Monday, October 13, 2014

Innocent Until Forced Guilty

Overcrowded Los Angeles Prison
The court room of America is no longer a place where the prosecution and defense are on an even playing field. According to an article featured in The Economist last week, titled "The Kings of the Courtroom", prosecutors are dominating the entire criminal justice system. 

In the modern court room, the prosecutors, especially U.S. attorneys, have an arsenal of tricks designed to sway the evidence in their favor. One of the most powerful is plea bargaining, which allows U.S. attorneys to deal out shorter sentences in exchange for guilty pleas. Because of this policy, "more than 95% of cases end in such deals" and are never even brought to trial. However, it is very unlikely that 95% of defendants are in fact guilty. The article explains that many defendants choose to give in to such deals because "harsh, mandatory minimum sentencing rules can make such a choice rational. Rather than risk a trial and a thirty year sentence, some cop a plea and accept a much shorter one". Therefore, the government is strengthening its grip both with its appointed attorneys and with its laws. 

While forcing the innocent into pleading their guilt does sound corrupt, the alternative has the potential for causing far greater issues. As I discussed in my blog last week, (please see blog post titled, "Is the Constitution Dead?") the overcrowding of the criminal courts has caused over seventy-four percent of felony in New York City's Bronx to stretch longer than six months. With this being the case, and Kalief Browder, a teenager from brooklyn, spending over three years of his adolescence in jail awaiting trial because of it, I fear what the abolition of excessive plea bargaining might result in. After all it supposedly removes 95% of felony cases from the waiting line. Without it, the justice system may "buckle under the weight" of all the extra trials (The Economist)

United States voters should not be forced to decide between waiting in jail for a trial, or giving into the prosecution's manipulative bargaining. Both end in perpetuating a justice system which has put a higher percentage of its population in jail than any other nation in the world. The justice system shouldn't compromise on what it believes is the lesser of two evils, but rather should create a solution that ends in freedom and fairness for its people.


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