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Indeed. Probably the dirtiest open secret of the US criminal justice system is that it is structurally incapable of giving a truly fair trial to the vast majori

Indeed. Probably the dirtiest open secret of the US criminal justice system is that it is structurally incapable of giving a truly fair trial to the vast majority of the accused. The system would grind to a halt without the vast majority of cases ending in plea bargains, and we have pretty good reasons to suspect that common police interrogation tactics (often functionally indistinguishable from psychological abuse) tend to produce false confessions [1] [2]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-criminal-cases-justice https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-crim... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opinion/false-confessions-police-interrogation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opinion/false-confessions...

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
There actually have been cases where public defenders have used this to organize and demand better treatment for themselves and the defendants. Where public defenders all convince their defendants not to plea, simultaneously, thereby forcing the court into a situation where they cannot avoid violating the constitutional right to a reasonably speedy trial due to all of the cases. I wished more civil resistance like this happened, but I know how career-threatening a stunt like this could be.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  I think a bigger issue in this case might be there public defenders are oversubscribed and sometimes not acting with all the vigor one might wish.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    I think there is a worse problem still... I could tolerate exhausted public defenders putting up a weak fight. After all, even a weak effort is still effort. But who do these public defenders identify with? They went to law school too, they passed the bar too. Their careers 15 years from now will look much like the prosecutors' careers. Hell, they might be sitting behind a bench, they're on the right career track. If they identify with the other lawyers and the judges, then they might not be putting any effort into it at all. They might instead be in the business of conducting their "clients" through the plea bargain pipeline, and act as if their duties primarily revolve around making certain that pipeline doesn't get clogged up. This wouldn't be all public defenders, mind you. But even a minor fraction of public defenders acting in this way would be horrific.
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      Yeah, I was being somewhat polite with the way I stated it... A PD who meets you at the last minute and just shepherds you through plea bargaining wouldn't be a surprise, and horror stories of them dozing off in court and the like abound.

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago

There actually have been cases where public defenders have used this to organize and demand better treatment for themselves and the defendants. Where public defenders all convince their defendants not to plea, simultaneously, thereby forcing the court into a situation where they cannot avoid violating the constitutional right to a reasonably speedy trial due to all of the cases. I wished more civil resistance like this happened, but I know how career-threatening a stunt like this could be.

emodendroket 3y ago
I think a bigger issue in this case might be there public defenders are oversubscribed and sometimes not acting with all the vigor one might wish.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  I think there is a worse problem still... I could tolerate exhausted public defenders putting up a weak fight. After all, even a weak effort is still effort. But who do these public defenders identify with? They went to law school too, they passed the bar too. Their careers 15 years from now will look much like the prosecutors' careers. Hell, they might be sitting behind a bench, they're on the right career track. If they identify with the other lawyers and the judges, then they might not be putting any effort into it at all. They might instead be in the business of conducting their "clients" through the plea bargain pipeline, and act as if their duties primarily revolve around making certain that pipeline doesn't get clogged up. This wouldn't be all public defenders, mind you. But even a minor fraction of public defenders acting in this way would be horrific.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Yeah, I was being somewhat polite with the way I stated it... A PD who meets you at the last minute and just shepherds you through plea bargaining wouldn't be a surprise, and horror stories of them dozing off in court and the like abound.