23 ms·

Plea Bargaining and Torture in light of the Aaron Swartz case

234 points by soundsop 14y ago

keeptrying 14y ago
Thats 6 months plus a felony on his record right? For downloading a few files. Its disgusting.
- Alterlife 14y ago
  It's much less than 35, and less than death... and it and probably indicates that in Aaron Swartz's case, the accused never entertained the idea of pleading guilty.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Getting kicked in the shins is better than a bat to the skull. Would you be surprised when people start looking for alternatives when offered that "choice"?
    - Alterlife 14y ago
      ??? The options were to spend 35 years in jail or to spend 6 months + plead guilty. Are you saying that he chose to kill himself rather than spend 6 months in jail? I don't know what went through his mind... but I think it's unlikely that he considered the plea bargain an option. From what I've read, he seems like an idealist and in his mind it was probably more black and white - he had to plead plead innocent and accept 35 years or at minimum the financial and emotional damage that goes with fighting it... and he was getting little or no help from the world he was trying to change.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        Huh? I am not saying I would commit suicide, nor that anybody should. I am saying that plea bargains for absurd sentences are coercive and should not be considered "choice".
      - gknoy 14y ago
        I believe the sticking point was being labeled a felon, not the jail time. Being a felon in the US is a Big Deal, and pretty much relegates you to permanent lower-classes [0]. Aaron also seemed big on moral integrity, and it's probably hard to reconcile admitting guilt to something you don't believe is morally wrong. "Live free or die" is a phrase with deep roots in our nation's history, for example. 0: from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony#United_States): The consequences convicted felons face in most states include: Disenfranchisement (which the Supreme Court interpreted to be permitted by the Fourteenth Amendment) Exclusion from obtaining certain licenses, such as a visa, or professional licenses required in order to legally operate (making many vocations off-limits to felons) Exclusion from purchase and possession of firearms, ammunition and body armor Ineligibility for serving on a jury Ineligibility for government assistance or welfare, including being barred from federally funded housing
  - rohansingh 14y ago
    > less than death How is this relevant? I wasn't aware that "wire fraud" was a capital crime now.
    - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
      Not only that, but apparently putting a fake name into a guest registration page is "wire fraud".
      - tripzilch 14y ago
        ... but that's the way I was taught to do it when I first got onto the Internet.
    - Alterlife 14y ago
      It's relevant because it's the fate he chose.
- tzs 14y ago
  That's a rather gross mischaracterization of what he was accused of. There's a good description here: http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/
  - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
    Doesn't look like it is to me. The charges are absurd. What is wrong with you people?
    - tzs 14y ago
      Got any actual reasoning to offer? All you've done so far is make an unsupported assertion.
      - maxerickson 14y ago
        The expert witness that was working with the defense states that JSTOR did not require passwords from computers on MITs network: http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/ http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartz... Attaching serious criminal charges to the act of feeding an automated system input that the automated system does nothing to verify is crazy (that is, it isn't wire fraud to use a variety of email addresses on a system that does nothing other than note the address that was input). The indictment uses language like "Although a MAC address is intended to be a permanent and globally unique identification". And yet nobody serious about security has any expectation that a MAC address is permanent or globally unique (it is well understood that they aren't particularly useful for authentication). If the government wants to attach serious charges to accessing computer systems, there should at least be some sort of notification that the provider of the system considers the system to be protected under federal law, not this running backwards to say that accepting an email address or having the capability to block a MAC address somehow makes a network 'protected'. To be perfectly clear, I'd be entirely fine with a broadly applicable lesser charge that applied more generally to computer tampering, for cases where the prosecutor wanted to argue that a user exceeded intended access and such.
linuxhansl 14y ago
Even six months in prison is no walk in the park. The article has is completely right. If the nominal penalty is 100 years and somebody gets 12 years after a plea bargain, that person is still locked away for a long time and the prosecutor can say "See, we're not so bad, we granted an 78% reduction of the sentence". Pathetic. As I said before, in most other civilized countries the maximum penalty is between 10 and 20 years prison (and that is for 1st degree murder).
- tlrobinson 14y ago
  While I agree many of our punishments are too harsh, it seems absurd to me that Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Norway, only received a sentence of 21 years in prison. Maybe because I'm American. Are Norwegians ok with this?
  - barrkel 14y ago
    That's not accurate. He got the maximum sentence in Norwegian law, and the imprisonment can be extended indefinitely - it's unlikely he'll ever be released.
  - konstruktor 14y ago
    As you surely know, Breivik will be in a closed psychiatric ward after the end of his sentence until he is not a danger anymore, which means until he dies. In a justice system aimed at the safety of the public and rehabilitation, this makes sense. The public is safe and shit like plea bargain coercion is impeded. This is why I consider the Norwegian system a good one (Austrian here).
    - linuxhansl 14y ago
      Exactly. And that is a very important distinction. After 21 years he will have served his term. If afterwards he cannot be released into society he needs to be kept separate, but that is no longer a punishment. As such he will (or should) be treated well during this "safe keeping" following his sentence.
  - 14y ago
jpatokal 14y ago
The study referenced is very worthwhile reading: The dominant version of American plea bargaining makes simi lar demands [to the Inquisition]: it requires the prosecutor to usurp the determinative and sentencing functions, hence to make himself judge in his own cause. I cannot emphasize too strongly how dangerous this concentration of prosecutorial power can be. The modern public prosecutor commands the vast resources of the state for gathering and generating accusing evidence. We allowed him this power in large part because the criminal trial interposed the safeguard of adjudication against the danger that he might bring those resources to bear against an innocent citizen-whether on account of honest error, arbitrariness, or worse. But the plea bargaining system has largely dissolved that safeguard. Direct link: http://www.judicialstudies.unr.edu/JS_Summer09/JSP_Week_4/JS710Wk4.LangbeinTorandPleaBargtxt.pdf http://www.judicialstudies.unr.edu/JS_Summer09/JSP_Week_4/JS...
arikrak 14y ago
I don't understand why the system works this way. Shouldn't the goal be to achieve justice? I.e. if someone committed a crime that actually deserves 20 years in prison, why should the government settle for only 2 years? And if the person is innocent of any real crime, why should he do any time? Instead it's based around some kind of competition of prosecution vs. defense, so they can compromise on smaller prison terms. It probably save everyone lots of money, but I don't see the where the justice is. Maybe if they had a simpler and less money-dominated legal system (with less lawyers), they could try to achieve real justice.
- jhuni 14y ago
  The pprison industry is very profitable. Justice has nothing to do with it.
  - arikrak 14y ago
    I don't think the prison companies are the ones in charge of prosecution or judging.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      No, but the judges who they bribe are certainly involved.
    - krichman 14y ago
      They're certainly lobbying for more laws and stricter enforcement.
    - veidr 14y ago
      They aren't in charge of it, per se, but the lobbying by them and the prison workers unions are definitely in large part responsible for how insane it is here, as opposed to literally any other modern democracy. There are other factors too, of course. But the perverse societal incentives of the American "prison-industrial complex" are a powerful (and malignant, in my view) force.
- pjscott 14y ago
TruthElixirX 14y ago
http://nevertakeaplea.org/ http://nevertakeaplea.org/ I have been a proponent of this since before the Aaron Swartz case. Plea bargains are used because the system would completely grind to a halt otherwise. And it should. The machine eats people's lives. Never take a plea.
- eurleif 14y ago
  >(EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is about government employees stealing money the government itself has stolen, and since it’s about theft, it is a crime with a victim, namely those who put money into the parking meters.) So this is a radical libertarian (or thereabouts) thing. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. But it's worth noting that it isn't apolitical.
  - monochromatic 14y ago
    Saying that the criminal justice system should grind to a halt goes well beyond the radical side of libertarianism.
    - veidr 14y ago
      Well, I took it to mean that the system should grind to a halt with as much bullshit as there is clogging it up, thereby forcing us (as a society) to choose what is really important to prosecute. E.g., not a guy with a little baggie of weed, or a guy downloading some academic papers he isn't allowed to.
      - TruthElixirX 14y ago
        This is exactly what I was trying to say. Millions of dollars shouldn't be spent prosecuting people like Aaron. It is a waste to society in several ways.
  - TruthElixirX 14y ago
    Yeah, I am a radical libertarian. I'm not hiding it, but this is an instance where I don't think the point I am trying to make is one that is specifically radically libertarian. EDIT:: Which isn't to say it isn't radical, but I think several non-libertarian groups who oppose such things as the war on drugs and other victimless crimes would like to see the system grind to a halt and only important cases sought after.
rms 14y ago
Where is the interview with the defense attorney referenced in this article?
barce 14y ago
What Attorney Stephen Heymann did to James and Schwartz is a very old story. I can't believe nobody has brought up the parallel yet, but this story is very much like Les Miserables. In "Les Mis," an ex-convict who decides to lead an upstanding life is dogged by an law enforcement officer who sees the ex-con's bending of the rules to help others as criminal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables_%28musical%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables_%28musical%...
- Gmo 14y ago
  Surely, linking to the original content (i.e. the book) would be better, don't you think? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables
jforman 14y ago
In 1984, a commission found that federal sentencing was too arbitrary (making us a "nation of men" rather than a "nation of laws") and so mandatory federal sentencing guidelines were enacted by Congress (the supreme court later made them not-quite-mandatory, but the restriction on judges is still pretty great). However, judicial discretion was an important check against prosecutorial zeal, and the unintended consequence of reducing arbitrariness at the judicial level has been an increase in control at the prosecutorial level. Systemically, prosecutors are incentivized to put people away, as their careers aren't shielded like those of judges. We may be more a "nation of laws" than before 1984, but combined with punishments most people would consider unjust we've drifted toward being a police state. In my opinion, if there's one thing to take away from this terrible tragedy, it's that we need a commission to study this systemic effect and recommend ways to make the justice system more just. I can't make myself blame the prosecutors involved when most federal prosecutors are similarly heavy-handed (and, quite possibly, were acting within a reasonable interpretation of the the law).
- danenania 14y ago
  "I can't make myself blame the prosecutors involved when most federal prosecutors are similarly heavy-handed (and, quite possibly, were acting within a reasonable interpretation of the the law)." A person who works to enforce immoral laws or immoral sentences is an immoral person and should be treated as such. We need direct accountability at every level, otherwise the buck is passed around in a circle indefinitely.
  - willyt 14y ago
    To reinforce your point, following the herd is not an excuse. To take the most extreme example of this. The Germans have a word, Schreibtischtäter, which roughly means 'desk based murderer'. It was coined during the period when former NAZI officials were being tried for their part in the holocaust. As I understand it, it was used not only for people who literally signed death warrants, but also for people who did things like arranging the logistics of transporting people to the death camps. The relevance of this being that the wide scale systematic nature of the atrocity could only work if all these secondary people were complicit in it. The wide scale systematic corruption of justice that is plea bargaining only happens because most prosecutors are complicit. While it is not genocide, it is, in effect, denying a lot of people the right to a fair trial, which is one of the founding principals of any modern society.
piokoch 14y ago
"The Catholic Church decided in the Middle Ages that too many people were getting convicted of crimes that they hadn’t committed. They instituted a rule that said nobody could be convicted without either two eyewitnesses or a confession. Convictions became difficult to obtain. Since it was not possible to obtain extra witnesses, the Church decided to torture defendants until they confessed." That's unfortunatelly typical anti-church misconception that does not have any support neither in fact nor in common sense. Why Catholic church introduced demand for two wittnes, if they can do away without that condition??? Why they created obstacle for themselves??? As a matter of fact Catholic church introduced that condition to stop feudal unjustice and cruelty. That partly failed, since "civil power" started to use tortures. Catholic church created then Inquisition, so, at least, stupid monarch and feudal masters could not kill or burn people they did not like for heresy (Jews, for instance) and witchcraft. Note, that most anty-witches trials were in Protestant coutries. In Catholic countries (Poland, for instance), there was no "anty witches campaigns" and Jews from all over the Europe were moving to Poland in large numbers (or, to be more precise to Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth).
ratsbane 14y ago
Perhaps someone here who actually is a lawyer can answer this or correct my understanding... Under current rules, any plea bargain offers by a prosecutor can't be introduced into the trial. What if that were changed? What if, at the same time a jury is told that the maximum sentence is 47 years imprisonment they were also told the details of any plea-bargain negotiations, such as that the prosecution had been willing to accept 3 months? Might this help to mitigate the perverse effects of the plea bargain system we have now?
- pyre 14y ago
  Well, it's usually the judge that makes the sentencing determination. A jury is just there to determine guilt or innocence. If a jury knew that the prosecutor was willing to take a 90% reduced sentence, but they still feel that the defendant is guilty, that wouldn't change anything.

234 points by soundsop 14y ago

keeptrying 14y ago

Thats 6 months plus a felony on his record right? For downloading a few files. Its disgusting.

Alterlife 14y ago
It's much less than 35, and less than death... and it and probably indicates that in Aaron Swartz's case, the accused never entertained the idea of pleading guilty.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Getting kicked in the shins is better than a bat to the skull. Would you be surprised when people start looking for alternatives when offered that "choice"?
  - Alterlife 14y ago
    ??? The options were to spend 35 years in jail or to spend 6 months + plead guilty. Are you saying that he chose to kill himself rather than spend 6 months in jail? I don't know what went through his mind... but I think it's unlikely that he considered the plea bargain an option. From what I've read, he seems like an idealist and in his mind it was probably more black and white - he had to plead plead innocent and accept 35 years or at minimum the financial and emotional damage that goes with fighting it... and he was getting little or no help from the world he was trying to change.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Huh? I am not saying I would commit suicide, nor that anybody should. I am saying that plea bargains for absurd sentences are coercive and should not be considered "choice".
    - gknoy 14y ago
      I believe the sticking point was being labeled a felon, not the jail time. Being a felon in the US is a Big Deal, and pretty much relegates you to permanent lower-classes [0]. Aaron also seemed big on moral integrity, and it's probably hard to reconcile admitting guilt to something you don't believe is morally wrong. "Live free or die" is a phrase with deep roots in our nation's history, for example. 0: from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony#United_States): The consequences convicted felons face in most states include: Disenfranchisement (which the Supreme Court interpreted to be permitted by the Fourteenth Amendment) Exclusion from obtaining certain licenses, such as a visa, or professional licenses required in order to legally operate (making many vocations off-limits to felons) Exclusion from purchase and possession of firearms, ammunition and body armor Ineligibility for serving on a jury Ineligibility for government assistance or welfare, including being barred from federally funded housing
- rohansingh 14y ago
  > less than death How is this relevant? I wasn't aware that "wire fraud" was a capital crime now.
  - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
    Not only that, but apparently putting a fake name into a guest registration page is "wire fraud".
    - tripzilch 14y ago
      ... but that's the way I was taught to do it when I first got onto the Internet.
  - Alterlife 14y ago
    It's relevant because it's the fate he chose.
tzs 14y ago
That's a rather gross mischaracterization of what he was accused of. There's a good description here: http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/
- lawnchair_larry 14y ago
  Doesn't look like it is to me. The charges are absurd. What is wrong with you people?
  - tzs 14y ago
    Got any actual reasoning to offer? All you've done so far is make an unsupported assertion.
    - maxerickson 14y ago
      The expert witness that was working with the defense states that JSTOR did not require passwords from computers on MITs network: http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/ http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartz... Attaching serious criminal charges to the act of feeding an automated system input that the automated system does nothing to verify is crazy (that is, it isn't wire fraud to use a variety of email addresses on a system that does nothing other than note the address that was input). The indictment uses language like "Although a MAC address is intended to be a permanent and globally unique identification". And yet nobody serious about security has any expectation that a MAC address is permanent or globally unique (it is well understood that they aren't particularly useful for authentication). If the government wants to attach serious charges to accessing computer systems, there should at least be some sort of notification that the provider of the system considers the system to be protected under federal law, not this running backwards to say that accepting an email address or having the capability to block a MAC address somehow makes a network 'protected'. To be perfectly clear, I'd be entirely fine with a broadly applicable lesser charge that applied more generally to computer tampering, for cases where the prosecutor wanted to argue that a user exceeded intended access and such.

linuxhansl 14y ago

Even six months in prison is no walk in the park. The article has is completely right. If the nominal penalty is 100 years and somebody gets 12 years after a plea bargain, that person is still locked away for a long time and the prosecutor can say "See, we're not so bad, we granted an 78% reduction of the sentence". Pathetic. As I said before, in most other civilized countries the maximum penalty is between 10 and 20 years prison (and that is for 1st degree murder).

tlrobinson 14y ago
While I agree many of our punishments are too harsh, it seems absurd to me that Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Norway, only received a sentence of 21 years in prison. Maybe because I'm American. Are Norwegians ok with this?
- barrkel 14y ago
  That's not accurate. He got the maximum sentence in Norwegian law, and the imprisonment can be extended indefinitely - it's unlikely he'll ever be released.
- konstruktor 14y ago
  As you surely know, Breivik will be in a closed psychiatric ward after the end of his sentence until he is not a danger anymore, which means until he dies. In a justice system aimed at the safety of the public and rehabilitation, this makes sense. The public is safe and shit like plea bargain coercion is impeded. This is why I consider the Norwegian system a good one (Austrian here).
  - linuxhansl 14y ago
    Exactly. And that is a very important distinction. After 21 years he will have served his term. If afterwards he cannot be released into society he needs to be kept separate, but that is no longer a punishment. As such he will (or should) be treated well during this "safe keeping" following his sentence.
- 14y ago

jpatokal 14y ago

The study referenced is very worthwhile reading: The dominant version of American plea bargaining makes simi lar demands [to the Inquisition]: it requires the prosecutor to usurp the determinative and sentencing functions, hence to make himself judge in his own cause. I cannot emphasize too strongly how dangerous this concentration of prosecutorial power can be. The modern public prosecutor commands the vast resources of the state for gathering and generating accusing evidence. We allowed him this power in large part because the criminal trial interposed the safeguard of adjudication against the danger that he might bring those resources to bear against an innocent citizen-whether on account of honest error, arbitrariness, or worse. But the plea bargaining system has largely dissolved that safeguard. Direct link: http://www.judicialstudies.unr.edu/JS_Summer09/JSP_Week_4/JS710Wk4.LangbeinTorandPleaBargtxt.pdf http://www.judicialstudies.unr.edu/JS_Summer09/JSP_Week_4/JS...

arikrak 14y ago

I don't understand why the system works this way. Shouldn't the goal be to achieve justice? I.e. if someone committed a crime that actually deserves 20 years in prison, why should the government settle for only 2 years? And if the person is innocent of any real crime, why should he do any time? Instead it's based around some kind of competition of prosecution vs. defense, so they can compromise on smaller prison terms. It probably save everyone lots of money, but I don't see the where the justice is. Maybe if they had a simpler and less money-dominated legal system (with less lawyers), they could try to achieve real justice.

jhuni 14y ago
The pprison industry is very profitable. Justice has nothing to do with it.
- arikrak 14y ago
  I don't think the prison companies are the ones in charge of prosecution or judging.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    No, but the judges who they bribe are certainly involved.
  - krichman 14y ago
    They're certainly lobbying for more laws and stricter enforcement.
  - veidr 14y ago
    They aren't in charge of it, per se, but the lobbying by them and the prison workers unions are definitely in large part responsible for how insane it is here, as opposed to literally any other modern democracy. There are other factors too, of course. But the perverse societal incentives of the American "prison-industrial complex" are a powerful (and malignant, in my view) force.
pjscott 14y ago

TruthElixirX 14y ago

http://nevertakeaplea.org/ http://nevertakeaplea.org/ I have been a proponent of this since before the Aaron Swartz case. Plea bargains are used because the system would completely grind to a halt otherwise. And it should. The machine eats people's lives. Never take a plea.

eurleif 14y ago
>(EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is about government employees stealing money the government itself has stolen, and since it’s about theft, it is a crime with a victim, namely those who put money into the parking meters.) So this is a radical libertarian (or thereabouts) thing. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. But it's worth noting that it isn't apolitical.
- monochromatic 14y ago
  Saying that the criminal justice system should grind to a halt goes well beyond the radical side of libertarianism.
  - veidr 14y ago
    Well, I took it to mean that the system should grind to a halt with as much bullshit as there is clogging it up, thereby forcing us (as a society) to choose what is really important to prosecute. E.g., not a guy with a little baggie of weed, or a guy downloading some academic papers he isn't allowed to.
    - TruthElixirX 14y ago
      This is exactly what I was trying to say. Millions of dollars shouldn't be spent prosecuting people like Aaron. It is a waste to society in several ways.
- TruthElixirX 14y ago
  Yeah, I am a radical libertarian. I'm not hiding it, but this is an instance where I don't think the point I am trying to make is one that is specifically radically libertarian. EDIT:: Which isn't to say it isn't radical, but I think several non-libertarian groups who oppose such things as the war on drugs and other victimless crimes would like to see the system grind to a halt and only important cases sought after.

rms 14y ago

Where is the interview with the defense attorney referenced in this article?

barce 14y ago

What Attorney Stephen Heymann did to James and Schwartz is a very old story. I can't believe nobody has brought up the parallel yet, but this story is very much like Les Miserables. In "Les Mis," an ex-convict who decides to lead an upstanding life is dogged by an law enforcement officer who sees the ex-con's bending of the rules to help others as criminal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables_%28musical%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables_%28musical%...

Gmo 14y ago
Surely, linking to the original content (i.e. the book) would be better, don't you think? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables

jforman 14y ago

In 1984, a commission found that federal sentencing was too arbitrary (making us a "nation of men" rather than a "nation of laws") and so mandatory federal sentencing guidelines were enacted by Congress (the supreme court later made them not-quite-mandatory, but the restriction on judges is still pretty great). However, judicial discretion was an important check against prosecutorial zeal, and the unintended consequence of reducing arbitrariness at the judicial level has been an increase in control at the prosecutorial level. Systemically, prosecutors are incentivized to put people away, as their careers aren't shielded like those of judges. We may be more a "nation of laws" than before 1984, but combined with punishments most people would consider unjust we've drifted toward being a police state. In my opinion, if there's one thing to take away from this terrible tragedy, it's that we need a commission to study this systemic effect and recommend ways to make the justice system more just. I can't make myself blame the prosecutors involved when most federal prosecutors are similarly heavy-handed (and, quite possibly, were acting within a reasonable interpretation of the the law).

danenania 14y ago
"I can't make myself blame the prosecutors involved when most federal prosecutors are similarly heavy-handed (and, quite possibly, were acting within a reasonable interpretation of the the law)." A person who works to enforce immoral laws or immoral sentences is an immoral person and should be treated as such. We need direct accountability at every level, otherwise the buck is passed around in a circle indefinitely.
- willyt 14y ago
  To reinforce your point, following the herd is not an excuse. To take the most extreme example of this. The Germans have a word, Schreibtischtäter, which roughly means 'desk based murderer'. It was coined during the period when former NAZI officials were being tried for their part in the holocaust. As I understand it, it was used not only for people who literally signed death warrants, but also for people who did things like arranging the logistics of transporting people to the death camps. The relevance of this being that the wide scale systematic nature of the atrocity could only work if all these secondary people were complicit in it. The wide scale systematic corruption of justice that is plea bargaining only happens because most prosecutors are complicit. While it is not genocide, it is, in effect, denying a lot of people the right to a fair trial, which is one of the founding principals of any modern society.

piokoch 14y ago

"The Catholic Church decided in the Middle Ages that too many people were getting convicted of crimes that they hadn’t committed. They instituted a rule that said nobody could be convicted without either two eyewitnesses or a confession. Convictions became difficult to obtain. Since it was not possible to obtain extra witnesses, the Church decided to torture defendants until they confessed." That's unfortunatelly typical anti-church misconception that does not have any support neither in fact nor in common sense. Why Catholic church introduced demand for two wittnes, if they can do away without that condition??? Why they created obstacle for themselves??? As a matter of fact Catholic church introduced that condition to stop feudal unjustice and cruelty. That partly failed, since "civil power" started to use tortures. Catholic church created then Inquisition, so, at least, stupid monarch and feudal masters could not kill or burn people they did not like for heresy (Jews, for instance) and witchcraft. Note, that most anty-witches trials were in Protestant coutries. In Catholic countries (Poland, for instance), there was no "anty witches campaigns" and Jews from all over the Europe were moving to Poland in large numbers (or, to be more precise to Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth).

ratsbane 14y ago

Perhaps someone here who actually is a lawyer can answer this or correct my understanding... Under current rules, any plea bargain offers by a prosecutor can't be introduced into the trial. What if that were changed? What if, at the same time a jury is told that the maximum sentence is 47 years imprisonment they were also told the details of any plea-bargain negotiations, such as that the prosecution had been willing to accept 3 months? Might this help to mitigate the perverse effects of the plea bargain system we have now?

pyre 14y ago
Well, it's usually the judge that makes the sentencing determination. A jury is just there to determine guilt or innocence. If a jury knew that the prosecutor was willing to take a 90% reduced sentence, but they still feel that the defendant is guilty, that wouldn't change anything.