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 difficult, expensive, and eat up time.
Plea deals are easy, cheap, and fast.
Pressuring someone to a plea deal means skipping a lot of work and still seeing someone face *some* kind of penalty. (Can’t call it “justice” in some cases, as innocent folks do get pressured into plea deals.)
And if there IS a mountain of evidence for the crime, then the plea deal will be way more tempting than going on to a trial that the defendant is almost guaranteed to lose. Why bother with all that when you could “resolve” things right away?
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