[lessnonymous]

I'd go further. The jury must convict on all presented charges or none. Throwing 900 charges at someone, as the article says, is a way to force a plea bargain from someone who may well be innocent. (And removing a charge after failing the plea bargain tactic, but before court can't be allowed either.)

[gamblor956]

That is an extremely dumb idea. And I say that from the POV as someone who used to represent criminal defendants.

A person can be guilty of multiple crimes for the same act. Under the basic principles of criminal constitutional law, all crimes for the same act must be charged at the same time. Your solution would mean that someone guilty of rape, murder, and larceny would go completely free if they were found guilty of the two more serious crimes (rape and murder) but not guilty (or no verdict) for the least serious crime.

[mindslight]

> Under the basic principles of criminal constitutional law, all crimes for the same act must be charged at the same time

You're just referencing double jeopardy, and mean that you have to simultaneously present all charges that you ever want to charge them with, right?

In your hypothetical, just ignore the larceny. In the event that they're found guilty of rape and murder, you can't really say that justice wasn't done. In the event they can beat the serious charges, you shouldn't think that getting them on the larceny would have been actual justice.

To the extent you may be right that it's a fundamentally bad idea, then the fact that one minor act can be turned into so many "independent" charges demonstrates the problem with a proliferation of laws that cover any possibly wrong action five times over.

[adenner]

One possible fix would be for Prosecutors to have a karma rating and each time someone is found not guilty of any charge it brings them down a notch. At a certain point then they would have their law license suspended for a time.

[Tuna-Fish]

That's almost how the current system works, and is a source of much of it's woes. There is no actual "karma rating", but prosecutors are very mindful of their success rates as they are generally considered to be a measure of their worth as a prosecutor and the basis on their future career advancement.

Because of that, once they prosecute someone, they must succeed -- and this leads to situations like the prosecution withholding or trying to hide evidence proving innocence.

[dllthomas]

Right, a 100% conviction rate could mean any of 1) they are very good at picking their battles, 2) they are very good at convicting innocent people, 3) they are extremely over-conservative in the cases they pursue. Only 1 is a good thing, although lesser degrees of 3 might be as well, depending. 2 is outright bad.

[1337biz]

Is there a way to compare / access the success rates of different prosecutes?

[gnoway]

I was just thinking about this. Why do we allow multiple charges per trial?

What would happen if we only allowed one charge per trial, and it was a prosecutor's job to determine (along with existing duties) which one of the possible charges would be tried? Double jeopardy would be prevented by requiring submission to the court of all considered charges; attempting to bring a new charge for an already-adjudicated matter would be handled like a failure to disclose exculpatory evidence is today - the charge would be thrown out and the prosecutor would be reprimanded however that happens today.

[CJefferson]

So if we were (for example) sure a person had committed rape, and had good evidence they also committed murder, it is up to the prosecutor to decide if they should risk pursuing a murder charge, risking a person going free for a rape which they would certainly be convicted for?

Also, if you do murder someone, you may as all rape them too, as it can't lead to any more sentence?

[gamblor956]

We allow multiple charges today because a person can be guilty of multiple different crimes for the same act.

Your suggestion makes no sense. It would incentivize people to commit as many crimes simultaneously as possible, knowing that they could only ever be charged for one of them.

[coldtea]

>We allow multiple charges today because a person can be guilty of multiple different crimes for the same act.

There is no logical necessity that "multiple different crimes for the same act" HAVE to be tried in the same trial, which was the whole point of what he said.

>Your suggestion makes no sense. It would incentivize people to commit as many crimes simultaneously as possible, knowing that they could only ever be charged for one of them.

Again you tollaly miss not only the point, but also his suggestion completely. He doesn't say a person has to be charged with "only one" of the crimes he did, but that each crime charge should have it's own trial proceedings.

[gamblor956]

There is no logical necessity that "multiple different crimes for the same act" HAVE to be tried in the same trial, which was the whole point of what he said.

Of course not. But in the real world, pragmatism applies. Related crimes will almost always be tried together; it is only in extremely rare circumstances where one or more charges will be tried separately from related charges.

Again you tollaly miss not only the point, but also his suggestion completely. He doesn't say a person has to be charged with "only one" of the crimes he did, but that each crime charge should have it's own trial proceedings.

This would only be possible if the defendant waived their right to a speedy trial. The flipside to allowing only one charge per trial is that a defendant's risk of criminal punishment could extend for years for the period between arraignment (the charging hearing) and judgement (the verdict), rather than weeks or months as is the case today.

[gnoway]

No, I actually meant that for a particular act, you could be held accountable for one crime committed during the act and that's it. The idea being the prosecutor would pick the most serious charge likely to win conviction and focus their attention on that. I thought it would streamline the entire process and result in a higher quality trial, since attention would not have to be split amongst several charges.

I was thinking of two situations: multiple homicides resulting in e.g. multiple life sentences - this has always seemed like silly theatrics to me - and the situation where e.g. a traffic stop for a busted taillight might lead to charges of driving on a suspended license, drugs possession because the friend-of-a-friend you're giving a ride to had weed on him and threw it under the seat, and resisting arrest because you argued with the cop. I was NOT thinking about gamer criminals trying to execute multi-crime combo moves, or about the scenario where someone was killed and rape was certain but murder iffy.

So overall the one charge approach has a lot of problems. It was a poorly formulated idea and I should not have posted it.

Thanks for attempting to find reason in it, though.

[dragonwriter]

> Why do we allow multiple charges per trial?

Because it saves the state (and, hence, the public) -- both the court and the prosecution -- witnesses, and the defendant time, and money and reaches finality sooner to consider related charges in a single proceeding rather than serial proceedings.

That's why we actually go further than allowing multiple charges per trial, but require, in many circumstances, related charges to be prosecuted in the same trial or not at all.

And, also, why we do the same thing in the civil system (though in that case, you have to consider another party -- the potential private plaintiff -- who has the same savings, since the state is no longer paying both the court and the prosecution.)

[dredmorbius]

Note that if there are multiple charges, prosecuting all of them at once benefits the accused as well, who needs to mount only one defense, as opposed to facing multiple trials for multiple charges.

The latter is the case at times especially where federal charges are brought against someone who's been found not guilty on state/local charges within the US. While I understand the tactic, it has significant abuse potential.

[einhverfr]

Well, there may be good reasons for multiple charges. For example, rape and murder might be tried together.

However, if we stopped allowing lesser included charges, that would be a good thing. For example, let's stop giving juries the ability to say "It wasn't murder, but manslaughter since intent wasn't proven."

[amalag]

I think there must be legitimate instances of multiple charges per a trial. I like the idea in the comment you responded to, I think that would be effective enough.