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In Japan, for example, one is guilty until proven innocent. They have a 99% conviction rate. Over course, in America, where things are much better and one is i

In Japan, for example, one is guilty until proven innocent. They have a 99% conviction rate. Over course, in America, where things are much better and one is innocent until proven guilty, they only have a 99.8% conviction rate in federal court. Yay America. http://justicedenied.org/wordpress/archives/3190 http://justicedenied.org/wordpress/archives/3190

marcoperaza 9y ago
It's in the low 90% range recently, and hovered between 70% and 90% for the last half century. Federal prosecutors don't pursue every case that lands on their desk, and they direct law enforcement toward the most winnable cases too. If the conviction rate was a lot lower, I'd be more concerned that the government was bringing so many cases without sufficient evidence.
- santoriv 9y ago
  My understanding is that the statistics you provided do not apply to federal court. As I understand it, this Marcus going to be tried in federal court. In any case, the United States has the second highest incarceration rate in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... Either the US has the second highest rate of criminal activity in the world or an unusually high rate of wrongful convictions. When Saddam Hussein won 99.96% percent of the vote in the 1995 election, we said "The fix is in" but when federal prosecutors get a 99.8% conviction rate, we say that they must be really great at their jobs! We have a moral obligation to subject the criminal justice to serious scrutiny since so many lives are at stake - not just repeat some platitudes about how the system is stacked in favor of the defendants (not saying you were doing that but the OP certainly was).
  - tarboreus 9y ago
    The incarceration rate is mostly due to our really, really long sentences. Not that that's great, either.

marcoperaza 9y ago

It's in the low 90% range recently, and hovered between 70% and 90% for the last half century. Federal prosecutors don't pursue every case that lands on their desk, and they direct law enforcement toward the most winnable cases too. If the conviction rate was a lot lower, I'd be more concerned that the government was bringing so many cases without sufficient evidence.

santoriv 9y ago
My understanding is that the statistics you provided do not apply to federal court. As I understand it, this Marcus going to be tried in federal court. In any case, the United States has the second highest incarceration rate in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... Either the US has the second highest rate of criminal activity in the world or an unusually high rate of wrongful convictions. When Saddam Hussein won 99.96% percent of the vote in the 1995 election, we said "The fix is in" but when federal prosecutors get a 99.8% conviction rate, we say that they must be really great at their jobs! We have a moral obligation to subject the criminal justice to serious scrutiny since so many lives are at stake - not just repeat some platitudes about how the system is stacked in favor of the defendants (not saying you were doing that but the OP certainly was).
- tarboreus 9y ago
  The incarceration rate is mostly due to our really, really long sentences. Not that that's great, either.