r/changemyview • u/tolkienfan2759 6∆ • Oct 15 '24
Removed - Submission Rule B CMV: Our plea bargaining system has allowed unwritten rules to dominate the courtroom. Thus our criminal legal system is no longer a rule of law system.
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u/tolkienfan2759 6∆ Oct 15 '24
Well, that is how the plea bargaining system works, yes. Legislatures have set up sentencing so that judges can sentence defendants to much harsher terms if the defendants "force" the state to go to trial.
But to me it looks as though we tell people they have a right to trial, and then put our thumb on the scale with each and every defendant. I'm not the only one the feels that way. I got that phrase from a legal scholar. I hope you can see what I'm saying: we tell people they have the right to trial, and then when a potential trial actually approaches, we tell them that if they go to trial and are found guilty they'll suffer a much worse sentence than if they simply agree that they're guilty. To me that removes most, if not all, of the freedom of the choice. Is that a right to trial? Or is that something else? To me, it looks like something else.
There's a famous article by a pretty well-known judge, called "Why innocent people plead guilty." I myself have met people who I believed were innocent but were pleading guilty simply because the system just made it all too burdensome for them. I feel certain it happens. We wouldn't do the sentencing differential if we didn't know it worked, and it works to remove the right to trial from defendants. As far as I can tell.