[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.