It really depends on the severity of the offense. If you’re talking Murder, most prosecutors aren’t gong to make you much of a deal. Maybe 35 years instead of 30, or whatever. Just enough that there would be some incentive to some people to plead guilty. If you think you have a good defense (“it wasn’t me,” or “I had a good excuse”) you’ll go to trial. If convicted you’ll serve, perhaps, a little longer than you would have if you had taken the deal. On the other hand, maybe the judge will say, "Sure, you’re guilty, but you sort of had a reason, I’ll give you the 25 years instead of the 30.
Most crimes are not murder, of course. Selling drugs on the street is a much more common case. A defendant might have sold to an undercover officer. There really isn’t a good defense. Sure, anything can happen at trial, but your lawyer is telling you not to expect a miracle You can plead guilty and get two years or you can go to trial and get three. Most people will take the deal. Such a system of incentive to plead guilty doesn’t really outrage me. It could certainly be abused: "Plead guilty and serve one year or if you make us take this case to trial we’ll be adding gun enhancements, and amend the Complaint to add conspiracy , etc, and you’ll be looking at 25 to life. I’ve seen some federal prosecutors really turn up the heat sometimes, especially to try to get cooperation.
Most people who take plea bargains DO serve sentences. They’re typically not as long as the sentences given those who go to trial (because the charges have been reduced as part of the bargain), but they don’t avoid jail/prison altogether unless it was a fairly low-level crime to begin with.
Actually, I can see that someone in prison for five years for tax evasion or larceny etc. might feel a certain annoyance if he’s next to someone serving two years for exactly the same thing but who made a deal; but I’m sure their innate good nature stifles such envy.
Because it’s a negotiation. Maybe the defendant is okay with a 15-year sentence, but not 25. Maybe the defense lawyer thinks the prosecution can’t prove murder, but can make a manslaughter charge stick. Conversely, maybe the prosecutor is more willing to go easy on one defendant because he was a follower rather than the ringleader.
I often wonder if the plea bargain system arose because the strong rights protections that defendants in the US have in criminal trials made the securing of convictions of guilty persons too unreliable. So the authorities found a way around the problem by increasing sentences, increasing the risk for defendants who go to trials, and then offering them a way out via a plea bargain.
In criminal cases, the vast majority of the time, it is not too difficult to get a conviction. The plea bargain happens not because conviction is uncertain, but because it is pretty predictable. The defendant knows he’s going down, and simple needs a little “incentive” to plead guilty instead of insist on a trial. The"deal," offered is more to save judicial and prosecutorial resources then because the government doesn’t think it can prove its case. The cases that make their way into the newspaper are newsworthy because they are the exception to this rule. If the government doesn’t think it can prove its case, the case can just be dismissed. I know several career prosecutors who have never lost a case at trial.
An accurate representation of his argument is one which points out its absurdity. Habeed is claiming that prison is so terrible that people will agree to anything if threatened with it. Which is absurd because the thing these people are agreeing to is to be sent to prison.
This isn’t remotely true. On paper, yes. In practice, though, “reasonable doubt” is an emotional decision made by jurors instead of an actuarial decision made by science and math.
A huge percentage of convictions would not pass a math check.
Say the only evidence against the accused specifically is a witness who has been bribed with a reduced sentence. What do you supposed the odds they lied are? Probably at least 60%. What if you have forensic evidence of drops of blood in an alley and the accused being stabbed in the throat hundreds of feet away, with a known timeline on the phone. What are the odds that they accused managed to fake this evidence? Probably more than 5 or 10 percent chance the accused didn’t fake it.
What if you have a trailer park resident spontaneously deciding to burn to death his whole family. The trailer burned down but there isn’t a shred of evidence he specifically did it, and there isn’t clear evidence it even was arson…
All 3 of these examples refer to well known cases, where jurors found the accused guilty, so guilty that they were deserving of the death penalty. In all 3 cases, no rational, sentient being could find them guilty “beyond reasonable doubt”, if the standard for reasonable doubt is “less than a 5% chance they were innocent”.
That one is Richard Glossip. I think it’s a mental flaw in that most people if they hear about the case might say “well, I think he might have done it. 2 juries did.”
That’s not an objective answer. A reasonable doubt is “does a reasonable explanation exist for all of the evidence that could mean the accused is not guilty”. In this case, the “reasonable explanation” is “that guy facing death himself lied about it”. Is this doubt reasonable? (more than 5% chance of being true is the standard I’d use). Of course.
Could Richard Glossip be guilty? Of course. Is there a more than 50% chance he is guilty? Maybe, maybe not. But, there isn’t enough evidence to take his life away for it. (and locking him in a cage til he croaks or is elderly is also taking his life away, not just execution)
So I asked for a cite for the claim that the case was prosecuted with “only evidence against the accused specifically is a witness who has been bribed with a reduced sentence.”
But there was more evidence against Glossip than the testimony of Sneed. For example, corroborating Sneed’s account, police recovered $1,200.00 from Glossip. The condition of the motel – its filth and the fact that only half its rooms were habitable – also corroborates Sneed’s account and gives a motive to Glossip. Evidence apart from Sneed’s testimony showed that Glossip acted to conceal Van Treese’s body, steering everyone away from room 102. He also made plans to flee, which is a lomngstanding principle in criminal law: flight can be used to infer consciousness of guilt. Glossip also lied to police about the broken window.
In short: while the testimony of Sneed was obviously critical, it wasn’t “the only.” In fact, the law requires that accomplice testimony MUST be corroborated and cannot along support a conviction. In Oklahoma, “…the corroborative evidence must tend in some degree to connect the defendant to the commission of the offense charged without the aid of the accomplice’s testimony. Even slight evidence is sufficient for corroboration, but it must do more than raise a suspicion of guilt.”
So your description of the case is incorrect: there was most certainly other evidence besides Sneed’s testimony against Glossip, and if there had not been, the verdict would not have been legally supported.
Maybe that convinces an elected judge, but no. None of those details you mentioned are exclusive to the possibility that Glossip ordered the murder. He may have known about the murder - it sounds like he did - but that is in no way evidence he did it. A rational person would not conclude this means he is guilty of the murder beyond a reasonable doubt. Acting in obstruction of justice? Sure.
Think like a mathematician, not a person reading into technicalities in some words on a page.
You know : 1. The evidence suggests the accused was aware of the murder
2. A person who literally is facing death says the accused did it, but this person physically committed the murder.
Neither statement allows you to conclude “beyond a reasonable doubt, the accused had the murder committed.” Sure, maybe he’s guilty. But look at it the other way. Is it *reasonable *to think that the person physically committing the murder also decided to commit the murder, and is it *reasonable *to think that whenever Glossip heard about it, he became concerned…about being falsely accused of murder…and was not immediately forthcoming to the police.
I say the chance of both being true is greater than 5%. Therefore not guilty. Case closed.
“I would really like Fairhurst; I have some good friends there. But I hear Tayleigh is much improved, and Ratshome has some of the finest catering this side of Provence, so either of those would be acceptable.”
Plea bargains don’t exist in all countries. Over here, they have been introduced only 5 years ago or so, and only for petty crime (punished by a sentence of one year or less). So, you can get a plea bargain for shoplifting, but no such thing for murder.
That’s a factual misstatement. Evidence, in law, is any information tending to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without that information. The fact that he knew about the murder is certainly evidence that he did it. Your objection is that it’s not strong evidence; it’s not evidence that excludes any possibility other than guilt.
And that’s true. It’s not evidence that excludes any possibility other than guilt.
But it’s still evidence. Evidence is information that tends to make a fact more probable (or less probable) than it would be without that information. It’s defined that way – see Federal Rules of Evidence 401.
Do you now understand what the word “evidence” means in the legal context?
Your argument rests on shifting ground. You started by claiming that there was “no evidence” apart from Sneed’s testimony. Now you’re claiming that the additional evidence, together with Sneed’s testimony, is insufficient to sustain reasonable doubt.
I’ll address that next, but first I want to be sure you’ve abandoned the “no evidence at all except Sneed’s testimony” claim. Have you?
In the Federal system I’ve seen plea deals where the government will agree to ask the Court to make a recommendation for a particular facility for low security inmates. (usually to make it easier for family visitation). The Judge will usually go along with it. The BOP doesn’t have to follow the recommendations, but in my experience, usually does.
In Washington State (the only state system I’m familiar with) the place you do your time is never part of the deal.
Well, evidence against that idea is that these days the vast majority of civil cases – where a private party is suing another private party – are settled without a trial, too. The thing is, with competent at least somewhat experienced lawyers on both sides, they probably have fairly similar ideas about how strong the case is for each side and what is likely to happen at a trial – they get to see each other’s evidence beforehand, the law is usually fairly clear, the outcome of similar cases is public record, etc. So why go through the huge expense and hassle of a trial, if both sides agree on what’s likely to happen?
I’m not saying that a criminal case is exactly like a private civil suit, and I’m not saying that there aren’t potential concerns about plea-bargaining (and possible overcharging) in criminal cases. But given that there’s been a trend towards settling before trial across the entire U.S. legal system – criminal and civil – you can’t really say that there’s something about criminal cases in particular that is the basic cause of plea bargains.