3 ms·

Not in the USA. Our plea bargain system is so lopsided that 97% of criminal charges end with a guilty plea without a trial. Even if she is 90% sure of winning

by btilly 6y ago

Not in the USA. Our plea bargain system is so lopsided that 97% of criminal charges end with a guilty plea without a trial. Even if she is 90% sure of winning at trial, unless she has a million dollars lying around and a deathwish, it STILL isn't worth it to fight the system. I first looked into this after Aaron Swartz's suicide. Every time I've looked since it has seemed even more broken. This is bad news for anyone who cares about justice. And good news for any authorities who are trying to target someone that they don't like.

tptacek 6y ago
That is not a remotely reasonable way of looking at the situation. Your odds in a criminal trial do not in fact reflect the likelihood that a random accused person will take a plea deal. If we're discussing police charging into houses of people accused of nonviolent crimes armed to the teeth, we're on the same page. But otherwise, I'm not clear what your suggestion is here.
- btilly 6y ago
  What is unreasonable about my way of looking at the situation? Look at what happened to Aaron Swartz. If he lost at trial, he was facing a lifetime in jail. They were also seeking damages that he had no hope of paying because his finances had already been drained by the legal fight. A legal fight that was projected to cost over a million dollars more than already spent. Or he could take a plea bargain. Which would have put him in serious debt, in jail for a few years, and made him a life-long felon. Or he could commit suicide. Which, of course, he did. In that surprisingly typical example, if his odds of winning were 90%, on average he spends as much time in jail if he chooses to fight. Which he couldn't afford to do. And you still have to accept that chance of losing your whole life in jail. In that situation, I'd probably have accepted the plea bargain. No matter how much I believed myself to be in the right. Given those incentives, it is somewhat surprising that 3% of people do choose to fight. But then again, that's down in the range of the portion of the population with serious mental illnesses.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    This is plainly false. Swartz's own lawyer believed, in writing, after Swartz's death, that had Swartz gone to trial and lost, he wouldn't even been given a custodial sentence, and you can look at the sentencing guidelines and see why he reached that conclusion. The prosecutors didn't demand a lifetime in jail; at their grimmest, most hardball state, they were suggesting (a laughable, given the guidelines, the fact that it was a first offense, and a non-remunerative crime) 7 years. You wrote other things, and I'm sorry I didn't read them carefully, because I'm a nerd and a human and I can't get past "a lifetime in jail". I'll try to revisit later and respond to them, and wouldn't want to suggest my not responding to them is an indication that they aren't good points.
    - btilly 6y ago
      You can read https://web.archive.org/web/20120526080523/http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120526080523/http://www.justic... to see that the prosecutor's press release in 2011 said, "If convicted on these charges, SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million." That was before they added nine more felony counts on September 12, 2012. As techdirt said at the time in https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-government-ups-felony-count-jstoraaron-swartz-case-four-to-thirteen.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-go..., the theoretical amount that he could have been put away for was 50+ years with a fine of up to $4 million. That's the lifetime that I was talking about. The fact that they were seeking a far lesser conviction, didn't stop them from throwing around those figures. And I'm sure that Aaron Swartz had to think about those numbers. Incidentally Aaron Swartz wasn't even the first programmer to commit suicide while being prosecuted by a team including Stephen Heymann. That dubious honor goes to Jonathan James in 2008. All of this notwithstanding, the important point is this. For most of US history, plea bargains were illegal. The way that they now railroad people into pleading guilty en masse demonstrates that they should still be illegal. And the fact that our plea bargaining system is so lopsided means that the right to a fair trial is more theory than practice. As a double check on that, consider https://innocenceproject.org/bad-drug-test-leads-to-wrongful-convictions/ https://innocenceproject.org/bad-drug-test-leads-to-wrongful.... Widely used roadside drug tests that are inadmissable in court have been found in practice to be wrong more than 1/3 of the time. And yet, 90% of people charged wind up accepting the plea bargain. The state literally has no evidence that they can present in court. And knows that a lot of those people are actually innocent. But they all get railroaded. Welcome to justice, American style.

by btilly 6y ago

tptacek 6y ago

That is not a remotely reasonable way of looking at the situation. Your odds in a criminal trial do not in fact reflect the likelihood that a random accused person will take a plea deal. If we're discussing police charging into houses of people accused of nonviolent crimes armed to the teeth, we're on the same page. But otherwise, I'm not clear what your suggestion is here.

btilly 6y ago
What is unreasonable about my way of looking at the situation? Look at what happened to Aaron Swartz. If he lost at trial, he was facing a lifetime in jail. They were also seeking damages that he had no hope of paying because his finances had already been drained by the legal fight. A legal fight that was projected to cost over a million dollars more than already spent. Or he could take a plea bargain. Which would have put him in serious debt, in jail for a few years, and made him a life-long felon. Or he could commit suicide. Which, of course, he did. In that surprisingly typical example, if his odds of winning were 90%, on average he spends as much time in jail if he chooses to fight. Which he couldn't afford to do. And you still have to accept that chance of losing your whole life in jail. In that situation, I'd probably have accepted the plea bargain. No matter how much I believed myself to be in the right. Given those incentives, it is somewhat surprising that 3% of people do choose to fight. But then again, that's down in the range of the portion of the population with serious mental illnesses.
- tptacek 6y ago
  This is plainly false. Swartz's own lawyer believed, in writing, after Swartz's death, that had Swartz gone to trial and lost, he wouldn't even been given a custodial sentence, and you can look at the sentencing guidelines and see why he reached that conclusion. The prosecutors didn't demand a lifetime in jail; at their grimmest, most hardball state, they were suggesting (a laughable, given the guidelines, the fact that it was a first offense, and a non-remunerative crime) 7 years. You wrote other things, and I'm sorry I didn't read them carefully, because I'm a nerd and a human and I can't get past "a lifetime in jail". I'll try to revisit later and respond to them, and wouldn't want to suggest my not responding to them is an indication that they aren't good points.
  - btilly 6y ago
    You can read https://web.archive.org/web/20120526080523/http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120526080523/http://www.justic... to see that the prosecutor's press release in 2011 said, "If convicted on these charges, SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million." That was before they added nine more felony counts on September 12, 2012. As techdirt said at the time in https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-government-ups-felony-count-jstoraaron-swartz-case-four-to-thirteen.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-go..., the theoretical amount that he could have been put away for was 50+ years with a fine of up to $4 million. That's the lifetime that I was talking about. The fact that they were seeking a far lesser conviction, didn't stop them from throwing around those figures. And I'm sure that Aaron Swartz had to think about those numbers. Incidentally Aaron Swartz wasn't even the first programmer to commit suicide while being prosecuted by a team including Stephen Heymann. That dubious honor goes to Jonathan James in 2008. All of this notwithstanding, the important point is this. For most of US history, plea bargains were illegal. The way that they now railroad people into pleading guilty en masse demonstrates that they should still be illegal. And the fact that our plea bargaining system is so lopsided means that the right to a fair trial is more theory than practice. As a double check on that, consider https://innocenceproject.org/bad-drug-test-leads-to-wrongful-convictions/ https://innocenceproject.org/bad-drug-test-leads-to-wrongful.... Widely used roadside drug tests that are inadmissable in court have been found in practice to be wrong more than 1/3 of the time. And yet, 90% of people charged wind up accepting the plea bargain. The state literally has no evidence that they can present in court. And knows that a lot of those people are actually innocent. But they all get railroaded. Welcome to justice, American style.