Why Innocent People Plead Guilty

November 1, 2014 1:11 PM

Jed S. Rakoff, senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, former federal prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, sheds light on the problems with how over 90% of criminal cases are resolved and proposes that judges be permitted to participate in the plea bargaining process.
posted by *s (14 comments total)

If ever there was a perfect example of "invisible privilege" it's this. If you're the kind of person with money to hire a lawyer and the kind of cultural capital that means you've grown up well informed about your legal rights and the way the judicial process works, it's simply baffling that people will plead guilty so easily to crimes they had no part in. But if you feel you're basically a pawn in a hostile system that's going to get its pound of flesh one way or the other, it often seems entirely rational to take what's being offered to you as the relatively "easy" way forward.
posted by yoink at 2:43 PM on November 1, 2014 [18 favorites]

"feel"
posted by effugas at 2:57 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

How about if we just eliminate plea bargains? And while we're at it we eliminate all the other ways prosecutors and LEOs have to threaten and pressure defendants? And scale their discretion way back as well?

If that makes the system collapse, well, that's just a sign of how much overcriminalization is going on...
posted by Hizonner at 3:07 PM on November 1, 2014 [20 favorites]

"feel"

To say that someone "feels" something is not to imply that it's a delusion.
posted by yoink at 3:19 PM on November 1, 2014 [4 favorites]

If all the accused refused to play ball (and plead out) the system would collapse as well. But it would require some coordination and cooperation among people accused of various crimes without any pre-existing relationship.
posted by el io at 3:43 PM on November 1, 2014

A few years back, there was an interesting Op Ed about going to trial as social protest against mass incarceration. Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow is also pretty eye-opening.
posted by *s at 4:04 PM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]

If all the accused refused to play ball (and plead out) the system would collapse as well. But it would require some coordination and cooperation among people accused of various crimes without any pre-existing relationship.
posted by el io at 6:43 PM on November 1 [+] [!]

It's literally the prisoner's dilemma.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 4:12 PM on November 1, 2014 [12 favorites]

I don't see this going anywhere alas. From the outside, it seems many in the US would think it better that 10 innocent persons suffer than one guilty person escape. Particularly since they're usually black, charged with drug offences, and thus must be 'guilty of something'.

Shockingly biased and unjust system; working as intended.
posted by ArkhanJG at 4:32 PM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]

I'm not sure if this made it onto the blue, but it touches on, in part, the manipulation of the justice system & abuse of plea bargains by prosecutors. It's an infuriating read.
posted by univac at 4:35 PM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]

A modest proposal: If we're committed to sentencing non-violent offenders to multi-decade sentences, train them to work as legal staff inside the judiciary system. We could complete many more jury trials this way.

Alternatively, we could eliminate mandatory minimums and use the money we save in prison costs to hire more court staff to complete more jury trials. But that's just crazy talk.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:05 PM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]

I am sure that, between the county's population and its love of narcotics prosecutions, among other things, the US experiences a substantially larger number of people moving through its legal system than many other countries. Still, how do those countries that have no equivalent of plea bargaining deal with keeping the court system running at a reasonably efficient pace?
posted by Bromius at 5:42 PM on November 1, 2014

it seems many in the US would think it better that 10 innocent persons suffer than one guilty person escape.

I have had family members tell me this exact thing -- except they went so far as to say that they would be willing to see 10 innocent people executed rather than one guilty person not.

The whole system is a disgusting cash-grab. Time to invest in for-profit, privately run prison companies!
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:14 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

Shockingly biased and unjust system; working as intended.

The complaint, locally, is that prosecutors "plead out" so many cases that the criminals have no incentive to go straight.

What's that, you say? Crime rates are falling at least as fast here as they are nationally? Go away, that's not germane to the discussion.
posted by dhartung at 11:52 PM on November 1, 2014

The economics of the system, at least on the federal side, in some ways mirrors problems with the pre-ACA healthcare system or employment. Those few with enough money to hire a great attorney are in good shape. Those with no money get the federal public defender, whose attorneys frequently have great pedigrees and experience at the white shoe firms and the knowledge to do a great job. I really feel for those who have enough money to hire some attorney, but not a terribly good one. (Or those who are convinced that a "free-world lawyer" is better than the public defender then squander all their family's money hiring someone who has no idea what they are doing.) The middle class folks are very much squeezed in this system and often have worse legal representation than people on either end.
posted by *s at 8:01 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]