[gnosis]

"The trials are public."

Actually, there mostly are no trials at all.

As the article states, "most drug-trafficking defendants plead guilty before trial"

One has to wonder if a "justice system" in which the majority of convicts have never even had a trial is worthy of the name.

[tptacek]

I find wildly erratic punitive sentencing for accused offenders who choose to go to trial alarming.

But I'm not alarmed that the majority of offenders plea out.

Trials are enormously expensive, and, in a coldly rational statistical sense, most of the accused are in fact guilty --- the fact patterns in many of these cases and the evidence supporting them are very straightforward. That there would be some incentive for the accused to spare the system the expense of litigation doesn't bother me, especially because the more resources get freed up from pointless controversies, the more resources are available to handle meaningful ones.

So, I think we agree that there's a problem, but not what its causes are.

Either way: plea out or not, these cases don't get brought without "untainted" evidence. The problem is that the DOJ's definition of "untainted" is subtly broken. "Fruit of a poisonous tree" is a good Google search to follow up on this.

[Vivtek]

Whether it goes to trial or not, whether the evidence is untainted or not, the primary problem with the war on drugs is the extrajudicial punishment system that is seizure of property on mere suspicion. Giving the DEA tips is paramount to simply declaring that anybody you dislike is no longer part of American society - and there's very little recourse, just as with the no-fly list.

I'm still not sure how it has come to pass that Americans simply blithely accept all this.

[gknoy]

> in a coldly rational statistical sense, most of the accused are in fact guilty

Without a trial, how do we know that?

If I am accused of something terrible, of which I am innocent, but a plea bargain gets me back to my family in N years instead of Never (or 10*N), I'm likely to lie and plead guilty. We've seen that the government doesn't merely use plea bargaining as a cost reduction tool, but rather as a very large hammer with which to ensure that people get punished in extreme ways.

While there are good police and prosecutors, as a system they are driven to increase convictions rather than to find the _guilty_. Given the chance, they can find something to convict nearly anyone of, and guilty verdicts can be nearly guaranteed against even people who are innocent by heaping up enough charges that either defense is too expensive or the penalty of losing at trial too large.

[yew]

In a coldly rational sense, the shape of the legal system contributes to the cultural context that informs the future actions of the courts and their apparatus.

True, if primary cause isn't challenged the legal system doesn't consider antecedents as evidence; but the courts only make decisions - they have no input into the consequences of those decisions, other than the making of them.

[jeltz]

In many countries you cannot plea out. Everything has to reach court, and I as living in one of these countries think is a good think. This prevents extortion and bullying by prosecutors. Your sentence should not depend on your skills at negotiation and knowledge of judicial processes.

[apalmer]

The DOJ's definition isn't "subtly" broken. It is completely a willful attempt to circumvent established law and precedent with a very convoluted trail of reasoning. Also not sure if this is really DOJ's definition, or certain branches of law enforcement.