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by crunchatized 2886 days ago
Given the justification for plea deals is the crowded dockets, alternatively, you could talk to your representatives to reform the laws so fewer acts are crimes that get people arrested in the first place.

Also alternatively, instead of using life-ruining threats to 'incentivize' defendants, the only actors in the system being strong-armed here, into 'reasonable' capitulations to do whatever the prosecutor wants, you incentivize prosecutors to better behavior by abolishing plea deals so they have to focus finite resources on prosecuting only the most important cases against the most dangerous individuals, and not to add as many people as possible to the USA's disproportionately massive prison population. [0]

Also also alternatively, instead of fretting about a zero-sum game where defendants suffer from 'delayed justice' due to other defendants enjoying their right to a day in court, you could try to eliminate cash bail and let people back into the community until they've actually been convicted of a crime, so they don't have to await their trial from a jail cell. [1]

And being stubborn, illogical, mistrusting, or giving an abstract concept the metaphorical middle finger is one of the weakest possible reasons to punish someone with excessive jail time that you actually know they don't deserve, in an unaccountably secretive, opaque legal game of chicken where you're trying to make the defendant blink first.

[0] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2018.html

[1] https://reason.com/blog/2018/01/25/government-is-gutting-the...

1 comments

Can I vote for you somewhere?
Yes, it’s the little up arrow next to their username. It’s called an “upvote”. :P
I voted twice now :)