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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> I know part of the reason is to spare the victim(s) and their families the trauma of going through a trial
That’s not really a reason, or at least not the main one. The main reason is that a trial, even a slam dunk conviction, still takes a lot of work and a ton of time. The courts can’t handle it and the prosecutors can’t handle the many cases they have going to trial all the time. Most prosecutors are happy to have defendants take a plea and get a guaranteed sentence instead of doing all that work for the possibility of an acquittal even on case that seems really good. Don’t forget, Marcia Clark though her case against OJ was a slam dunk and look how that turned out. At the end of the day, the prosecutor doesn’t really care about the difference between the sentence at trial vs the sentence on the plea because the defendant is still convicted, and being sentenced to *something*.
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