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.
There’s never a guarantee when you take something to trial. All it takes is one juror who doesn’t want to find them guilty. All it takes is one bad enough error and a mistrial can be declared. So a plea deal is a (mostly) sure thing and often worth avoiding the risk.
And in some cases, sometimes it’s worth it to not put the victims and/or their families through the ordeal of a trial, making them relive what happened to them and subjecting them to cross examination.
Another consideration in some of the worst cases is the mental health of a jury. In CSAM cases, a jury would have to look at each image/video the defendant is charged with. A deal can be offered to a defendant that still gives them life in prison, but maybe they get some kind of concession like getting to choose from certain facilities, like ones closer to their families so they’re more likely to get visits.
In short, it’s weighing all the variables, including the unpredictability of juries and the need to victimize/revictimize as few people as possible.
If you hire a lawyer your charges will be diminished in 90% of cases, then if you plea your overall expected cost is lower than going to trial (in terms of time and money).
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?
Aside from the expense and logistics of actually trying every case, there’s a very real risk of losing a case at trial. It often serves the public interest to guarantee the offender spends the minimum sentence in prison rather than gamble on a possible acquittal or conviction where they get the minimum anyway.
For comparatively minor crimes it’s also a way to expedite the whole process and essentially grant a stern warning to first time offenders. Spending a month in lockup while you wait for the court schedule to earn a conviction and 30 day sentence that’s already zeroed out with time served wastes everyone’s time.
Prosecutors get rewarded for winning cases, and guilty pleas are the fastest way. In addition, anything can happen at trial, the case can fall apart, new evidence comes to light, the jury becomes sympathetic to the defendant, some evidence becomes inadmissible, a key witness disappears, police misconduct ruins everything, etc. A plea is a guaranteed win, while trial isn’t.
Just a reminder that many democratic western countries don’t use grand juries of common people, but just judges, so there is no need for plea deals, trial % is much higher.
Also we don’t vote for our procecutors or sherifs, those things seem uterly insane to me.
US common law system and court practices isn’t the best, even oldest or it’s not the only democratic system. It has it’s merits, and 300 years ago it was really progressive, but for me it doesn’t seem to respect the principles it was found after years of medling and lobbying the laws and practises.
Trials are always a crapshoot. Seriously. You can have mountains of DNA and witnesses and a video tape and a confession and everything could go south when the trial actually starts. Witness gets confused and looks unreliable. DNA witness confuses the jury. Heck, I have seen prosecutors lose a trial because they goofed up and forgot to prove an element of the offense (that the gun involved was in interstate commerce). Literally, the prosecutor just needed to have a witness say “this gun is produced in a different state”. (I interned at DOJ so these were federal cases and you had to prove certain elements for the federal nexus to apply, like the interstate commerce thing or that the victim was a government employee).
Prosecutor forgot to do a simple thing and the charge was dropped because she didn’t prove that element of the case. No prosecutor expects to make a mistake, but there’s no mistake when you get a plea. And in addition, most plea deals include a clause where you waive your right to appeal which means that you aren’t risking something getting overturned.
The issue you are having is you are listening to true crime podcasts they sensationalise, they aren’t news outlets which in theory have a code of ethics, they flat make stuff up to make the narrative better.
Do NOT forgive them, ever. Cut contact and make sure to let them know they have no child with your name, they are dead to you and that if so much as you hear that they are dead you will celebrate and go spit on their graves.
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