Completely agree with this take. There is a fine line between the state rewarding someone for cooperation by taking a plea and punishing one for exercising the right to trial. The system today often looks too much like the latter.
wsj.com/articles/most-…
wsj.com/articles/most-…
If you are wrongly accused and the option is plead guilty and get 1 year or go to trial (with an overworked public defender who has no time to mount real defense) and get either 10 or 0, it's not a real choice. The concept of coercion is overused, but how else to describe this.
Just 2% of federal criminal defendants go to trial (probably similar for states but data is difficult). Courts have no capability to hear even 10% of the cases in full trial. It would take massive influx of resources for systems that are often already structurally underfunded.
Given the resource constraints, all the relevant actors (judges, DAs, public defenders) are highly incentivized to conclude cases with pleas, not because anyone is a bad actor but because the system as designed and funded today would break if 10% of defendants went to trial.
There is a good argument that the court system as practiced in many jurisdictions today does not protect criminal defendants' 6th Amendment rights "to a speedy and public trial."
