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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Courts are limited by staff, budgets, scheduling availability, and having to comply with people’s rights.
So let’s say I walked into a store, showed my ID to buy a gun then used the gun to rob the store, and was arrested 10 minutes later with the dye bag exploded all over my hands, and matching the description from the CCTV.
I have a right to a prompt trial, a recent order came down that there should be 6 months between being charged and having a trial.
So the prosecutor looks at this, it’s a slam dunk case, but it’s case 1 of 719 that need to be addressed before September 13th. So they could hit me with Armed Robbery, Pointing a firearm, possession stolen property, and we could go through the process, and after it all since it’s my first offense I may get 4 years in prison.
But maybe they offer I plea to armed robbery, they’ll waive the pointing a firearm and possession stolen property, in exchange for saving court time and resources, I end up spending a year in jail and 2 years probation.
So I decide I don’t want to spend 4 years in prison and agree to the deal. Now there are only 718 matters to get through for the prosecutor, this also reduces the need for court resources, witnesses (keep in mind police tied up in court are police not on the streets, to say nothing of paid overtime), spares the victim from having to testify, and ultimately can achieve the goals of sentencing;
1. Rehabilitate the accused so they don’t do crime
2. Protect the public
3. Deter the behaviour.
So 1 year in jail and probation may be considered to address those. But if I don’t plea, you have to fight me in court, you have to prove the allegations, you have to call the witnesses, tie up days of the court’s time, the lawyer has to spend dozens of hours preparing for trial and at the end, I go to jail for 4 years.
Do those 4 years in jail achieve the goals of sentencing significantly enough to justify the cost when you could just offer me a plea to achieve the same goals?
So now let’s apply that to the 718 cases, you have 20 prosecutors available, the courthouse has 5 courtrooms and 4 Judges, trials can take hours to days or weeks. Remember, these have to be completed by a hard deadline or the KILLERS GO FREE, and the pedo gets to walk AND sue the government, tax payers dollars, criminals roam the streets!
So if 500 people are offered plea deals and 400 take them, our 718 cases are now a manageable 318.
That means each prosecutor takes 15 cases they can focus preparation in. Two courtrooms can handle the short trials, one courtroom processes the medium length trials, and the murder case running 6 weeks gets the fourth courtroom. The murderer gets addressed, the pedo goes to jail, the shoplifters got the pleas, the drunk drivers who got their licenses suspended got pleas, the small scale low impact criminals don’t gum up the works, and the serious criminals are promptly addressed.
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