"New report from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers concludes that more and more innocent people are pleading guilty to avoid the risk of the massive penalties of going to trial. The suggestion simmering underneath: that the entire system seems now to be built primarily to push most people through by plea bargaining. **97% of cases now end in plea bargaining.** This means that oversight by jury is now mostly cut out of the system. Their conclusion is that the 6th amendment is now almost de facto extinct.
The piece notes that, if we had only a 10% increase in people choosing to go to trial instead of plea bargaining, the courts wouldn’t be able to handle the load.
“There is ample evidence that federal criminal defendants are being coerced to plead guilty because the penalty for exercising their constitutional rights is simply too high to risk.”
“Guilty pleas have replaced trials for a very simple reason: individuals who choose to exercise their Sixth Amendment right to trial face exponentially higher sentences if they invoke the right to trial and lose. Faced with this choice, individuals almost uniformly surrender the right to trial rather than insist on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, defense lawyers spend most of their time negotiating guilty pleas rather than ensuring that police and the government respect the boundaries of the law including the proof beyond a reasonable doubt standard, and judges dedicate their time to administering plea allocutions rather than evaluating the constitutional and legal aspects of the government’s case and police conduct. Equally important, the public rarely exercises the oversight function envisioned by the Framers and inherent in jury service.”
The piece notes that, if we had only a 10% increase in people choosing to go to trial instead of plea bargaining, the courts wouldn’t be able to handle the load.
“There is ample evidence that federal criminal defendants are being coerced to plead guilty because the penalty for exercising their constitutional rights is simply too high to risk.”
“Guilty pleas have replaced trials for a very simple reason: individuals who choose to exercise their Sixth Amendment right to trial face exponentially higher sentences if they invoke the right to trial and lose. Faced with this choice, individuals almost uniformly surrender the right to trial rather than insist on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, defense lawyers spend most of their time negotiating guilty pleas rather than ensuring that police and the government respect the boundaries of the law including the proof beyond a reasonable doubt standard, and judges dedicate their time to administering plea allocutions rather than evaluating the constitutional and legal aspects of the government’s case and police conduct. Equally important, the public rarely exercises the oversight function envisioned by the Framers and inherent in jury service.”