Here is the link:
They say at least one percent, based on projecting from after-conviction introduction of DNA evidence for rape and rape-murders only:
And I understand them to be saying that plea bargain false convictions are an utter mystery:
I think pleading innocent and forcing a trial with no credible defense is a reason to penalize a defendant in sentencing. It shows that the defendant fails to take responsibility for their actions and demonstrates no remorse.
I think the plea bargaining system works and this situation doesn’t occur all that often. It is usually going to be wealthy defendants who can do this at all, a public defender won’t be able to delay the process with numerous filings or present a lot of expert witnesses so the trials will go quickly. Despite a conviction a defendant may still have a reasonable defense when the physical evidence is limited and witness testimony is less than absolute. When the situation does arise I don’t see any problem with additional penalty for wasting the states time and money on a pointless trial that is just additional harm done by the defendant after the original crime.
In reality we have to be careful not to penalize defendants solely for the simple exercise of their right to trial. It can be done when a defendant is clearly using the system as a means of defiance but a competent lawyer should preclude that possibility. So it ain’t gonna happen much, or be used unjustly when it is. So plea bargaining has turned out to serve the purpose of avoiding unnecessary trials so well this isn’t that common an issue.
Re my last post, here is a study that estimates an 11.6 percent false conviction rate for sexual assault:
Estimating the Prevalence of Wrongful Convictions
Do I endorse this study? No. It would take many days, studing the false conviction literature, to come up with an opinion on which studies, if any, use a plausible methodology. And, after that, I suspect I’d conclude that the most common crimes will probably not be ones whether we have any kind of good false conviction rate evidence.
What I will say is that whatever the false conviction rate is, it is too high.
In other, unrelated, threads, I’ve read worries that automation and AI are going to create a society in which there isn’t enough work. Well, by ending plea bargaining, we then create a lot of important productive jobs.
Agreed, but I missing seeing how this sentence was consistent with the rest of the post.
Any offer of to reduce charges, or recommended sentencing, in return for giving up the right to trial, penalizes “defendants solely for the simple exercise of their right to trial.”
I’m not comfortable with incentiving witness testimony – the incentive could motivate lying – but concede it is needed in high-crime localities. What is not clear to me is why routine plea bargaining gets more of those bigger criminals.
We currently have a system where virtually all criminals expect they can get a deal leading to a sentence that’s a low fraction of what they would receive if they insisted their usually-publicly-funded attorney go to trial. So it appears to me that routine plea bargaining dilutes the value to the criminal of a decision to turn on their associates.
When there was virtually no plea bargaining, judges could still consider cooperation in sentencing. And I’m sure they did.
Reality is that you can’t go from near-100 percent plea offers to near-zero, or vice versa, overnight. Wouldn’t going in the direction of few plea offers make the incentive, when a plea is offered in return for cooperation, greater?
Why, if they are found guilty? You have right to go to trial, but you do not have the right to be immune from the the consequences of that choice. Excluding situations where there may be genuine uncertainty prior to trial if the facts imply guilt, if someone knows that the facts make them guilty they are doing something wrong in going to trial. They are exploiting due process designed to protect the innocent in order to try to benefit from an unjust outcome.
Don’t confuse the right to do something with it being the right thing to do.
I can’t speak for all areas, but in King County Washington, pleading guilty would not get you a “low fraction” of their expected sentence.
There would be a lower sentence, to be sure, but not 1 year instead of 5, for example. Maybe 25% off for a plea. For most serious murders, rapes, and assaults, the prosecution didn’t offer any significant deal. Sometimes it was just “we’ll recommend the high end of the standard range but won’t ask for a departure above the range.” But, of course, every case has something unique about it, so it’s very hard to generalize.
I don’t think a 25 percent trial penalty would be so bad if it was almost always the limit (although 25 percent reduction implies a 33 percent harsher sentence penalty). Note the 700 percent penalty I found below for Baltimore.
I hope I’m not looking at this from a pure self-interest standpoint, but I am a highly law abiding person. So if I was busted for drugs, it would because I was an innocent in the wrong place at the wrong time. Suppose that wrong place was Baltimore:
I’d have to be extremely confident in the Baltimore system of justice — and I am not — to turn down that enormous sentence reduction.
It might be argued — and this is probably the best defense of plea bargaining — that if I wasn’t offered a plea bargain, and was falsely convicted, I’d then have to serve the longer sentence. But I don’t think so. Progressive Maryland isn’t going to stuff two man cells with a dozen or more prisoners, or build many times more prisons. Without plea bargains, they would have to lower trial conviction sentences.
Responding to @Riemann as well as you:
I stated reasons why a defendant could be penalized for demanding a trial, failure to take responsibility, lack of remorse, wasting public resources, but using your constitutional right to a trial in and of itself isn’t a reason. Nor does use of that right by itself determine matters like a lack of remorse, etc.
So then all cases must go to trial to prevent that. Or possibly there’s something wrong with your logic and it’s possible to find compromises in the application of justice that serve the public interest better than an all or nothing approach.
…there is a reason why it is called the industrial prison complex.
We are talking about a machine that is designed to put people behind bars with ruthless efficiency. The United States locks up more people per capita than anywhere else in the world. The majority haven’t been convicted of a crime. If you were to release half of everyone locked up in the US right now you would still have twice as many people in detention per capita as they do in Australia.
This is dystopian. This is a nightmare.
And yet, ya’ll just out here acting like it’s normal.
From the ACLU:
The entire system is fucked up. Plea bargaining is fucked up. This ain’t normal.
As I think you are saying, maybe not.
Many defendants will plead guilty with no offer. And a minimal offer — say 10 percent sentence reduction — is enough to get more, who know the DA has strong proof, to plead guilty, without creating a situation where innocent defendants feel going to trial is too risky.
It used to be said that Philadelphia had a jury trial penalty, where, for the sake of efficiency, judges informally were reputed to give a slightly harsher sentence to a found-guilty-at-trial defendant who refused a bench trial. So there are many subtle ways, with pluses and minuses, the system could potentially be tweaked without instantly needing many times more judges. I think a bench trial is, at a minimum, better than no trial.
As alluded to in the earlier ACLU link, mandatory minimum sentences are as big part of the problem. Bargaining down charges is one way for a liberal DA to get around the mandatory minimums. I suspect this is part of why plea bargains became common after tough-on-crime Philadelphia DA Lynne Abraham left office in 2010.