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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There are two reasons.
The first is that there isn’t simply enough manpower to actually prosecute so many people. Were many defendants not offered plea deals, that would inherently increase the amount of hours used to get a conviction and each prosecutor would have less time to prepare itself on the case, and their conviction rates would likely plummet.
The second one is that in reality, the prosecutors hate going into court because going into court means some of their cases will get a *not guilty* verdict and this makes them look incompetent, while getting a plea deal is seen as a success to the general public. Research on federal courts, which likely have a higher conviction rate than state courts, *only* have a 83% conviction rate when trials are actually done.
TL; DR: Prosecutors don’t want a big pile of cases and they don’t like their conviction rates decreased when they go to trial. Offering plea deals is less about sparing families and more about sparing their own work pile and their credibility.
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