[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.