Death of Due Process: 95% Of All Inmates Have Been Imprisoned Without Trial

Looking into the causes of this unacceptably high statistic, journalists and legal scholars have concluded that responsibility for this epidemic lies at the feet of plea bargaining. Plea bargaining is a long-standing practice within the criminal justice system in which a defendant receives a more lenient penalty if they plead guilty.

It may seem like a fair arrangement at first, but when you take into account the fact that some defendants may not have the legal resources to exonerate themselves and thus run the risk of harsh penalties if their plea of innocence is denied, you can see why it is absolutely not fair.

“Plea bargaining failed in its attempt to facilitate pragmatic justice seen in earlier courts, before the advent of the ‘adversary system and the related development of the law of evidence,’ as John H. Langein once described. After the Civil War, as Judge Jed S. Rakoff explained in the New York Review of Books, rising crime and immigration rates began to burden the system and plea bargains offered an acceptable solution. In other words, court proceedings were at one time swift and simple, and though such expediency might have seemed a desirable quality in the past, the incontrovertible reality at present is a system wholly focused on speed at the expense of the necessary — in fact, imperative — assumption of innocence of the accused.

Indeed, for incontrovertible proof the court system no longer functions for the people — neither in its capacity to protect the public from the actual criminals, nor in its ostensible assurances no innocent person will be punished unfairly — take even a cursory glance at the trial system. Plea bargains have actualized a replacement of justice with a farcical, well-oiled machine of incarceration. ‘In actuality,’ as Rakoff described, ‘our criminal justice system is almost exclusively a system of plea bargaining, negotiated behind closed doors and with no judicial oversight. The outcome is very largely determined by the prosecutor alone.’

Of all federal criminal cases, ‘fewer than 3 percent went to trial. The plea bargains largely determined the sentences imposed.’

Plea deals are presented to defendants as a way to escape the near certainty of a heavy-handed sentence should they be found guilty by a jury at trial — because defense attorneys’ and prosecutors’ most pressing goal is to prevent a trial in the first place. ‘Once you are charged in America,’ Hedges said, ‘whether you did the crime or not, you are almost always found guilty.’”

In part, such ‘unconditional guilt’ begat the need for The Innocence Project — “a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.” Since 1989, there have been 337 DNA-related exonerations with individuals having served a combined total of around 4,606 unjustified years — an average of 14 years, each, before being freed. Of those 337 cases, 31 individuals, who had served over 150 combined years, “pled guilty to crimes they didn’t commit — usually seeking to avoid the potential for a long sentence (or a death sentence),” states The Innocence Project’s website.
“If all of the accused went to trial, the judicial system, which is designed around plea agreements, would collapse. And this is why trial sentences are horrific. It is why public attorneys routinely urge their clients to accept a plea arrangement. Trials are a flashing red light to the accused: DO NOT DO THIS. It is the inversion of justice.” Of the students he teaches in prison, those “who have the longest sentences are usually the ones who demanded a trial.”

Source: Activist Post