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> The plea system seems to be loaded with problems, but if you don't want to make a plea bargain you can still simply go to court. Which is what you'd be doing

by wwwtyro 14y ago

> The plea system seems to be loaded with problems, but if you don't want to make a plea bargain you can still simply go to court. Which is what you'd be doing without a plea system anyway. The implication here is that things would be the same without a plea system. I disagree. I think that if people regularly faced the kind of sentences that they are threatened with under the plea system, there would be political upheaval. 50 years for trespassing and downloading files? It's absurd. The plea system as it stands is simply a means for prosecutors to acquire more convictions, and it is absolutely unacceptable. They are blatantly gaming the system, so the system needs to be changed.

anonymouz 14y ago
First of all, I did not make an implication that things would be exactly the same without plea bargain. I was merely responding to the completely over the top claim that a plea bargain somehow constitutes "institutionalized torture" that the parent made. That said, I don't think abolishing plea bargain would necessarily lower the maximum penalty for a given felony (which is what the 50 years is). There is a great number of things that come under the name "wire fraud", some of which deserve years in prison and some of which don't. That is why the law gives a range for the possible penalty and it is up to the judge to pick the right number in that range. There is little reason to believe a judge would have opted for the upper bound of the range in this case. The problem I see with plea bargains (from an outside perspective, we don't have plea bargains where I live), is that they allow one to sidestep an honest and public trial in favor of such a bargain, thereby replacing justice by backroom deals. Sometimes this works in the favor of the prosecution, and sometimes the defendant gets of lightly.

by wwwtyro 14y ago

anonymouz 14y ago

First of all, I did not make an implication that things would be exactly the same without plea bargain. I was merely responding to the completely over the top claim that a plea bargain somehow constitutes "institutionalized torture" that the parent made. That said, I don't think abolishing plea bargain would necessarily lower the maximum penalty for a given felony (which is what the 50 years is). There is a great number of things that come under the name "wire fraud", some of which deserve years in prison and some of which don't. That is why the law gives a range for the possible penalty and it is up to the judge to pick the right number in that range. There is little reason to believe a judge would have opted for the upper bound of the range in this case. The problem I see with plea bargains (from an outside perspective, we don't have plea bargains where I live), is that they allow one to sidestep an honest and public trial in favor of such a bargain, thereby replacing justice by backroom deals. Sometimes this works in the favor of the prosecution, and sometimes the defendant gets of lightly.