4 ms·

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 repe

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...
  - distances 9y ago
    The plea bargain system is such a gross miscarriage of justice that it boggles the mind. As far as I see, negotiating a plea deal should not be allowed under any circumstances. Either assign more resources to the justice system, or find a way to reduce the number of cases coming in.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
Isn't that contempt? Those watching over the lawyers should follow-up, demand the evidence and, if it's not presented, strike-off (and present for prosecution) the lawyer in question and any party who was involved in the deceit ... surely that's a basic and obvious protection. A lawyer lying in court should be risking their own livelihood at least, with prison as a certainty for attempting to manipulate the court to imprison someone through deceit. It's probably already part of the system, right?
- watwut 9y ago
  Lawyer lying in court might be in trouble, but it is ok for prosecution to lie during negotiation or interrogation.
  - speedplane 9y ago
    No, it's definitely not. Any lawyer who lies can be disbarred. It's something that every lawyer learns to not do first day of law school... that said, you also learn lots of ways of not saying anything, but implying quite a bit... e.g., you wouldn't say "we found the weapon" when you really didn't, but you could say "we're gonna get the weapon".
- michaelchisari 9y ago
  I don't know the law enough to say one way or the other, but assuming that you're right... If I remember correctly, the defendants had run out of money, the private lawyer they hired was increasingly doing things pro-bono (and losing focus because of it), and they had already disrupted their lives for two years. Each court date required hours of travel for both of them and days off work. They'd get there, only to have the prosecution kick the can down the road and have the court date postponed for another few weeks, in which case they'd have to do it all over again. That they lasted as long as they did is a testament to them, but the system wore even them down. To add a whole new angle of going after the prosecutors for contempt would have increased the stress on their lives and resources by an order of magnitude.

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...
- distances 9y ago
  The plea bargain system is such a gross miscarriage of justice that it boggles the mind. As far as I see, negotiating a plea deal should not be allowed under any circumstances. Either assign more resources to the justice system, or find a way to reduce the number of cases coming in.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago

Isn't that contempt? Those watching over the lawyers should follow-up, demand the evidence and, if it's not presented, strike-off (and present for prosecution) the lawyer in question and any party who was involved in the deceit ... surely that's a basic and obvious protection. A lawyer lying in court should be risking their own livelihood at least, with prison as a certainty for attempting to manipulate the court to imprison someone through deceit. It's probably already part of the system, right?

watwut 9y ago
Lawyer lying in court might be in trouble, but it is ok for prosecution to lie during negotiation or interrogation.
- speedplane 9y ago
  No, it's definitely not. Any lawyer who lies can be disbarred. It's something that every lawyer learns to not do first day of law school... that said, you also learn lots of ways of not saying anything, but implying quite a bit... e.g., you wouldn't say "we found the weapon" when you really didn't, but you could say "we're gonna get the weapon".
michaelchisari 9y ago
I don't know the law enough to say one way or the other, but assuming that you're right... If I remember correctly, the defendants had run out of money, the private lawyer they hired was increasingly doing things pro-bono (and losing focus because of it), and they had already disrupted their lives for two years. Each court date required hours of travel for both of them and days off work. They'd get there, only to have the prosecution kick the can down the road and have the court date postponed for another few weeks, in which case they'd have to do it all over again. That they lasted as long as they did is a testament to them, but the system wore even them down. To add a whole new angle of going after the prosecutors for contempt would have increased the stress on their lives and resources by an order of magnitude.