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Comment by imroot | Hacker News Reader

There was a DA who did this in California when he was running for re-election in the early 2000's -- no more plea bargains. What happened is that the ADA's workload tripled, they ran out of courtrooms (and had to get courtrooms in other counties to fill the backlog), and people were released because of their right to have a speedy trial were being infringed.

While the wheels of Justice turn slowly, plea agreements are the oil that keeps the wheels turning at all. Think about it -- if you're speeding, and you know you're speeding, do you really want to take time from a Judge and a Trooper to have them present evidence to know that you're speeding? Even more so, if the trooper wrote your ticket so you don't get any points -- just a fine? Better yet...do you want someone to sit in jail if they're innocent because he can't afford his bail to sit longer because of all of the backlog?

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What happened is that the ADA's workload tripled, they ran out of courtrooms (and had to get courtrooms in other counties to fill the backlog), and people were released because of their right to have a speedy trial were being infringed.

I would argue that is the correct outcome. At this point, we either adjust policy/law to reduce the backlog (decriminalize drug possession, etc). Or, we commit to the path of criminalizing everything and tax and spend accordingly.

Indeed. This exposes the true cost of (something more closely approaching) justice.

People will either pay more taxes to fund it (unlikely) or change their tolerance of what actions they want prosecuted

Which is to say that as a society we don't allocate the resources we'd really need in order to give all defendants a fair and speedy trial.

Might say something about how much we really value that ideal.

You're right that it's nice in some ways to be able to reach plea agreements. To the extent the system can depend on them in order to get things done, though, that means there are incentives for suboptimal outcomes.

Maybe a right to a speedy and fair trail is not scalable? Maybe at 300M people, there has to be a layer of BS?

If tax revenue stays the same per person, then there shouldn't be any problem funding the justice system as population grows, as long as the arrest rate stays the same.

My suspicion is that arrest rates increase with population density and with rates of poverty.

Which rapidly leads to a problem of funding and/or justice.

Perhaps deal with a few less offenses and spend less money paying officers to troll for victims.... err I meant criminals.

Is the outcome where innocent people go to prison better than the one where guilty people go free? That's the trade-off of aggressive plea bargaining vs. an overloaded system. This is more morally complex than you're giving it credit for.

If the wheels are grinding innocent people down, maybe they shouldn't be turning quite so fast.

That's an argument that many conservative jurists have made, such as when SCOTUS declared that due process requires that the constitutional right to counsel means the destitute get a free lawyer. (The text never meant that; it only guaranteed the right to have your own lawyer represent you, assuming you could afford one. That interpretation isn't even in dispute.) Likewise when they set lower bounds on what a speedy trial meant. I don't always agree with that perspective, but certainly the logic behind those views is sound (if incomplete), and we shouldn't be surprised that both of those changes helped to usher in the age of plea bargaining. (The real question is 1) whether we're better off and 2) whether there was a realistic alternative.)

There are always unintended consequences, and constitutional guarantees are usually too blunt of an instrument to be very useful in ending most social problems. They're too easy to get around, and courts are not institutionally capable of policing all the myriad games governments can play. Legislation is far more effective as an objective matter (and that is indeed it's function in our system), yet most people seem to prefer constitutional rules instead of legislation even while intuitively understanding that legislation is not very effective at forcing social or institutional change.

But how many of those cases were pointless things like drug possession? If society can't afford to pursue some sorts of crimes then perhaps we have too many laws. At some point we are going to have to quit having the legal system save us from ourselves.

Of course, setting engineering-appropriate speed limits and ending the War On Some Drugs would also fix the backlog, but those solutions are out of the question for obviou$ reasons.

You are over complicating. We can and should have different rules for speeding tickets and murder trials.

In the case of the latter and other serious offenses it's simple restrict sentences to what was offered in a plea bargain excepting situations in which an offer was contingent upon giving evidence against another.

Its still perfectly possible to deal with traffic and other tickets mostly without court at all and plea bargains designed to make cases in which guilt is unambiguous go quicker by agreement between defense and prosecution about a fair penalty can still be negotiated.

If there is any doubt of guilt or a fair sentence let it be adjudicated and let us bear the cost as the cost of a fair system.

My idea is to make the plea 80% of the max punishment. If the DA offers 5 years and the plea isn't accepted, the max punishment would be 6 years.

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