Three Ways Courts Screw the Innocent Into Pleading Guilty
- Apr 17, 2024
- 1 min read
Updated: May 5, 2024
(senior federal district judge) Jed A. Rakoffs essay in The New York Review of Books tries to explain why innocent people so often plead guilty. At least 20,000 people have pled guilty to and gone to jail for felonies they did not commit. If you very conservatively take criminologists lowest estimates, and cut them in half. Rakoff identifies three ways the criminal justice system obstructs its own truth seeking mechanism, a trial by jury:
1. By embracing the increasingly popular plea bargain. 97% of federal trials were resolved last year through plea bargain. Plea bargains are weighted largely in favor of the prosecutor. The notion that a plea bargain is a contractual mediation between two relatively equal parties, Rakoff argues, is a total myth.
2. Through mandatory minimum sentences. The combination of mandatory sentences and prosecutorial discretion forces the defendant to run the risk of losing the case and serve the maximum sentence or take a reduced charge, at a reduced sentence, even when innocent.
3. Via the unfettered rise of prosecutorial power. Prosecutors have far more power than any other party involved in the criminal justice system. The one mechanism that could check their power is the jury trial, which is becoming virtually extinct in federal court, Rakoff writes. One possible solution to all these problems aside from repealing mandatory minimum sentences and generally reducing the severity of sentences is greater judicial oversight.
2014-11-07, The Intercept
