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I believe there should be a movement to pass a law to stop all plea bargaining, and require all criminal proceedings to go to trial. It would force the crimina

I believe there should be a movement to pass a law to stop all plea bargaining, and require all criminal proceedings to go to trial. It would force the criminal justice system to only pursue solid cases, prioritize for the worst crimes, and reduce our bloated prison system, and restore our right to a fair trial.

tptacek 12y ago
It would grind the criminal justice system to a complete halt. The impact would fall almost entirely on the accused, who would sit in holding cells for years waiting for trials, which would be even more perfunctory as a result of the immense pressure that would be put on public defender offices as a result of conducting pointless trials for open-and-shut cases.
- iconjack 12y ago
  Not if the 6th-amendment right to a speedy trial was taken seriously. Then prosecutors would have to prioritize, since they couldn't possibly try everyone. Low-level "criminals" like pot smokers and prostitutes would (hopefully) walk. Our legal system has denial-of-service attacked itself. Two million in prison and still the line is out the door and around the building. We've got so many laws that even our huge system can't handle the load. If we as a society really want all these so-called crimes prosecuted, we'll have to pony up to guarantee each defendant a speedy trial. At least that was the intent of the 6th, as I see it.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    The idea that our jails are full of pot-smokers and prostitutes appears to be totally unsupported by the facts. Each state keeps statistics on the crimes for which its incarcerated population is held. Look up the stats for your state. I think you're going to find that it's not prostitutes keeping the numbers up.
- gamblor956 12y ago
  Speaking as a former public defender, the opposite would be true. Defendants are entitled to speedy trials. If a case cannot proceed to trial within the specified time frame (usually 60 days from charging, unless the defendant waives the right to a speedy trial, but it varies by state), then the charges are dismissed. I was lucky enough to participate in a plea bargaining strike organized by the public defender and criminal defense attorneys bar in response to the DA refusing to negotiate for low-level (non-dealing) drug offenses. As part of the strike, our defendants also refused to waive their rights to speedy trials. Almost 100 additional cases were scheduled for trial during a 1 week period, with many more queued up in the weeks beyond. Despite utilizing every DA and intern at its disposal, and opening up shuttered courtrooms, the DA was wholly unable to staff the sheer volume of cases. On the 3rd day it became clear that fewer than 25 cases would make it to trial by the deadline, and the DA capitulated.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Defenders are theoretically entitled to speedy trials, but in reality can be held for years and years without trial based on procedural delays, and, in particular, based on the court's scheduling problems: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/law-3 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/law-3 And a huge flood of criminal trials would certainly not make individual criminal trials any more rigorous, or juries any more likely to carefully weigh evidence. Finally: people on HN royally fucking hate hearing this, but it's true: most criminal defendants are guilty. We hear about newsworthy cases where there's enough of an interesting narrative to write an interesting lede graf. But for every one of those, there are 100 where the details are completely uninteresting: the defendant was found in his living room with bloody knuckles standing next to his unconscious spouse. A plurality of Cook County inmates are in for domestic violence; the majority are incarcerated for violent crime. So the idea that we'd have a fairer system by ensuring that fewer defendants actually faced charges is... suspect. The injustices in our criminal law system need to be fixed at their source: the law needs to be changed to ratchet down sentences. This is an uncontroversial point. There is broad agreement that sentences were escalated to untenable levels during the nationwide freak-out over crime from the late 1960s through the mid 1990s. That problem needs to be fixed; no cosmetic change will improve our system until it is.
- Aloha 12y ago
  You have roughly the same level of cynicism I do, which is to say, I don't think it would do anything to reduce the number of people charged for spurious things, just either cause a massive expansion, or a massive slowdown of the justice system.
shkkmo 12y ago
I don't thing we should stop all plea bargaining, but we do need to drastically overhaul how plea bargaining is handled. We need a judge involved, we need all the evidence available to the defendant, and we need reduce the ability for prosecutors to set 'ticking clocks' limiting the availability of plea bargain offers to allow defense attorneys time to evaluate the case..
Kluny 12y ago
It wouldn't force them to do anything - there's already a backlog of several years in many places. Some people awaiting trial are released because they can't be provided their "right to a speedy and public trial", but the exact length of "speedy" isn't defined in the constitution, so they still end up waiting in holding cells or house arrest for years.

tptacek 12y ago

It would grind the criminal justice system to a complete halt. The impact would fall almost entirely on the accused, who would sit in holding cells for years waiting for trials, which would be even more perfunctory as a result of the immense pressure that would be put on public defender offices as a result of conducting pointless trials for open-and-shut cases.

iconjack 12y ago
Not if the 6th-amendment right to a speedy trial was taken seriously. Then prosecutors would have to prioritize, since they couldn't possibly try everyone. Low-level "criminals" like pot smokers and prostitutes would (hopefully) walk. Our legal system has denial-of-service attacked itself. Two million in prison and still the line is out the door and around the building. We've got so many laws that even our huge system can't handle the load. If we as a society really want all these so-called crimes prosecuted, we'll have to pony up to guarantee each defendant a speedy trial. At least that was the intent of the 6th, as I see it.
- tptacek 12y ago
  The idea that our jails are full of pot-smokers and prostitutes appears to be totally unsupported by the facts. Each state keeps statistics on the crimes for which its incarcerated population is held. Look up the stats for your state. I think you're going to find that it's not prostitutes keeping the numbers up.
gamblor956 12y ago
Speaking as a former public defender, the opposite would be true. Defendants are entitled to speedy trials. If a case cannot proceed to trial within the specified time frame (usually 60 days from charging, unless the defendant waives the right to a speedy trial, but it varies by state), then the charges are dismissed. I was lucky enough to participate in a plea bargaining strike organized by the public defender and criminal defense attorneys bar in response to the DA refusing to negotiate for low-level (non-dealing) drug offenses. As part of the strike, our defendants also refused to waive their rights to speedy trials. Almost 100 additional cases were scheduled for trial during a 1 week period, with many more queued up in the weeks beyond. Despite utilizing every DA and intern at its disposal, and opening up shuttered courtrooms, the DA was wholly unable to staff the sheer volume of cases. On the 3rd day it became clear that fewer than 25 cases would make it to trial by the deadline, and the DA capitulated.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Defenders are theoretically entitled to speedy trials, but in reality can be held for years and years without trial based on procedural delays, and, in particular, based on the court's scheduling problems: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/law-3 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/law-3 And a huge flood of criminal trials would certainly not make individual criminal trials any more rigorous, or juries any more likely to carefully weigh evidence. Finally: people on HN royally fucking hate hearing this, but it's true: most criminal defendants are guilty. We hear about newsworthy cases where there's enough of an interesting narrative to write an interesting lede graf. But for every one of those, there are 100 where the details are completely uninteresting: the defendant was found in his living room with bloody knuckles standing next to his unconscious spouse. A plurality of Cook County inmates are in for domestic violence; the majority are incarcerated for violent crime. So the idea that we'd have a fairer system by ensuring that fewer defendants actually faced charges is... suspect. The injustices in our criminal law system need to be fixed at their source: the law needs to be changed to ratchet down sentences. This is an uncontroversial point. There is broad agreement that sentences were escalated to untenable levels during the nationwide freak-out over crime from the late 1960s through the mid 1990s. That problem needs to be fixed; no cosmetic change will improve our system until it is.
Aloha 12y ago
You have roughly the same level of cynicism I do, which is to say, I don't think it would do anything to reduce the number of people charged for spurious things, just either cause a massive expansion, or a massive slowdown of the justice system.

shkkmo 12y ago

I don't thing we should stop all plea bargaining, but we do need to drastically overhaul how plea bargaining is handled. We need a judge involved, we need all the evidence available to the defendant, and we need reduce the ability for prosecutors to set 'ticking clocks' limiting the availability of plea bargain offers to allow defense attorneys time to evaluate the case..

Kluny 12y ago

It wouldn't force them to do anything - there's already a backlog of several years in many places. Some people awaiting trial are released because they can't be provided their "right to a speedy and public trial", but the exact length of "speedy" isn't defined in the constitution, so they still end up waiting in holding cells or house arrest for years.