Plea deals are the root cause of a lot of evil in the American justice system.
At first glance, I would think the prevalence of them relies on some lower level issues. But maybe you're right. They sure seem to occur along with most of the more rotten dealings. I guess the option of them just creates a judicial environment where there's nothing too harsh for the books because it can be mitigated in a plea deal, which opens the door to any subversion desired by the few enforcing parties. Is this basically what you're saying?
> They sure seem to occur along with most of the more rotten dealings
They occur in the vast majority of all criminal cases that are filed, “rotten dealings” or not.
97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases end in a plea deal. That's a conviction rate comparable to the most authoritarian regimes in the world. Sentencing is mostly in the gift of the prosecutor, not a judge. Threatened charges without much to back them up are common, and you don't have time to investigate them because the plea deal is time limited. This is a way, way, bigger scandal than Ulbricht.
Ugh, yeah that's awful.
I'm saying prosecutorial practice in the US is entirely structured around plea deals, and guilt, innocence or standards of evidence are rarely significant.
Or more likely, the murder charges didn't have a lot of weight to them to begin with.