Been listening to a bunch of true crime podcasts lately. More often than not, the person accused of a horrific crime, is offered some sort of reduced sentence, in exchange for a guilty plea. I know part of the reason is to spare the victim(s) and their families the trauma of going through a trial. It just seems pointless when they have so much evidence to convict them and give them a harsher sentence, especially considering how many people rarely serve the full sentence. I get it but I also don’t.
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Trials are always a crapshoot. Seriously. You can have mountains of DNA and witnesses and a video tape and a confession and everything could go south when the trial actually starts. Witness gets confused and looks unreliable. DNA witness confuses the jury. Heck, I have seen prosecutors lose a trial because they goofed up and forgot to prove an element of the offense (that the gun involved was in interstate commerce). Literally, the prosecutor just needed to have a witness say “this gun is produced in a different state”. (I interned at DOJ so these were federal cases and you had to prove certain elements for the federal nexus to apply, like the interstate commerce thing or that the victim was a government employee).
Prosecutor forgot to do a simple thing and the charge was dropped because she didn’t prove that element of the case. No prosecutor expects to make a mistake, but there’s no mistake when you get a plea. And in addition, most plea deals include a clause where you waive your right to appeal which means that you aren’t risking something getting overturned.
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