[lbo-talk] The Death of the American Trial

[Dennis Claxton]

On 10/10/2012 2:17 AM, Ismail Lagardien wrote:
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> Not sure if anyone has read this - just sharing.
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> "Despite what TV dramas may suggest, the American trial has become an endangered species.  In 2002, less than 2 percent of civil cases ended at trial, down from 12 percent forty years earlier and 25 percent in the 1930’s.  The percentage of criminal cases going to trial declined almost 70% between 1976 and 2002, to less than 5%.  Though the numbers of cases have increased, they are almost always now “disposed of” – a telling metaphor – without trial.  Judges decide more and more often on a purely paper record.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-fairer-deal-for-those-who-plea-bargain/2012/10/03/47fa81ce-081d-11e2-858a-5311df86ab04_print.html

IF YOU IMAGINE the nation’s prosecutors regularly going to trial to 
convict the bad guys, imagine again.

The Wall Street Journal reported recently that 97 percent of cases the 
Justice Department prosecuted last year ended with guilty pleas, up from 
84 percent in 1990. The ratio is nearly as high at the state level. 
“Criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a 
system of trials,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote this year.

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