[jakelazaroff]

You are the breadwinner for your household. A detective decides that you are the most likely person to have committed a nearby burglary. You have an alibi, but they charge you anyway. You cannot afford to pay bail; your options are to remain in jail until the case makes its way through the courts, or to accept a plea bargain that lets you out on probation. Your underfunded and overworked public defender advises you to take the deal, since a trial would be ruinous even if you do prevail. What do you do?

The issue with plea bargains is not that guilty people are given leniency for remorse; it is that they are used to coerce innocent people into confessing to a crime they did not commit.

[dijit]

So, back to the thread at hand: to your mind is this more often than when the law is working properly or less?

because it has been claimed in this subthread that the law is applied unjustly nearly 100% of the time.

[jakelazaroff]

I don't see any such claim, but the idea that prosecutors correctly identify the perpetrator in 98% of cases is obviously pure fantasy.

[bombcar]

In 98% of cases they bring for prosecution - they know the job, they know what works, and if they don't think they can follow through, they often just drop the case entirely, so it doesn't count.

[shimman]

Yes because we all know workers are the best judges of said work they do.

How often do you work on bug tickets and realize that the "simple one liner change" is actually more complicated? Okay now instead of it being a simple computer bug, you are dealing with real human lives and have the potential to destroy them quite easily.

Maybe the system isn't working as intended, maybe courts should be redesigned to be more accommodating to the needs of everyone and not just those with $100k in checking accounts.

[BrenBarn]

How do we know they know the job and know what works? How do we know that they define "what works" as justice and not "get convictions"?

[magicalist]

The objection seems to be to your claim without caveat that plea bargains are meaningfully "due process".

[dijit]

Anyone who says "all of x is justified" or "all of y is unjustified" is usually wrong.

I thought we were smart enough to realise that on HackerNews.

Parent of mine claimed that the law as practiced is unjust, I said, largely that's not true and that there's a pretty strong propaganda campaign against the legal system (due to aligned incentives of stoking up rage for clicks).

I didn't claim that unfairness didn't exist, merely that it's not the default.

I have now been told that because plea bargains exist for those who show remorse, that the law never follows due process.

Are we stupid? What's happening here?

[paulryanrogers]

The DOJ, DHS, ICE, and judicial processes are losing credibility quickly. If ever they deserved the benefit of the doubt, I would say that time has passed, at least at national level.