards.
- hx87 10y ago
  Probably because plea bargaining encourages prosecutors to go after cases that otherwise wouldn't be winnable.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
nommm-nommm 10y ago
I believe plea bargaining has its place in the Justice system, however abuse of plea bargains has to go.
- tremon 10y ago
  Maybe simple suggestion: plea bargains shouldn't be put on a criminal record. If the prosecution doesn't care enough about your crime to lead you before a judge, you shouldn't have to carry that burden around either.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    A judge accepts the plea.
    - kwhitefoot 10y ago
      But he doesn't hear all the arguments.
- enjo 10y ago
  Could you elaborate please?
- ergothus 10y ago
  I agree with both your statements, but what does keeping plea bargains but stopping abuse look like? I mean, you'd have to come up with some sort of reliable test for what abusing the system is. That means you'd essentially have to have rules for prosecutors' discretion, which sort of defeats the idea of discretion. I understand the ideal of plea bargains, but I can't think of how to make them work without inviting bad situations, particularly for those that suffer more from drawn out litigation or have reason to suspect the system wouldn't find them correctly innocent. It's easy to find terribly egregious scenarios, but plenty of others become quite subjective, and yet still very manipulative. Honest question, do you have a proposed solution that doesn't remove plea bargains entirely?
  - akiselev 10y ago
    > That means you'd essentially have to have rules for prosecutors' discretion, which sort of defeats the idea of discretion. No it doesn't. Their discretion for who and what to prosecute are already limited by the criminal code created by the relevant legislature. Judges have a lot more discretion than prosecutors but they too are limited by a variety of factors including minimum sentencing laws and public pressure (since many are elected). Besides, prosecutors already have too much discretion if they can use false positive tests and the threat of a jury sentencing to bully innocent people into becoming felons. > Honest question, do you have a proposed solution that doesn't remove plea bargains entirely? There are a number of solutions, just look at the Wikipedia page on plea bargaining [1]. Plea bargains are illegal in countries like Denmark and severely restricted elsewhere like the UK and Estonia. This is trodden territory. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain
    - ergothus 10y ago
      >> Honest question, do you have a proposed solution that doesn't remove plea bargains entirely? > There are a number of solutions...Plea bargains are illegal in countries like Denmark and severely restricted elsewhere like the UK and Estonia. That sounds an awful lot like saying "No, you remove them entirely, or almost entirely" Since I was asking someone that said they wanted to keep plea bargains how they pictured that, I'm not sure what point you were trying to make. Can you elaborate?
- Retric 10y ago
  IMO, the largest problem is how much of a 'discount' you get with plea bargains. If there was a cap where a plea bargain could only give you a 20% discount on every single charge then there is little incentive for innocent people to use it. Instead people are given the choice between say 6 months in prison or risk 15 years in prison. You end up sending innocent people to jail for long periods while obviously guilty people get vastly reduced penalties for not wasting the courts time. PS: Alternatively, if a prosecutor offers someone a plea with X charges, they can only charge someone with those same charges.
  - cmdkeen 10y ago
    This is the UK system - generally a 1/3 discount is the maximum you can get for an early guilty plea which reduces the further through the process you get. There are plea agreements though much rarer and the judiciary are not fans and will happily ignore them when sentencing. Plus of course the lack of elected prosecutors and the existence of the independent bar (barristers) who often prosecute and defend reduces the madness of prosecutors bragging about almost perfect conviction rates. The system over here isn't perfect but I'd rather face it than any other as an innocent accused.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    I think any "discount" is a problem. If you have one, then you are effectively punishing people who insist on their right to a trial. That may not be the intent, but it is the outcome. People should be allowed to plead guilty if they want to, but they shouldn't get any reduced punishment for it. No innocent person should ever be faced with the choice of accepting a certain lesser punishment or an uncertain greater punishment.
    - abecedarius 10y ago
      Arguably these 'bargains' violate the Fifth Amendment: "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". Yes, in a trivial enough case you could say there's no compulsion, but we're a long way from that state of things now. https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2013/01/15/plea-bargaining-and-torture-in-light-of-the-aaron-swartz-case/ https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2013/01/15/plea-bargaining-a...
- btilly 10y ago
  Originally, plea bargains were illegal in the USA. I wish it had remained that way. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargaining_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargaining_in_the_United_... says, plea bargaining was considered unconstitutional until 1970. It happened, and on a large scale, but such pleas would not stand up under appeal. (Typical lawyer trick, get people to agree to something they can't legally be held to, and as long as they don't realize that it isn't binding, you get your way.) The case https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/397/742/case.html https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/397/742/case.htm... established plea bargaining, but said, Of course, the agents of the State may not produce a plea by actual or threatened physical harm or by mental coercion overbearing the will of the defendant. I, and many others, would argue that giving the person a choice between years in jail if they fight versus weeks if they plea, is exactly such coercion. The USA keeps a larger portion of its population in prison than any other country in the world. By a lot. Our plea bargain system is part of how we do that.
nxzero 10y ago
There are an number of ways to get "pleas" without plea agreements: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/7-ways-police-break-law-threaten-lie/ http://thefreethoughtproject.com/7-ways-police-break-law-thr...
imroot 10y ago
There was a DA who did this in California when he was running for re-election in the early 2000's -- no more plea bargains. What happened is that the ADA's workload tripled, they ran out of courtrooms (and had to get courtrooms in other counties to fill the backlog), and people were released because of their right to have a speedy trial were being infringed. While the wheels of Justice turn slowly, plea agreements are the oil that keeps the wheels turning at all. Think about it -- if you're speeding, and you know you're speeding, do you really want to take time from a Judge and a Trooper to have them present evidence to know that you're speeding? Even more so, if the trooper wrote your ticket so you don't get any points -- just a fine? Better yet...do you want someone to sit in jail if they're innocent because he can't afford his bail to sit longer because of all of the backlog?
- wwweston 10y ago
  Which is to say that as a society we don't allocate the resources we'd really need in order to give all defendants a fair and speedy trial. Might say something about how much we really value that ideal. You're right that it's nice in some ways to be able to reach plea agreements. To the extent the system can depend on them in order to get things done, though, that means there are incentives for suboptimal outcomes.
  - xeromal 10y ago
    Maybe a right to a speedy and fair trail is not scalable? Maybe at 300M people, there has to be a layer of BS?
    - roywiggins 10y ago
      If tax revenue stays the same per person, then there shouldn't be any problem funding the justice system as population grows, as long as the arrest rate stays the same.
      - dredmorbius 10y ago
        My suspicion is that arrest rates increase with population density and with rates of poverty. Which rapidly leads to a problem of funding and/or justice.
emodendroket 10y ago
I agree that it needs to be scaled back significantly if not abolished, but a lot more resources would need to be poured into the court system for that to be possible.
- biomcgary 10y ago
  I would love to see the court system get more money. In particular, I think every defendant found not guilty should have their legal bill payed by the prosecutor's office. The money for the defense should be put into escrow at the time charges are filed. It would encourage prosecutors not to draw things out.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    The public defender system is woefully underfunded in many places too. So yeah, I'm all in favor, but we do need to consider the consequences.
SilasX 10y ago
That's the wrong lesson to take; the problem is excessive leverage over undeserving parties (per current law), not with the eminently defensible decision to prefer a bird in the hand over 1.7 in the bush. If you eliminate plea bargaining without solving the real problem (the excessive leverage), the you get the worst of all worlds: choked courts, delayed justice, and long sentences.
fisherjeff 10y ago
I don't know that it's necessarily plea bargaining that's the problem so much as pre-trial imprisonment and the bail process. What typically makes plea bargains so unfair is when the alternative is to sit in prison, lose your job, etc., just waiting for a trial. Talk about leverage.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  I have an idea: if you're accused and spend time in jail before trial but then you win your case, the state has to fully compensate you for any financial loss at all that you experience because of your jail stay: lost wages, house or car repossessed (you get a new house or car of at least the brand-new value), etc. If that bankrupts the state, that's OK with me.
  - imauld 10y ago
    Compensation in that case could be extremely difficult to calculate. Cutting a check for 3 days lost wages is one thing but figuring out the cost of a month or two long stay is likely impossible. Not only are there lost wages for your time in jail you will likely also lose your job so does the state now pay you $XX/year * avg life expectancy? Even if proven innocent your future prospects could be shot not to mention intangibles like lost relationships, losing pets. Not that I don't think people who are wrongly incarcerated shouldn't be compensated but it's not so cut and dry.
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      >Not only are there lost wages for your time in jail you will likely also lose your job so does the state now pay you $XX/year * avg life expectancy? Yes. >Even if proven innocent your future prospects could be shot not to mention intangibles like lost relationships, losing pets. These should be compensated for too. Lost relationships I think are worth a cool $1M. If the state can't afford all this, then they shouldn't put people in jail unless they're really sure they need to.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
joshmn 10y ago
Easing the workload of public defenders would help tremendously. Many get so many cases they just can't handle the load, so they have to move quickly. There's a documentary out there somewhere that goes into detail. It's staggering, and somewhat sickening. There are "good" public defenders though. How to spot a "good" one? See how many of their cases go to trial.

Plea bargaining needs to go, it's letting evidence that wouldn't stand up in court send people to prison.

by stuaxo 10y ago

Plea bargaining needs to go, it's letting evidence that wouldn't stand up in court send people to prison.

MichaelBurge 10y ago

Alaska did this, and I don't believe their courts were too overburdened afterwards.

hx87 10y ago
Probably because plea bargaining encourages prosecutors to go after cases that otherwise wouldn't be winnable.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

nommm-nommm 10y ago

I believe plea bargaining has its place in the Justice system, however abuse of plea bargains has to go.

tremon 10y ago
Maybe simple suggestion: plea bargains shouldn't be put on a criminal record. If the prosecution doesn't care enough about your crime to lead you before a judge, you shouldn't have to carry that burden around either.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  A judge accepts the plea.
  - kwhitefoot 10y ago
    But he doesn't hear all the arguments.
enjo 10y ago
Could you elaborate please?
ergothus 10y ago
I agree with both your statements, but what does keeping plea bargains but stopping abuse look like? I mean, you'd have to come up with some sort of reliable test for what abusing the system is. That means you'd essentially have to have rules for prosecutors' discretion, which sort of defeats the idea of discretion. I understand the ideal of plea bargains, but I can't think of how to make them work without inviting bad situations, particularly for those that suffer more from drawn out litigation or have reason to suspect the system wouldn't find them correctly innocent. It's easy to find terribly egregious scenarios, but plenty of others become quite subjective, and yet still very manipulative. Honest question, do you have a proposed solution that doesn't remove plea bargains entirely?
- akiselev 10y ago
  > That means you'd essentially have to have rules for prosecutors' discretion, which sort of defeats the idea of discretion. No it doesn't. Their discretion for who and what to prosecute are already limited by the criminal code created by the relevant legislature. Judges have a lot more discretion than prosecutors but they too are limited by a variety of factors including minimum sentencing laws and public pressure (since many are elected). Besides, prosecutors already have too much discretion if they can use false positive tests and the threat of a jury sentencing to bully innocent people into becoming felons. > Honest question, do you have a proposed solution that doesn't remove plea bargains entirely? There are a number of solutions, just look at the Wikipedia page on plea bargaining [1]. Plea bargains are illegal in countries like Denmark and severely restricted elsewhere like the UK and Estonia. This is trodden territory. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain
  - ergothus 10y ago
    >> Honest question, do you have a proposed solution that doesn't remove plea bargains entirely? > There are a number of solutions...Plea bargains are illegal in countries like Denmark and severely restricted elsewhere like the UK and Estonia. That sounds an awful lot like saying "No, you remove them entirely, or almost entirely" Since I was asking someone that said they wanted to keep plea bargains how they pictured that, I'm not sure what point you were trying to make. Can you elaborate?
Retric 10y ago
IMO, the largest problem is how much of a 'discount' you get with plea bargains. If there was a cap where a plea bargain could only give you a 20% discount on every single charge then there is little incentive for innocent people to use it. Instead people are given the choice between say 6 months in prison or risk 15 years in prison. You end up sending innocent people to jail for long periods while obviously guilty people get vastly reduced penalties for not wasting the courts time. PS: Alternatively, if a prosecutor offers someone a plea with X charges, they can only charge someone with those same charges.
- cmdkeen 10y ago
  This is the UK system - generally a 1/3 discount is the maximum you can get for an early guilty plea which reduces the further through the process you get. There are plea agreements though much rarer and the judiciary are not fans and will happily ignore them when sentencing. Plus of course the lack of elected prosecutors and the existence of the independent bar (barristers) who often prosecute and defend reduces the madness of prosecutors bragging about almost perfect conviction rates. The system over here isn't perfect but I'd rather face it than any other as an innocent accused.
- mikeash 10y ago
  I think any "discount" is a problem. If you have one, then you are effectively punishing people who insist on their right to a trial. That may not be the intent, but it is the outcome. People should be allowed to plead guilty if they want to, but they shouldn't get any reduced punishment for it. No innocent person should ever be faced with the choice of accepting a certain lesser punishment or an uncertain greater punishment.
  - abecedarius 10y ago
    Arguably these 'bargains' violate the Fifth Amendment: "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". Yes, in a trivial enough case you could say there's no compulsion, but we're a long way from that state of things now. https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2013/01/15/plea-bargaining-and-torture-in-light-of-the-aaron-swartz-case/ https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2013/01/15/plea-bargaining-a...
btilly 10y ago
Originally, plea bargains were illegal in the USA. I wish it had remained that way. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargaining_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargaining_in_the_United_... says, plea bargaining was considered unconstitutional until 1970. It happened, and on a large scale, but such pleas would not stand up under appeal. (Typical lawyer trick, get people to agree to something they can't legally be held to, and as long as they don't realize that it isn't binding, you get your way.) The case https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/397/742/case.html https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/397/742/case.htm... established plea bargaining, but said, Of course, the agents of the State may not produce a plea by actual or threatened physical harm or by mental coercion overbearing the will of the defendant. I, and many others, would argue that giving the person a choice between years in jail if they fight versus weeks if they plea, is exactly such coercion. The USA keeps a larger portion of its population in prison than any other country in the world. By a lot. Our plea bargain system is part of how we do that.

nxzero 10y ago

There are an number of ways to get "pleas" without plea agreements: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/7-ways-police-break-law-threaten-lie/ http://thefreethoughtproject.com/7-ways-police-break-law-thr...

imroot 10y ago

There was a DA who did this in California when he was running for re-election in the early 2000's -- no more plea bargains. What happened is that the ADA's workload tripled, they ran out of courtrooms (and had to get courtrooms in other counties to fill the backlog), and people were released because of their right to have a speedy trial were being infringed. While the wheels of Justice turn slowly, plea agreements are the oil that keeps the wheels turning at all. Think about it -- if you're speeding, and you know you're speeding, do you really want to take time from a Judge and a Trooper to have them present evidence to know that you're speeding? Even more so, if the trooper wrote your ticket so you don't get any points -- just a fine? Better yet...do you want someone to sit in jail if they're innocent because he can't afford his bail to sit longer because of all of the backlog?

wwweston 10y ago
Which is to say that as a society we don't allocate the resources we'd really need in order to give all defendants a fair and speedy trial. Might say something about how much we really value that ideal. You're right that it's nice in some ways to be able to reach plea agreements. To the extent the system can depend on them in order to get things done, though, that means there are incentives for suboptimal outcomes.
- xeromal 10y ago
  Maybe a right to a speedy and fair trail is not scalable? Maybe at 300M people, there has to be a layer of BS?
  - roywiggins 10y ago
    If tax revenue stays the same per person, then there shouldn't be any problem funding the justice system as population grows, as long as the arrest rate stays the same.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      My suspicion is that arrest rates increase with population density and with rates of poverty. Which rapidly leads to a problem of funding and/or justice.

emodendroket 10y ago

I agree that it needs to be scaled back significantly if not abolished, but a lot more resources would need to be poured into the court system for that to be possible.

biomcgary 10y ago
I would love to see the court system get more money. In particular, I think every defendant found not guilty should have their legal bill payed by the prosecutor's office. The money for the defense should be put into escrow at the time charges are filed. It would encourage prosecutors not to draw things out.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  The public defender system is woefully underfunded in many places too. So yeah, I'm all in favor, but we do need to consider the consequences.

SilasX 10y ago

That's the wrong lesson to take; the problem is excessive leverage over undeserving parties (per current law), not with the eminently defensible decision to prefer a bird in the hand over 1.7 in the bush. If you eliminate plea bargaining without solving the real problem (the excessive leverage), the you get the worst of all worlds: choked courts, delayed justice, and long sentences.

fisherjeff 10y ago

I don't know that it's necessarily plea bargaining that's the problem so much as pre-trial imprisonment and the bail process. What typically makes plea bargains so unfair is when the alternative is to sit in prison, lose your job, etc., just waiting for a trial. Talk about leverage.

Grishnakh 10y ago
I have an idea: if you're accused and spend time in jail before trial but then you win your case, the state has to fully compensate you for any financial loss at all that you experience because of your jail stay: lost wages, house or car repossessed (you get a new house or car of at least the brand-new value), etc. If that bankrupts the state, that's OK with me.
- imauld 10y ago
  Compensation in that case could be extremely difficult to calculate. Cutting a check for 3 days lost wages is one thing but figuring out the cost of a month or two long stay is likely impossible. Not only are there lost wages for your time in jail you will likely also lose your job so does the state now pay you $XX/year * avg life expectancy? Even if proven innocent your future prospects could be shot not to mention intangibles like lost relationships, losing pets. Not that I don't think people who are wrongly incarcerated shouldn't be compensated but it's not so cut and dry.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    >Not only are there lost wages for your time in jail you will likely also lose your job so does the state now pay you $XX/year * avg life expectancy? Yes. >Even if proven innocent your future prospects could be shot not to mention intangibles like lost relationships, losing pets. These should be compensated for too. Lost relationships I think are worth a cool $1M. If the state can't afford all this, then they shouldn't put people in jail unless they're really sure they need to.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago

joshmn 10y ago

Easing the workload of public defenders would help tremendously. Many get so many cases they just can't handle the load, so they have to move quickly. There's a documentary out there somewhere that goes into detail. It's staggering, and somewhat sickening. There are "good" public defenders though. How to spot a "good" one? See how many of their cases go to trial.