[psychlops]

The harm is that innocent people incriminate themselves. People are not experts on the law and make mistakes all the time. Even if they are eventually exonerated, the process is the punishment and there is no recourse.

Not to mention that defense attorneys are usually overworked, working for free and you generally get what you pay for.

[pixl97]

This right here. Any state assigned attorney is going to say "Take the plea". Simply put, most of the suspects do not have the money to present the case as needed in front of the courtroom, and the lawyer states, taking the plea is less apt to bankrupt you.

[bombcar]

To be brutally honest, some huge percentage of people who get to the "plea" option are actually and truly guilty - this causes all sorts of issues.

(One of the strange side-effects of mandatory sentencing is removing plea deals because if they HAVE to charge you with X, and guilty or plead on X is Y years in jail, then there is no reason not to go to a jury trial, because the worst case is you get Y years anyway, which you get when you plea out.)

If criminals really were organized and forced everything to jury trials, the United States would collapse.