11 ms·

Inasmuch as this works, or any justice system works, is as much as people believe the system metes out justice. In the USA, in 2017, people who knows they're g

Inasmuch as this works, or any justice system works, is as much as people believe the system metes out justice. In the USA, in 2017, people who knows they're guilty plead not guilty because they have reason to believe that they'll be able to get away with something. Either their entire crime, or at least the heaviest punishment for it. Meanwhile, people who know they're not guilty frequently plead guilty (or more accurately, take plea bargains) to avoid a slow and expensive justice system they don't perceive as an instrument of true justice. Even in the system described in the article, it seems one third of people claimed innocence and yet were found guilty by the priests. My cynical thought is that they didn't pay the priest, or weren't regular churchgoers, or were "outsiders" to the community, and so justice didn't work for them.

speedplane 9y ago
> In the USA, in 2017, people who knows they're guilty plead not guilty because they have reason to believe that they'll be able to get away with something. I don't have a problem with this. Allowing a defendant to plead not guilty puts the onus on the system to make its case. The purpose of the justice system is not only to determine innocence and guilt, it's also to show that there is a fair and transparent process to get to that result. The procedure is often as important as the substance. > people who know they're not guilty frequently plead guilty Not sure how often this occurs, but this is definitely bad.
- michaelchisari 9y ago
  > Not sure how often this occurs, but this is definitely bad. Unless you have a clear alibi with documented proof that you were nowhere near the scene of the crime, every public defender in America (and plenty of private lawyers) recommends you take a plea deal. Even if the charges are absurd. Even if you repeatedly assaulted the police officer's fist with your eye-socket in the process of being arrested. Even if your friends, your parents, and your priest were all witnesses to your innocence, a plea bargain is the first and most prominent option.
  - speedplane 9y ago
    Not so simple. It depends on the evidence the prosecution brings. If they come in with nothing, you'll win. More often than not, they have a lot of evidence.
    - michaelchisari 9y ago
      That's not true. I have friends who had court cases last years (literally, two years) because the prosecution promised a video tape that proved guilt. They repeatedly failed to bring the evidence to court. I forget if the charges were dropped or if they were provided the option of accepting the original plea bargain, but the evidence was never produced. There is no requirement for the prosecution to provide a clear case (or even a weak one) at the time of presenting a plea bargain. They often use the extremity of the charges as their hand.
      - speedplane 9y ago
        There are definitely abuses, and what you describe definitely constitutes an abuse, but that hasn't been my experience.
        michaelchisari 9y ago
        That has only been my experience. Every single person I know who has ever been arrested has been strong-armed into a plea bargain, regardless of evidence or guilt. John Oliver did a piece on public defenders that talks a lot about plea bargains, amongst other problems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USkEzLuzmZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USkEzLuzmZ4 Here's a study from the Department of Justice: 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).
- rhizome 9y ago
  I think this is federal numbers, but about 10%: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-peop...
- ImSkeptical 9y ago
  The vast majority of criminal cases end with people pleading guilty rather than going to trial. This US government page [1] says 90% but I've heard even higher figures from lawyers and other sources. Now, perhaps the police are very good at their jobs and really do get the right guy 90+ of the time (everyone who pleads guilty plus everyone convicted at trial - approximately 60% of cases that go to trial [2]). Or, perhaps the court system has a bias towards finding people guilty. One data point that argues for the latter possibility is that people defended by public defenders are significantly more likely to go to jail than people with a private lawyer. People with a public defender go to jail 88% of the time compared to ~75% for people with a private attorney [3]. To me, the implication is that the skill of your lawyer, and the time your lawyer will spend on your case, has a huge influence on your likelihood of getting convicted. That influence implies to me that the police probably aren't 96+% accurate in getting their man, and that therefore some of the people pleading guilty are doing so to avoid a false conviction. If you look into this, you'll find prosecutors threaten defendants with harsh punishments as a tactic to get them to plead to vastly reduced sentences - e.g. "Take your chance at trial, kid, you'll do ten years for possession with intent to distribute. Or, plead guilty, do six months with two years probation." Prosecutors are incentivized to make these deals because they are evaluated, in part, by conviction rate. 1-http://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/types-cases/criminal-cases http://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/types-cases/cri... 2 - http://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2012/12statrpt.pdf http://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2012/12s... page 14 3 - http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/3.2.1.html http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/3.2.1.html
  - gnopgnip 9y ago
    You are overlooking that the police and the DA both have limited resources and must be selective with what cases they pursue. If one assistant DA can only have four misdemeanor trials a month they aren't going after cases that are 50/50. In a high population area there is enough crime for the DA to keep a 90% conviction rate by only going after the easiest cases to prove.
    - jdmichal 9y ago
- Spooky23 9y ago
  90% of cases her plead out.
- matwood 9y ago
  > Not sure how often this occurs, but this is definitely bad. Because of over charging it occurs all the time. The prosecutor works to setup an impossible choice where the only answer is to plead out. Take a plea for 2-5 years now or go to trial with the possibility of 30+ years?
- mrgoldenbrown 9y ago
  It happens very often. I have friends who are defense lawyers. They get very frustrated at the how the system fails. We also had 3 major crime lab scandals here in Massachusetts recently, all of which revealed that thousands of folks were put away with bogus evidence. See also The Innocence Project, who are constantly proving that people on death row were in fact innocent.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  This has become bad enough that the system should probably be altered to remove the pleadings altogether, automatically entering a plea of "not guilty" for every criminal defendant and answering "deny all claims" for every civil defendant where at least one plaintiff is a government entity. If they really want to admit guilt, they can do so via motion at any time, and it would be treated identically to a request for summary judgment, where the defense allows the prosecution to finish building its case, and preemptively declines to respond or go to trial. Whatever is presented would be taken at face value. The prosecutor/plaintiff would still have to make a case strong enough to meet the burden of proof. Plea bargains are taking the justice out of the system. They shouldn't even be possible until after the state has already done all the work they would have to do for a trial, because otherwise the incentive is to terrorize and intimidate the suspect in order to coerce them into taking the deal, regardless of their actual guilt or innocence.
pge 9y ago
Your last point is important. The author seems to assume that the priests are honest and trying to do the right thing. Given human nature, I have trouble believing that a person with unilateral decision making authority over the fate of another always does the right thing. Far more likely, as you suggest, that he punishes those he does not like (out group members, didnt pay him enough, etc)
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Priests are as close as it gets to professional liars, why would they tell the truth at all unless it served their interests?
  - jdmichal 9y ago
    There's a huge difference between lying and holding allegedly mistaken but otherwise wholehearted beliefs.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      > wholehearted I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. The degree to which one would have to be willing to fudge things in order to make that work seems incredible to me. I can forgive the laypeople, the people who have placed their belief in others who claim an authority they don't have a right to but I find it impossible to afford the purveyors of the belief systems themselves the same leeway. After all, if you study something more than a little bit then you should be intricately familiar with the thing and in the case of religion it would require quite an act of self delusion in order to get to the point where you would start influencing the lives of others based on the belief you profess to be an authority in. Maybe they have some other code by which they live but a search for truth or a solid foundation under the religion at hand does not seem to factor into it. I've met quite a few priests, not a single one - to date, I'm prepared to be surprised - struck me as willing to place evidence over dogma and reason over belief. But that didn't stop them from eating over the backs of their subjects and making promises they would never be able to keep.
empath75 9y ago
> In the USA, in 2017, people who knows they're guilty plead not guilty because they have reason to believe that they'll be able to get away with something. Yes some people do this, but the vast, vast majority of cases never go to trial. Innocent people plead guilty in the us all the time.
- SubiculumCode 9y ago
  Exactly this. The incentives are to plead guilty and take a deal: If plead innocent and found guilty: Life in prison. If plead guilty 10 years, 5 with good behavior. Then take a poor brown person without good legal representation and having a fairly empirically justified belief that the justice system is out to get him, and he woukd be found guilty regardless. So exactly this.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
  Did you read what he said? That was literally on the next line!

speedplane 9y ago

> In the USA, in 2017, people who knows they're guilty plead not guilty because they have reason to believe that they'll be able to get away with something. I don't have a problem with this. Allowing a defendant to plead not guilty puts the onus on the system to make its case. The purpose of the justice system is not only to determine innocence and guilt, it's also to show that there is a fair and transparent process to get to that result. The procedure is often as important as the substance. > people who know they're not guilty frequently plead guilty Not sure how often this occurs, but this is definitely bad.

michaelchisari 9y ago
> Not sure how often this occurs, but this is definitely bad. Unless you have a clear alibi with documented proof that you were nowhere near the scene of the crime, every public defender in America (and plenty of private lawyers) recommends you take a plea deal. Even if the charges are absurd. Even if you repeatedly assaulted the police officer's fist with your eye-socket in the process of being arrested. Even if your friends, your parents, and your priest were all witnesses to your innocence, a plea bargain is the first and most prominent option.
- speedplane 9y ago
  Not so simple. It depends on the evidence the prosecution brings. If they come in with nothing, you'll win. More often than not, they have a lot of evidence.
  - michaelchisari 9y ago
    That's not true. I have friends who had court cases last years (literally, two years) because the prosecution promised a video tape that proved guilt. They repeatedly failed to bring the evidence to court. I forget if the charges were dropped or if they were provided the option of accepting the original plea bargain, but the evidence was never produced. There is no requirement for the prosecution to provide a clear case (or even a weak one) at the time of presenting a plea bargain. They often use the extremity of the charges as their hand.
    - speedplane 9y ago
      There are definitely abuses, and what you describe definitely constitutes an abuse, but that hasn't been my experience.
      - michaelchisari 9y ago
        That has only been my experience. Every single person I know who has ever been arrested has been strong-armed into a plea bargain, regardless of evidence or guilt. John Oliver did a piece on public defenders that talks a lot about plea bargains, amongst other problems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USkEzLuzmZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USkEzLuzmZ4 Here's a study from the Department of Justice: 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).
rhizome 9y ago
I think this is federal numbers, but about 10%: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-peop...
ImSkeptical 9y ago
The vast majority of criminal cases end with people pleading guilty rather than going to trial. This US government page [1] says 90% but I've heard even higher figures from lawyers and other sources. Now, perhaps the police are very good at their jobs and really do get the right guy 90+ of the time (everyone who pleads guilty plus everyone convicted at trial - approximately 60% of cases that go to trial [2]). Or, perhaps the court system has a bias towards finding people guilty. One data point that argues for the latter possibility is that people defended by public defenders are significantly more likely to go to jail than people with a private lawyer. People with a public defender go to jail 88% of the time compared to ~75% for people with a private attorney [3]. To me, the implication is that the skill of your lawyer, and the time your lawyer will spend on your case, has a huge influence on your likelihood of getting convicted. That influence implies to me that the police probably aren't 96+% accurate in getting their man, and that therefore some of the people pleading guilty are doing so to avoid a false conviction. If you look into this, you'll find prosecutors threaten defendants with harsh punishments as a tactic to get them to plead to vastly reduced sentences - e.g. "Take your chance at trial, kid, you'll do ten years for possession with intent to distribute. Or, plead guilty, do six months with two years probation." Prosecutors are incentivized to make these deals because they are evaluated, in part, by conviction rate. 1-http://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/types-cases/criminal-cases http://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/types-cases/cri... 2 - http://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2012/12statrpt.pdf http://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2012/12s... page 14 3 - http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/3.2.1.html http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/3.2.1.html
- gnopgnip 9y ago
  You are overlooking that the police and the DA both have limited resources and must be selective with what cases they pursue. If one assistant DA can only have four misdemeanor trials a month they aren't going after cases that are 50/50. In a high population area there is enough crime for the DA to keep a 90% conviction rate by only going after the easiest cases to prove.
  - jdmichal 9y ago
Spooky23 9y ago
90% of cases her plead out.
matwood 9y ago
> Not sure how often this occurs, but this is definitely bad. Because of over charging it occurs all the time. The prosecutor works to setup an impossible choice where the only answer is to plead out. Take a plea for 2-5 years now or go to trial with the possibility of 30+ years?
mrgoldenbrown 9y ago
It happens very often. I have friends who are defense lawyers. They get very frustrated at the how the system fails. We also had 3 major crime lab scandals here in Massachusetts recently, all of which revealed that thousands of folks were put away with bogus evidence. See also The Innocence Project, who are constantly proving that people on death row were in fact innocent.
logfromblammo 9y ago
This has become bad enough that the system should probably be altered to remove the pleadings altogether, automatically entering a plea of "not guilty" for every criminal defendant and answering "deny all claims" for every civil defendant where at least one plaintiff is a government entity. If they really want to admit guilt, they can do so via motion at any time, and it would be treated identically to a request for summary judgment, where the defense allows the prosecution to finish building its case, and preemptively declines to respond or go to trial. Whatever is presented would be taken at face value. The prosecutor/plaintiff would still have to make a case strong enough to meet the burden of proof. Plea bargains are taking the justice out of the system. They shouldn't even be possible until after the state has already done all the work they would have to do for a trial, because otherwise the incentive is to terrorize and intimidate the suspect in order to coerce them into taking the deal, regardless of their actual guilt or innocence.

pge 9y ago

Your last point is important. The author seems to assume that the priests are honest and trying to do the right thing. Given human nature, I have trouble believing that a person with unilateral decision making authority over the fate of another always does the right thing. Far more likely, as you suggest, that he punishes those he does not like (out group members, didnt pay him enough, etc)

jacquesm 9y ago
Priests are as close as it gets to professional liars, why would they tell the truth at all unless it served their interests?
- jdmichal 9y ago
  There's a huge difference between lying and holding allegedly mistaken but otherwise wholehearted beliefs.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > wholehearted I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. The degree to which one would have to be willing to fudge things in order to make that work seems incredible to me. I can forgive the laypeople, the people who have placed their belief in others who claim an authority they don't have a right to but I find it impossible to afford the purveyors of the belief systems themselves the same leeway. After all, if you study something more than a little bit then you should be intricately familiar with the thing and in the case of religion it would require quite an act of self delusion in order to get to the point where you would start influencing the lives of others based on the belief you profess to be an authority in. Maybe they have some other code by which they live but a search for truth or a solid foundation under the religion at hand does not seem to factor into it. I've met quite a few priests, not a single one - to date, I'm prepared to be surprised - struck me as willing to place evidence over dogma and reason over belief. But that didn't stop them from eating over the backs of their subjects and making promises they would never be able to keep.

empath75 9y ago

> In the USA, in 2017, people who knows they're guilty plead not guilty because they have reason to believe that they'll be able to get away with something. Yes some people do this, but the vast, vast majority of cases never go to trial. Innocent people plead guilty in the us all the time.

SubiculumCode 9y ago
Exactly this. The incentives are to plead guilty and take a deal: If plead innocent and found guilty: Life in prison. If plead guilty 10 years, 5 with good behavior. Then take a poor brown person without good legal representation and having a fairly empirically justified belief that the justice system is out to get him, and he woukd be found guilty regardless. So exactly this.
HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
Did you read what he said? That was literally on the next line!