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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The criminal justice system (in the US) is a funnel – capacity declines as you get further into the system.
The system cannot afford to put every single case on trial – afford either in time or money.
This leads to something known colloquially as the “trial tax.” If you are guilty, and you force a trial, and you are found guilty, you will generally have a more harsh sentence than had you accepted the plea originally.
Additionally, you are generally charged with the most serious and the highest number of charges in order to get you to WANT to plea down. Generally by the time you go for trial, it’s not for everything you were initially charged with. But by throwing everything at you during the charging phase, they can get you to take a plea deal.
95% of guilty cases in the US are settled through plea deals.
EDIT 1: Yep, it is a problem that innocent people accept plea deals. However, that has more to do with the problems with the public defender system in most large jurisdictions. Most PDs are overworked, with caseloads double or triple what they should be. Thus, you have innocent people who don’t understand how the system works, with legally-acceptable-but-less-than-adequate-defense-counsel and there you go.
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