[byoung2]

The system is set up to push people toward plea bargains. Even an innocent person charged with first degree murder and facing 25 to life would consider a plea of involuntary manslaughter with a sentence as short as 3 years. Over 90% of trials in the US end in a plea bargain...I wonder how many people take a plea when they are innocent.

[coopdog]

As unethical as it would be, a scientific experiment to replicate the system closely and charge people with falsified crimes to find out the percentages who admit guilt while knowing they're innocent.. it potentially really could save thousands of innocent people

[eli_awry]

Another interesting thing would be to let the plea-bargain cases go to trial, with a moot outcome and see how many come up not guilty. Unfortunately, it would be very difficult to motivate lawyers to argue their hardest.

[byoung2]

I bet someone somewhere has pitched that very idea as a reality show.