Also not from the US, I used to think/assume that the deals happening via "plea bargains" were just mildly corrupt fictional plot devices used in police TV seri

Also not from the US, I used to think/assume that the deals happening via "plea bargains" were just mildly corrupt fictional plot devices used in police TV series scripts. It took me until reading about Aaron Swartz's case that I realized "wait what, that's an actual thing?". I always assumed that could only happen in TV series because the pressure and amount of leverage against the suspect could only be presented as a "good thing" (which is almost always) if you know that the officers and prosecutors are not only strictly "good guys" but also definitely for sure right in their hunches, which requires trusting the meta-narrative of a police TV series.