8 ms·

> 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

> 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).
      - Chathamization 9y ago
        It seems that it's a quite common experience[1]: > As prosecutors have accumulated power in recent decades, judges and public defenders have lost it. To induce defendants to plead, prosecutors often threaten “the trial penalty”: They make it known that defendants will face more-serious charges and harsher sentences if they take their case to court and are convicted. About 80 percent of defendants are eligible for court-appointed attorneys, including overworked public defenders who don’t have the time or resources to even consider bringing more than a tiny fraction of these cases to trial. The result, one frustrated Missouri public defender complained a decade ago, is a style of defense that is nothing more than “meet ’em and greet ’em and plead ’em.” [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocence-is-irrelevant/534171/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocen...
  - matwood 9y ago
    > If they come in with nothing, you'll win. More often than not, they have a lot of evidence. Wow, this is not true at all. Unfortunately, for many jurors simply being charged with a crime is evidence of said crime. The prosecution wields an amazing amount of power, and based on a lot of the news stories coming out they abuse said power. Remember, prosecutors are not rewarded for finding the truth, but for convictions.
  - mrgoldenbrown 9y ago
    Sorry, but I find this overly optimistic. I sat on a jury where during deliberations I had to argue with a lady who said the defendant "looked guilty" (ie was black) and that's all she needed to know.
    - speedplane 9y ago
      That's one of the reasons why there are 12 jurors and any one of them can prevent a guilty verdict. It's an imperfect but decent method to root out the bad apples.
- Chathamization 9y ago
  > 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. And even when you have a clear alibi including video proof, you're still in grave danger[1]: > Three months later, Juan would be facing a murder rap. The slaying in question had taken place on May 12, the same night he was at Dodger Stadium — 20 miles from the crime. Investigators didn’t buy his story. As covered in the Netflix documentary “Long Shot,” out Friday, Juan’s innocence would ultimately rest on a near brush with fame — more specifically, with Larry David and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” * > Show’ producers allowed Melnik to view their footage from that day. He sourced eight 10-minute tapes before finding his holy grail: Juan, in his No. 27 Kevin Brown shirt, and his young daughter walking to their seats after returning from the concession stand. * > The discovery seemed a home run for Juan, who by then had been in jail over a month. Still, the prosecutor argued that the footage was from 9:10 p.m. — and the murder had occurred at 10:32. Juan ostensibly could have left early, driven to the scene of the crime, and still had time to kill Puebla. It's worth reading the whole thing. They were going to push the death penalty for the guy. Eventually, his lawyer finds other evidence proving he wasn't there. After sitting in jail for five and a half months, he's finally let out, but then has to go back to jail for another 2 weeks because of a clerical error. [1] http://nypost.com/2017/09/23/how-curb-your-enthusiasm-saved-this-man-from-prison/ http://nypost.com/2017/09/23/how-curb-your-enthusiasm-saved-...
  - winter_blue 9y ago
    What a terrible justice system. It's a disgrace to this country. The way the prosecutors are incentivized to lock people up away forever with little or no evidence, and even kill innocent people (with the death penalty), is cruel and evil.
    - chongli 9y ago
      It's not a justice system, it's a judicial system. Justice is its ostensible purpose, sure, but its true propose is to maintain order so that the state can preserve its authority.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  So who's going to invade and bring democracy and the rule of law to USA? I guess the people in power stand to lose most, as they'll no longer have relative immunity from their crimes. And then you remember USA is "the policeman of the World" ... US voters have a big responsibility.
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.

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).
    - Chathamization 9y ago
      It seems that it's a quite common experience[1]: > As prosecutors have accumulated power in recent decades, judges and public defenders have lost it. To induce defendants to plead, prosecutors often threaten “the trial penalty”: They make it known that defendants will face more-serious charges and harsher sentences if they take their case to court and are convicted. About 80 percent of defendants are eligible for court-appointed attorneys, including overworked public defenders who don’t have the time or resources to even consider bringing more than a tiny fraction of these cases to trial. The result, one frustrated Missouri public defender complained a decade ago, is a style of defense that is nothing more than “meet ’em and greet ’em and plead ’em.” [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocence-is-irrelevant/534171/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocen...
- matwood 9y ago
  > If they come in with nothing, you'll win. More often than not, they have a lot of evidence. Wow, this is not true at all. Unfortunately, for many jurors simply being charged with a crime is evidence of said crime. The prosecution wields an amazing amount of power, and based on a lot of the news stories coming out they abuse said power. Remember, prosecutors are not rewarded for finding the truth, but for convictions.
- mrgoldenbrown 9y ago
  Sorry, but I find this overly optimistic. I sat on a jury where during deliberations I had to argue with a lady who said the defendant "looked guilty" (ie was black) and that's all she needed to know.
  - speedplane 9y ago
    That's one of the reasons why there are 12 jurors and any one of them can prevent a guilty verdict. It's an imperfect but decent method to root out the bad apples.
Chathamization 9y ago
> 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. And even when you have a clear alibi including video proof, you're still in grave danger[1]: > Three months later, Juan would be facing a murder rap. The slaying in question had taken place on May 12, the same night he was at Dodger Stadium — 20 miles from the crime. Investigators didn’t buy his story. As covered in the Netflix documentary “Long Shot,” out Friday, Juan’s innocence would ultimately rest on a near brush with fame — more specifically, with Larry David and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” * > Show’ producers allowed Melnik to view their footage from that day. He sourced eight 10-minute tapes before finding his holy grail: Juan, in his No. 27 Kevin Brown shirt, and his young daughter walking to their seats after returning from the concession stand. * > The discovery seemed a home run for Juan, who by then had been in jail over a month. Still, the prosecutor argued that the footage was from 9:10 p.m. — and the murder had occurred at 10:32. Juan ostensibly could have left early, driven to the scene of the crime, and still had time to kill Puebla. It's worth reading the whole thing. They were going to push the death penalty for the guy. Eventually, his lawyer finds other evidence proving he wasn't there. After sitting in jail for five and a half months, he's finally let out, but then has to go back to jail for another 2 weeks because of a clerical error. [1] http://nypost.com/2017/09/23/how-curb-your-enthusiasm-saved-this-man-from-prison/ http://nypost.com/2017/09/23/how-curb-your-enthusiasm-saved-...
- winter_blue 9y ago
  What a terrible justice system. It's a disgrace to this country. The way the prosecutors are incentivized to lock people up away forever with little or no evidence, and even kill innocent people (with the death penalty), is cruel and evil.
  - chongli 9y ago
    It's not a justice system, it's a judicial system. Justice is its ostensible purpose, sure, but its true propose is to maintain order so that the state can preserve its authority.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
So who's going to invade and bring democracy and the rule of law to USA? I guess the people in power stand to lose most, as they'll no longer have relative immunity from their crimes. And then you remember USA is "the policeman of the World" ... US voters have a big responsibility.

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.