So I was hearing that, apparently, pleading guilty to something will actually get you a fairly significantly reduced sentence, assuming that you'll be found guilty either way (in US court of law of course). Maybe this only works provided you bargain it correctly or something.

Is that ethical?

Someone made the argument that we should encourage guilty pleas because it will speed the system up. I have several problems with this argument. Regardless of how often you think this happens, there are cases where the evidence will lead to an innocent man/woman being convicted. And I also think that the jury system in the US has evolved from "beyond reasonable doubt" to "probably" in terms of BoP. It just seems to me that encouraging innocent people to plea guilty is bat-shit insanely unethical.

Now, if we take my position to the logical extreme, we just shouldn't require pleas at all. If there's no benefit from pleading guilty, then that means everyone pleas innocent, which means it would be stupid to begin with. I don't have a problem with this. If it is proven that you did a crime, then you do the time. Asking for someone's remorse doesn't get their remorse.



[Edited on September 4, 2011 at 10:24 PM. Reason : ]

9/4/2011 10:22:10 PM

Shut up.

9/4/2011 10:41:13 PM

Quote :

"Shut up."

Also:

9/4/2011 11:14:39 PM

I've actually never thought of that before.

Yeah, it is a little fucked up.

9/4/2011 11:44:57 PM

the benefit of having people plead guilty is it saves time and money

9/5/2011 9:00:25 AM

Quote :

"it saves time and money"

But at what cost?

9/5/2011 9:01:25 AM

lol, have we begun argumentative circles already?

There was also some recent movie trailer I saw, although I can't find it now. The wife in this family was put on trial for a murder she didn't commit and the lawyer was like "duh, plea guilty" which obviously they were not happy with. Turns out the husband broke her out of jail out of that, which is pretty much the entire movie. I presume they live happily ever after as fugitives.

9/5/2011 9:16:45 AM

Plea bargaining obviously saves time and money over an actual jury trial. "But at what cost" is essentially the question you're asking in the OP (recognizing that not all costs may be tallied as time, dollars and cents).

Fun fact: 90% of criminal cases in the US are plea bargained.

9/5/2011 9:22:59 AM

^^^ At less cost.

^ Point?

9/5/2011 12:48:27 PM

^ There are no downsides to plea bargains? Is that what your trolling is trying to say?

9/5/2011 4:02:52 PM

Oh my God, this is already an extensively argued and researched issue

9/5/2011 6:03:19 PM

Tell us about it then!

9/5/2011 6:55:57 PM

The conclusion is inconclusive.

9/5/2011 7:36:01 PM

Pleading guilty does not get a reduced sentence. 1st degree murder is always 1st degree murder. However, the prosecutor can charge you with whatever he feels like, having complete discretion, so what happens is you promise to plead guilty and he promises to charge you with lesser offenses. The only way to stop such agreements would be to remove prosecutorial discretion. But then who decides what to charge people with?

9/5/2011 9:40:26 PM

^x5 I'm saying grown ass people are given a choice. They can plea guilty for a reduced sentence or go to court. I'm not following the logic that innocent people get convicted of crimes makes a plea bargain unethical.

Posting a wikipedia article that states that 90% of criminal cases in the US are plea bargained is pointless. So far you've typed a lot of words without saying anything. Why don't you cut the bullshit and state what problem you have with a plea bargain so we can just make you look like a damned fool.

9/5/2011 9:48:26 PM

100% of wikipedia articles are 5 degrees from Hitler.

9/5/2011 11:42:54 PM

Yeah but that's just because every article is at most 4 clicks from World War 2.

Whatever article you're on, click on any country
Click on history
click on world war 2
click on hitler


If for some reason the article you're on doesn't have a country, click on a name then click on his/her nationality.

9/6/2011 12:31:21 AM

IMO most criminal cases are plea-bargained because the cops have a shit-ton of evidence already and the suspect is guilty as sin and assured of a heavy sentence following conviction.

9/6/2011 1:10:29 AM

I don't necessarily believe that plea bargains are inherently unethical.

The problem comes in when the system is built up around the presumption of plea bargains...when there are a gazillion laws with exorbitant sentences used to intimidate and coerce defendants into taking a deal that may not be in their best interest. And obviously this matter becomes even more unjust when defendants cannot afford someone to accurately advise them on their best interest. It's truly not a fair "bargain" or "deal" when one side has an enormous upper hand.

And if you're a big fan of justice and punishment, then you may like the plea bargain for all the drug convictions it secures. But pretty much everybody resents the number of actual criminals who plead out to charges that don't reflect the heinous nature of their crimes.

9/6/2011 5:59:46 AM

^

9/6/2011 6:29:56 AM

Quote :

"But then who decides what to charge people with?"

The jury?

I'm sorry... I had to say it. And yeah yeah yeah, I got it, what you are charged with is different from what you're convicted with. And it's probably one of those genius things about our legal system that what one is convicted of must be a subset of what they are charged with.

Quote :

"Pleading guilty does not get a reduced sentence."

The only way this is true is if you assume the charges are different. Say it's the same case and, yes, plea bargains do get a reduced sentence.

For the record:

If someone is 50% likely to be guilty of getting 10 years, I do not entirely object to the idea that they be sentenced with 5 years. According to the great Wikipedia, it would seem that in today's world, you somewhat more-or-less have a chance to plea bargain to 5 years, or go to trial for a 50/50 chance of 10 years. Plus or minus some cost premiums for legal expenses.

A big problem with this is that I don't think juries would be very good at evaluating the likelihood of guilt. They're not very good at guessing one or the other as it stands, maybe they'd be even worse guessing at percents. It's possible to forecast 10% chance of rain and be shown to be empirically wrong in the predictions made. I mean, if your forecasts for rain were either not correlated or reverse correlated with rain, then the fact that you give a percentage chance as opposed to an absolute does not make you any more or less right. But we might need a statistician to weigh in on that.

9/6/2011 8:12:34 AM

Quote :

"The only way this is true is if you assume the charges are different. Say it's the same case and, yes, plea bargains do get a reduced sentence."

But the charges are different. You can plead guilty to 2nd degree murder for 20 to life or go to trial and be found guilty of 1st degree murder for the death penalty.

However, depending on the state prosecutors have the option of charging you with everything in the book, everything from 1st degree murder to 3rd degree manslaughter and let the jury sort out your punishment by choosing which to find you guilty of (called including lesser offenses). But they do this to obtain a conviction when the jury is unsure of guilt and thinks 5 years is a good compromise given the uncertainty.

9/6/2011 10:00:49 AM

Quote :

"But the charges are different. You can plead guilty to 2nd degree murder for 20 to life or go to trial and be found guilty of 1st degree murder for the death penalty."

Yes. Of course, we all get this. But the thing starts with a death, maybe an investigation depending on the circumstances, and then an arrest by the cops. The charge is after-the-fact. It doesn't change what happens.

Quote :

"But they do this to obtain a conviction when the jury is unsure of guilt and thinks 5 years is a good compromise given the uncertainty."

Alternatively, the prosecutor could only charge the person with the more severe option, so the jury has the option of sending the person to jail for 20 years or let him/her walk.

...that's a lot of power for the prosecutor to have.

9/6/2011 11:32:26 AM

It is. But the question is whether that is too much power. If the evidence is weak or the charges too severe then the jury should let them walk. The district attorney will find it difficult to seek re-election.

9/6/2011 11:54:51 AM

Quote :

"The problem comes in when the system is built up around the presumption of plea bargains...when there are a gazillion laws with exorbitant sentences used to intimidate and coerce defendants into taking a deal that may not be in their best interest."

as much as I hate to say it, I agree with Bridget here. It's quite hard to prove your innocence some times, and the plea-bargain is used to cement a conviction, even on innocent people. jackleg can tell you all about this fact. Hell, I heard this kind of shit on NPR the other day with a guy who plead guilty to a murder he didn't commit so he wouldn't get the death penalty after being badgered by police into a confession. Dude was stupid for confessing, but it just shows how fucked up the system is

9/6/2011 6:34:58 PM

Well, yes, badgered confessions should not be admissible in court. No argument there.

But what system can exist that won't convict any innocent when some people are willing to confess? Criminals sometimes confess, are no confessions to ever be admissible?

9/6/2011 8:27:20 PM

well obviously there should be some burden of proof for it to go to trial in the first place.

Like, if there's a 1% chance that a jury will convict the person, it shouldn't go to trial. I don't fully understand who has this discretion in the current system, but I'm pretty sure that the prosecutor is one of the people who has that power. Otherwise, I imagine that an investigation has to come up with suspects in the first place.

It kind of makes me wonder why we don't often hear about multiple people being charged for the same murder. Even if both were mutually likely, I think an investigator wouldn't like to accuse more than 1 person unless the thought was that they collaborated. Naturally, the average chance that a suspect did it would be <50%. I think an investigator might accuse someone with <50% chance they did it, but they just wouldn't like to admit it.

9/6/2011 10:51:11 PM

That the state is trying someone else for the same crime is more than enough reasonable doubt to secure a not guilty verdict.

9/7/2011 1:45:20 AM