To be sure, there is plenty of abuse of the plea bargaining system by Prosecutors -- much more than most establishment observers of the American legal system would care to admit. Nevertheless, it is beyond naive to think (and I am not suggesting that you do, Doug) that a substantial proportion of the people in jail, prison, or who are on probation/parole are actually innocent. A far larger proportion of convictions in the United States are obtained by violating defendants' constitutional rights (e.g. unlawful searches and seizures, ineffective assistance of counsel, improperly obtained confessions, etc.).
-WD
On 5/9/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On May 9, 2007, at 5:22 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
> > Personally, I'd rather see her wearing a signboard out in front of
> > one of the clubs she frequents, but I haven't given it much more
> > thought than that. I was in favor of freeing Martha Stewart though.
>
> Martha was a victim of the federal practice of trying to trap people
> into lying to a federal agent just to jail them, even if they weren't
> necessarily guilty of a crime in the first place. That's really
> sleazy and outrageous.
>
> By the way, I saw some stats recently about how few cases actually go
> to trial now (at the state/local level as well as the federal).
> Defendants are threatened with long prison terms and encouraged to
> agree to a plea bargain, which nets them just a few years behind
> bars. Anyone see these? I can't recover them...
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