I think you are letting your hatred of the US cloud your judgement. Plea bargaining is mostly a cost saving measure, going to trial is very expensive.
A particular instance I'm privy to the details of was a friend accepting a bargain on a resisting arrest charge (it probably got reduced to a more minor charge in the bargain) that only led to community service (and probation), when the reality is that the police officer had assaulted the defendant and they were covering it up. It simply wasn't worth the risk of going to jail and the certainty of financial trouble for him and his kids to fight the city on it. But the city got a conviction against a troublesome black, or whatever euphemism they're using these days, and didn't have to admit wrongdoing on the part of a police officer, so all good, right?
I'm not saying all plea bargains are bad, I'm just saying that the US makes suspicious use of them and some of them have been noted to be abusive (eg, that they charge ridiculous things for the trial and agree to plea down to what the charges should've been in the first place).
I view this as semi-rampant prosecutor misconduct, rather than a fundamental problem with plea bargains, though plea bargains make this kind of misconduct easier, if not otherwise policed.
I'm of the opinion that trials should be system where both sides should be allowed to put as much money as they want into a trial, but that they need to put that money into a pot that is divided equally between the defense and prosecution. You cannot have justice when there is financial asymmetry.
This would allow trials to be as cheap or as expensive as necessary to determine the truth. It provides a great disincentive for either side to pour money into the process if they know they are in the wrong going into a trial.
In your proposed system, what's the incentive that prevents the guilty accused from allocating infinite resources to their case? Why not do that? These are people who've drawn off-suit seven deuce in the poker game of justice. What would they have to lose?
Absolutely nothing, and that's just fine.
Let them have their day, even 10 days in court. If they're guilty it will still stick. If not they should walk, no matter how long it takes to get to that point.
The way to deal with the overload is a many pronged problem, for one you could decide not to have so many crimes on the books, second you could decide which crimes are to be dealt with using fines and which are to be dealt with using prison time, and prison time could be seen as a measure of correction rather than one of punishment or revenge.
That would mean that there would be a lot less prisoners and that in turn would upset a whole pile of applecarts but on the whole that's not a bad system to have.
At least you won't have 1% of the population (and 2% of the adult population) behind bars which is generally considered to be a good thing because it takes people out of circulation causing a domino effect into the next generation. Kids of convicts are more likely to become convicts themselves.
http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/gokids/gokids_articles_children_...
Compromising the right to a fair trial on cost basis because you're scared the 'guilty accused' will hog the system has a much higher cost in the longer term.
I will happily pay taxes to support a justice system that gives the accused every opportunity to prove their innocence.
An arbitrary cut-off is indeed a strange thing to have, probably some element of practicality went into designing it. Where I live there are a number of courts where one can appeal, I personally think that the ideal would be a court where no conviction would ever be overturned should be the cut-off. We're definitely not there and that system isn't perfect (nor will it likely every be), but it is one of the reason why I am mordicus against the death penalty.
Too many cases got overturned many many years later and in plenty of those cases the accused had already been executed. See also: project innocence.
Justice systems will always be imperfect but regardless of that we should strive to improve them and find better ways to release those that are innocent as fast as possible (and, incidentally, to make them whole).
The state and its functionaries should definitely not be rewarded on metrics that might disadvantage the innocent.
Besides, what is the downside for prosecution (as individual) for a wrongful convictions?
The innocent accused are paying the steepest price today, they end up pleading guilty, lose their livelihood, rights, and lots more.
If the system would grind to a halt it would grind to a halt for everybody, not just for the guilty. And maybe that would allow for a better system rather than one where might makes right and the amount of money you can muster for your defense is the biggest factor in determining the outcome.
You make it seem as if the plea bargaining system is used as an efficiency gain where those that 'know they're guilty' are going to plead guilty and all those that know they are not are going to have their day in court. If that were the case I would not have a problem with it, alas it is very far from the truth.
Increase burden on court system: decrease resources allocated to the innocent accused.
So they serve a sentence they shouldn't be serving and they end up being branded convicts for life.
Have a read:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/why-inn...
You're also very happy to mis-frame my point, repeatedly suggesting that I believe there's no meaningful injustice in the status quo. That is not what I believe. I've been pretty clear about the fact that there is a significant problem that urgently needs correction. It's just not exactly the problem you care about, and so you caricature my points to try to win the argument.
Once again: regardless of how often the innocent accept bogus plea agreements, those innocent who choose to fight their cases are greatly harmed by a system that eliminates plea bargains.
So plea bargaining as we see it at present does not appear to help those innocent who fight their cases. Because it's all about winning for the state, not about guilt or innocence.
That has always been bullshit, the way you and most of the Internet are misusing this quotation.
Why 10 to 1? Why not 1 to 1 or 1e100000 to 1?
This ratio is purely arbitrary.
Obviously, if you really followed through with the gist of your argument, we should never convict anyone, because better to let everyone go than miss the one injustice in a thousand years.
Unless you can make a case for a specific ratio, 10 to 1 has no special meaning.
The quotation only argues that the balance should be biased towards aquittal. Nothing more.
They do now, but I think it's still different from our system: http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj/vol34/iss2/5/
Their court system, however, has some fundamental differences from ours.