Adding to this watering down of the Sixth Amendment is the fact that most defendants take pleas without even knowing the strength of the case against them. But defendants who wait till then lose the benefit of a plea bargain. There are benefits to this system of course — it diminishes court dockets and saves the expense of conducting a trial. Our Constitution claims to protect the guilty as well, affording them a presumption of innocence and protecting them from punishment unless the government can prove them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Innocence Is Irrelevant in the Age of the Plea Bargain - The Atlantic
A system characterized by extravagant trial penalties produces guilty pleas in cases where the government cannot satisfy that burden, hollowing out those protections and producing effects no less pernicious than innocents pleading guilty. What used to be 20 percent of those arrested choosing trial 30 years ago, is now down to 3 percent. This fear of trial saves the prosecution from having their evidence tested for both accuracy and sufficiency. It makes them lazy, invites corruption, and coerces defendants who stand a chance of being acquitted to back off.
It also creates injustices. In one murder case, an offer was made of 11 years on a plea. After trial, the defendant was sentenced to The defendant did not take the stand, thus the prosecution could not argue that he committed perjury or obstructed justice. He was given the higher sentence merely because he refused to plead guilty.
In antitrust cases, it was more than eight times as high. Poor people often suffer the most. Since his trial, there is substantial evidence that exonerates Reed and implicates the victim's fiance Jimmy Fennell, a local police officer.
Bastrop, TX — October 4, Ramos, highlighting the number of innocent people in Louisiana who have been wrongly convicted by a non-unanimous juries. Press Release. Special Features. According to the report: Guilty pleas have replaced trials for a very simple reason: individuals who choose to exercise their Sixth Amendment right to trial face exponentially higher sentences if they invoke the right to trial and lose…This [trial] penalty is now so severe and pervasive that it has virtually eliminated the constitutional right to a trial.
Share this story Help us advocate for the innocent by sharing the latest news from the Innocence Project. Leave a reply. Share Facebook Twitter Linkedin. Cooper , S. The Constitution requires reliable procedures in order to accurately identify suspects who are guilty. That begs the question of whether plea bargains fulfill that constitutional mandate. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 15 percent of all exonerees originally pleaded guilty.
That share rises to 49 percent for people exonerated of manslaughter and 66 percent for those exonerated of drug crimes. Critics point to the paradigm shift that plea bargains created.
What can be done to improve this important and problematic practice?
They say the prospect of pleas places too much power in the hands of prosecutors as they have the sole authority to decide what charges will be lodged. The problem with overcharging is extremely harmful for poor persons who cannot afford to post a cash bond. Several studies have found that pretrial detention results in longer sentences, and it is more likely the defendant will plead guilty.
He managed to post bond, and the offer changed to probation and community labor. While arrestees are not formally charged with a crime and are considered by the Constitution to be innocent, most of them must post a bond to obtain release. In most jurisdictions, low-level charges such as misdemeanors have a set bond amount, but in others, the defendant must appear before a court for that amount to be determined. This is where overcharging begins to have a detrimental effect upon the accused. More charges mean a bond amount for each charge, and overcharging a crime can make the defendant appear to be a greater public safety risk.
His reasonable bonds have a floor. Of those, 97 percent used a bondsman. This is a cozy little industry. Under Louisiana law, a small percentage of every bond contract with a bondsman goes back to the budgets of the court, the sheriff, the district attorney, and the public defenders. Most bondsman charge 10 percent of the set bond, which is not returned even if the charges are dismissed. For those who cannot post a bond, the only option is to wait in jail until their case is resolved.
The main consequence is usually the loss of a job and inability to provide for family. The result is that justice in our courts depends on wealth. A study analyzing , cases determined that those who gained pretrial release were That is a major concern of plea bargains: People plead guilty but maintain their innocence. Alford , U. Henry C. Alford was unable to read or write when he was charged with first-degree murder in He was an African-American facing the criminal justice system at the height of the civil rights movement, and to assist him, a lawyer who was just a few years out of law school was appointed.
While there were no eyewitnesses, there was strong evidence of guilt. At arraignment, Alford was expected to plead guilty, but he testified that he was only doing so to avoid the death penalty. After some discussion, the court accepted the plea and sentenced Alford to 30 years in prison for second-degree murder. When the case came before SCOTUS, it ruled that there are two components to a guilty plea: the waiver of the right to trial and the admission of guilt. The court found the latter was not a constitutional requisite to imposing a criminal sanction.
Criminal Procedure
Because Alford pleas are not categorized in court statistics, the frequency of their entry is difficult to quantify. In a report by Wolf Harlow that used a Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities, it was estimated that 65, state prisoners 6 percent of the state prison population and 2, federal prisoners 3 percent entered Alford pleas.
Research by the PBS NewsHour and Capital News Service identified more than cases where suspects pleaded guilty, but there was strong evidence of innocence. The National Registry of Exonerations says 15 percent of exonerees pleaded guilty. If just 1 percent of the people who entered Alford pleas in the study were factually innocent, then of those prisoners suffered a grave injustice in the name of keeping an overburdened and underfunded court system functioning.
Plea Bargains and Guilty Pleas
Why would an innocent person plead guilty? There are a number of factors that contribute to such pleas. It starts with the cash bond system. If bond is set higher than people can post, they face months or even years in jail awaiting final disposition of their case. Ironically, such offers often come immediately after the prosecutor argued that the defendant was a public safety threat that required an out-of-reach cash bond.
Then they keep dragging it out. Can I get out today? Prosecutors can wreak havoc on the life of a person who insists he or she is innocent and wants to exercise the right to a jury trial. Rakoff in a New York Books Review article. Indeed, in 11 states that advantage is enhanced because the law does not require prosecutors to disclose discovery materials such as videos, witness statements, and other key evidence until the eve of trial.
This often results in situations where people plead guilty to a crime they did not commit because they do not know what evidence prosecutors have against them. Some prosecutors see it the other way. Bronx nightclub bouncer Aaron Cedres learned firsthand how broken the system is when he was charged with gang assault, which carries 25 years in prison, during a scrum outside the bar in which he worked.
The prosecutor said the video from outside the bar looked bad for Cedres when offering a guilty plea for a five-year sentence. Cedres insisted he only threw one punch to break up two men. The charges caused Cedres, who at 25 had no prior record, to lose his job, which left him homeless and forced his girlfriend and their infant daughter to move in with her mother.
Those pressures and the threat of a long prison sentence had him considering the plea offer. Then, his attorney pushed to see the video.