Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System
By MICHELLE ALEXANDER
Columbus, Ohio
AFTER years as a civil rights lawyer, I rarely find myself speechless. But some questions a woman I know posed during a phone conversation one recent evening gave me pause: “What would happen if we organized thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people charged with crimes to refuse to play the game, to refuse to plea out? What if they all insisted on their Sixth Amendment right to trial? Couldn’t we bring the whole system to a halt just like that?”
The woman was Susan Burton, who knows a lot about being processed through the criminal justice system.
Her odyssey began when a Los Angeles police cruiser ran over and killed her 5-year-old son. Consumed with grief and without access to therapy or antidepressant medications, Susan became addicted to crack cocaine. She lived in an impoverished black community under siege in the “war on drugs,” and it was but a matter of time before she was arrested and offered the first of many plea deals that left her behind bars for a series of drug-related offenses. Every time she was released, she found herself trapped in an under-caste, subject to legal discrimination in employment and housing.
Fifteen years after her first arrest, Susan was finally admitted to a private drug treatment facility and given a job. After she was clean she dedicated her life to making sure no other woman would suffer what she had been through. Susan now runs five safe homes for formerly incarcerated women in Los Angeles. Her organization, A New Way of Life, supplies a lifeline for women released from prison. But it does much more: it is also helping to start a movement. With groups like All of Us or None, it is organizing formerly incarcerated people and encouraging them to demand restoration of their basic civil and human rights.
I was stunned by Susan’s question about plea bargains because she — of all people — knows the risks involved in forcing prosecutors to make cases against people who have been charged with crimes. Could she be serious about organizing people, on a large scale, to refuse to plea-bargain when charged with a crime?
“Yes, I’m serious,” she flatly replied.
I launched, predictably, into a lecture about what prosecutors would do to people if they actually tried to stand up for their rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees the accused basic safeguards, including the right to be informed of charges against them, to an impartial, fair and speedy jury trial, to cross-examine witnesses and to the assistance of counsel.
But in this era of mass incarceration — when our nation’s prison population has quintupled in a few decades partly as a result of the war on drugs and the “get tough” movement — these rights are, for the overwhelming majority of people hauled into courtrooms across America, theoretical. More than 90 percent of criminal cases are never tried before a jury. Most people charged with crimes forfeit their constitutional rights and plead guilty.
“The truth is that government officials have deliberately engineered the system to assure that the jury trial system established by the Constitution is seldom used,” said Timothy Lynch, director of the criminal justice project at the libertarian Cato Institute. In other words: the system is rigged.
In the race to incarcerate, politicians champion stiff sentences for nearly all crimes, including harsh mandatory minimum sentences and three-strikes laws; the result is a dramatic power shift, from judges to prosecutors.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that threatening someone with life imprisonment for a minor crime in an effort to induce him to forfeit a jury trial did not violate his Sixth Amendment right to trial. Thirteen years later, in Harmelin v. Michigan, the court ruled that life imprisonment for a first-time drug offense did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
No wonder, then, that most people waive their rights. Take the case of Erma Faye Stewart, a single African-American mother of two who was arrested at age 30 in a drug sweep in Hearne, Tex., in 2000. In jail, with no one to care for her two young children, she began to panic. Though she maintained her innocence, her court-appointed lawyer told her to plead guilty, since the prosecutor offered probation. Ms. Stewart spent a month in jail, and then relented to a plea. She was sentenced to 10 years’ probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. Then her real punishment began: upon her release, Ms. Stewart was saddled with a felony record; she was destitute, barred from food stamps and evicted from public housing. Once they were homeless, Ms. Stewart’s children were taken away and placed in foster care. In the end, she lost everything even though she took the deal.
On the phone, Susan said she knew exactly what was involved in asking people who have been charged with crimes to reject plea bargains, and press for trial. “Believe me, I know. I’m asking what we can do. Can we crash the system just by exercising our rights?”
The answer is yes. The system of mass incarceration depends almost entirely on the cooperation of those it seeks to control. If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation. Not everyone would have to join for the revolt to have an impact; as the legal scholar Angela J. Davis noted, “if the number of people exercising their trial rights suddenly doubled or tripled in some jurisdictions, it would create chaos.”
Such chaos would force mass incarceration to the top of the agenda for politicians and policy makers, leaving them only two viable options: sharply scale back the number of criminal cases filed (for drug possession, for example) or amend the Constitution (or eviscerate it by judicial “emergency” fiat). Either action would create a crisis and the system would crash — it could no longer function as it had before. Mass protest would force a public conversation that, to date, we have been content to avoid.
In telling Susan that she was right, I found myself uneasy. “As a mother myself, I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t plead guilty to if a prosecutor told me that accepting a plea was the only way to get home to my children,” I said. “I truly can’t imagine risking life imprisonment, so how can I urge others to take that risk — even if it would send shock waves through a fundamentally immoral and unjust system?”
Susan, silent for a while, replied: “I’m not saying we should do it. I’m saying we ought to know that it’s an option. People should understand that simply exercising their rights would shake the foundations of our justice system which works only so long as we accept its terms. As you know, another brutal system of racial and social control once prevailed in this country, and it never would have ended if some people weren’t willing to risk their lives. It would be nice if reasoned argument would do, but as we’ve seen that’s just not the case. So maybe, just maybe, if we truly want to end this system, some of us will have to risk our lives.”
We need legal reform, not childish solutions like this, where no one really wins.
Demanding a full hearing at every step, to have the charges read in full, and not waiving a speedy trial would bring the system to its knees. Beyond that the suspect can refuse to cooperate in any manner, not to answer the judge's questions, refuse to cooperate with any court appointed lawyer, or take any part in his defense would pose problems that would clobber the system - and not win the love of any judges or politicians.
Never mind, forget I said anything.
Also, where is there mention in this article of the fact that each state runs it's own system of criminal prosecutions? What is a horror in Texas may be a perfect and only solution in NY.
Don't knock it 'till you've seen people desperate to get out from under the court systems. The real enemy is vicious prosecutors, cruel and thoughtless judges, guard unions and mean cops with an arrest quota, high bail, dumb legislators and dumber probation and parole systems.
But non lawyers or non offenders never seem to understand the realities thatimpinge upon individuals, not whole populations.
The problem with this is that if it is coercive, then there no longer exists the primary motivation for the practice, namely, giving the person greater say over their future. To have such a say, one would think that one must be free to choose to plea bargain, a requirement that is undermined by the presence of coercion.
And to be clear, merely having the option of not plea bargaining is not sufficient to say the practice is not coercive. To give an example, imagine someone pulls a gun on you and demands 'your money or your life.' Clearly, you can choose to keep your money (albeit at an extremely high cost), but no one would consider that sufficient for concluding that you had consented to handing over your cash.
The legal system to adapt and civil liberties related to jury trials would be further degraded in the process. But maybe it would force our culture to finally confront and change the way we treat drugs.
Drugs are a public health problem, like alcohol, and should be treated as such. If we took that approach, and we only prosecuted bad behavior by people who take drugs, which is the way we treat drunks, our current appalling rate of incarceration would be dramatically reduced. We could actually spend money on public health reductions in drug abuse. Heck, we might even be able, by education and human infrastructure, to improve the lives and hopes of folks who currently have nothing but drugs and alcohol to stave off despair.
We need to face the fact that the only people served by the current system are those who build and maintain prisons. What kind of a culture is that?
Consequently, it's also not surprising that they missed the entire point of this article.
Over 90% of the time with the cooperation the defense council, defendants rights for formal arraignment and speedy trial are waved. There after it is the Judge who control as to what if anything will be done. The defendants who are granted bail are put on a monthly calendar to appear for role call for one reason or another. Usually this a whole day process unless of course the attorney is connected. Nothing is done for the convenience of the accused. The whole system of jurisprudence is structured for the convenience of the system the judge, where Judicial abuse is common.
If every body elect for a trial, the judges will just back up everything, complain for need of more judges, who will be attorneys, or lower court Judges, old retired geezer , so called senior judges who all run rough shod, assemble red neck juries or some such cohorts start railroading people through the system.
These days in the eyes of people that include the jury in most case the accused has to prove his or her innocence rather then the prosecutor to prove the guilt without a reasonable doubt. And then when the person gets wrongfully convicted the judges throw
The longest, most costly war in U.S. History - against its own citizens - continues to destroy our country and others like Mexico, Columbia, Afghanistan, etc. This "war" was lost as soon as it was declared. Was nothing learned from the failure of alcohol prohibition in the 1920's, largely responsible for creating organized crime in this country? Apparently, gang violence and enrichment of criminals is an acceptable tradeoff for those who think government should control what people choose to put in their own bodies.
Stupidity and self-destructive behavior are not crimes, although in many states attempted suicide is prosecuted as a crime against the state, as your body is state property. That's why a crime against oneself like drug addiction results in jail time.
Naturally inherent human behavior cannot be controlled by simply enacting laws against it. It does create a lot of employment though for the law enforcement, legal & penal system. And the chance for politicians to grand stand about being "tough on crime". Almost every time that phrase is used though, it more accurately refers to being "tough on minorities with serious medical problems".
Tom Wolpert, Esq.
Royersford PA
But regardless, the right to a jury trial isn't just for the objectively innocent, and there's a point that many sentences are out of proportion to their offenses to incentivize plea bargains.
However, if a movement such as this one were ever to come to fruition, I would hope those involved would include not only criminal defendants and public defenders, but also a large contingent of criminal lawyers in private practice equally disgusted with the current situation and willing to provide a huge amount of pro bono defense work. Perhaps somebody who works in that world could chime in as to whether functionally speaking there are enough criminal defense attorneys with both the heart and the means to sign on to such a cause, but without them, I could see such a movement fizzling as the first participants just find themselves with longer jail terms and others start having doubts about the wisdom of this course of action.
Private Prisons, Prisons for Profit are the very definition of Fascism..
Plea bargains are often for the innocent, not the guilty and our Prosecutors think only of Conviction Rates, not the Truth or facts of a case, or Justice for that matter...
As Ms. Alexander points out in her brilliant book, and as any alert reader of the news knows, the rates particularly of drug offenses are similar among the white and black population. If our criminal system were to lock away guilty people in proportion to their crimes, the majority of people in prison would be white.
Yet we want to believe that black men are behind bars because they are guilty, and whites are not because they are innocent.
I hope that we, the people, including the white majority, can face the truth. Until we do, we will continue burdening our country with rates of imprisonment comparable only to the most brutal dictatorships in the world, and lose millions of talented youth who could be our future physicians, mechanics and violinists to the prison pipeline.
Michelle Alexander's book is a must read for anyone who cares about the future of this country. It could be great, if we were to conclude that "all people are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
If people wanted to go to trial, they stand a very good chance of being convicted, due to the legal thresholds that they have reached to be charged in the first place, i.e, probale cause declaration by police, and the preliminary hearing.
The trade-off is that if you want to fight your charge, you risk a jury or judge convicting you and giving you the maximum sentence-----rather than a plea to the charge and receiving leniency.
That's the way the system works.
Lary Waldman
Qualicum Beach
if things are bad enough, you can be represented by the best politically connected law firm in the country, and fight this thing in court and win! If you are broke, plea bargain.
Of course it's very difficult to organize this kind of thing, and that's why it's never been tried. But there's no doubt it could be very effective. The courts depend on the ignorance and desperation of their victims, whom the rest of us are only too wiling to forget.
Profits for imprisonment, 'rewards' to police departments for making drug arrests, allowing them to keep forfeited money, and for 'reducing crime' (which NYPD understands to mean to ignore reports of serious crimes) and bonuses to prosecutors for the number of convictions (i.e., number of defendants pleading guilty), leaving America with the best judicial system money can buy. No wonder we manage to imprison more of our citizens than any other country in the world.
When "justice" becomes a business, there is no justice.
We need to change the laws erasing records after a year for misdemeanors and after 5 years for felonies except murders and such. We need a drug rehab process that stops putting drug addicts on the street without resources in the same neighborhood where they got into trouble in the first place.
I'd love to organize this rebellion. I wonder if something like anonymous could get this rolling. It would be nice to start by hacking police records and erasing them or mayby pranking by replacing names with those of familar politicians. Any, food for thought.
In communities where blue-collar jobs have been lost because of offshoring and technological change, many laid-off workers have found jobs in the prison system: as guards, clerical workers, and in other capacities. They have a vested interest in laws that lock up as many people as possible.
Moreover, because of the Republican push to privatize prisons (along with schools and other institutions traditionally administered by government), we now have large for-profit prison corporations who actually state, in their annual reports, that they are concerned about relaxing the drug laws because it could result in fewer prisoners and an adverse effect on the company's bottom line.
In what other country are the lives of harmless people -- who need treatment rather than punishment -- so casually destroyed in order to make profits for others? The United States truly has lost its way.
What will happen if we break it? Congress and legislatures will try to fix it. That could be worse than what we have now.
If you are indeed in Columbus you need not look far to verify damage that can be inflicted by this corrupt system on communities as a whole by the degradation of the rule of law.
Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) prosecutor Bill Mason has built and supported a corrupt political regime based on over charging and in many cases indicting the innocent to enhance his statistics and to use his office as a cudgel against any form of opposition. Elections fixed, donations strong armed, contracts manipulated, and supporters rewarded all with the threat implicit of grave consequences judicially for refusing to play along or simply getting caught in the crossfire.
Mason has turned a blind eye to the most egregious abuse of the public trust by his cronies and acolytes as evidenced by the Friday conviction of a former county commissioner on 33 federal charges. Mason was "unaware". Raising awareness on this sordid mess in the hands of corrupt and power hungry prosecutors gets my vote.
With the ever increasing assaults on our privacy and constitutional protections it is prudent to remember that the likes of Bill Mason can will indict a ham sandwich.
Until someone or something breaks through this "boys club" the bell tolls for each and every one of us. I encourage Eric Holder to take a long and hard look at Bill Mason and to remember he is sworn to protect us. Letting Mason slide out of office into a cosy sinecure at a big law firm serves no one well except the corrupt.
If this what it takes to get us to have a national conversation, I say we do it. I'll sign the petition.
The decisions involved and the thought process by defendants has a term of art derived from mathematical game theory .... Prisoner's Dilemma.
How appropriate.
This is the first suggestion that I think could really point out the insanity of our "justice" system.
Here is my proposal. Take 10% of every punitive damage. Start a fund to open a second shift of courts. A speedy trial for everyone who wants one.
no elected official ever talks of the rail-roading in the justice system. they are the ones creating it, with their guidelines, their three strikes,their so called police training where being arrested is already a sign of guil-if they didn't already shoot you dead , their piling charge upon charge-you could indite a chicken sandwich...
but they talk of freedom and liberty...yeah
Keep these stories alive. A great many people in the US are painfully aware that our "justice" these days is a horror. As witness the story right here, a couple days ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/nyregion/officer-sues-claiming-police-...
Where is today's follow up on that one??
It is obvious that our justice system lack an important feedback loop. If its goal is to make a meaningful separation between the innocent and guilty then the culture of mass plea bargaining where prosecutors are evaluated on the number of guilty pleas creates perverse incentives that destroy lives and waste scarce public resources. Absent creating meaningful measures of success for our court system, a mass movement may become inevitable.
So while I recognize the seriousness of what I'm saying, I think there are ample grounds to doubt the authenticity of that final quote. Perhaps as a lawyer, rather than journalist, Ms. Alexander is using a different set of standards regarding what it means to present something as a direct quote.
P.S. For what it is worth, I fully agree with her argument.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/sexting-hysteri/
1) Release thousands of low-offence, non-violent crime prisoners all at once.
2) Cut the State budget for prisons.
3) Direct the money to other state-debt relief.
4) The only way to re-incarcerate the released prisoners is to raise State taxes on the rich.
Masses of people accept plea bargains because they are guilty. Going to trial won't change this. And we have the crimes we have, the penalties we have, and the enforcement we have because that's what most people *want.* Legislators care a lot less about this or that crime than they do about getting reelected...but constituents care about crime more than just about anything else...particularly at the state level, where 98% of crimes are prosecuted. If all cases were tried, the public would - with some grumbling perhaps - pony up more money.
Meanwhile, the criminals on whose back this experiment is being carried out would end up serving 10 years rather than 2 years. Progress of a sort, I suppose.
Comfortable upper middle class people misunderstand a lot of things about crime. Derrick Bell believed that blacks on a jury seeing other blacks prosecuted for drug crimes would rather nullify than convict. But this is completely wrong - the blacks on the jury are the ones who see the drug dealers outside their apartments every day. These are the people who want something done about crime and who want the streets cleaned up. People living in areas with no street crime tend to assume the opposite and are gravely mistaken.
and even if a few had to take a hit which they would, thousands of others would benefit from their sacrifice. I'm with you. it would be cool to see.
david zapp
With regard to arresting, jailing, trying, and ultimately imprisoning drug offenders, realize this: for most, mere possession is not their only offense, even if it's the only one on the docket. How does a heroin user living in public housing support a deck-a-day habit? Who commits a disproportionate share of petty property crime (e.g., car break-ins)? Ms. Alexander may not like it, but the fact that police started holding low-level offenders accountable in the early 1990s resulted in the lion's share of the crime decrease since. (See the late James Q. Wilson's writings.) Every night an otherwise unemployed rock-cocaine addict spends at Rikers is one night he or she isn't stealing the GPS out of your car.
P.S. Comparing our justice system to slavery does an injustice to the indefensible horror that was the middle passage and our "peculiar institution."
I was charged with midemeanor domestic violence. I would have gone to trial, except for one minor inconvenience: the police overcharged and tacked on a charge of criminal threat, which is a wobbler, but is always charged as a felony in CA. The criminal threat was highly suspect, but had I gone to trial, I would have run the risk of a felony conviction, which would have ruined my life. I entered the plea on the misdemeanor charge, and the felony charge was dropped.
Seems to me that the challenge to the system should be based on 14th amendment denial of due process rather than eight amendment cruel and unusual pumishment. The "justice" system uses trumped up charges to force defendants to waive their rights.
And a historical note: the plea bargain system is a legacy of Prohibition. It was invented when illegal alcohol cases were overwhelming the courts.
You want to make a change, change the law. Educate juries. As long as we have these draconian laws and harsh jury verdicts, then copping a plea is often the only way to get a halfway reasonable outcome.
The entire legal system, both criminal and civil, is monstrous in its inability to take context and unique factors into account in the application of law. Blindfolded lady justice is considered to be a symbol of fairness, but justice cannot be done by a system blind to the context of the situation, and unable to prevent the steamroller of the letter of the law from squashing and destroying many lives. We must throw out the blind application of the letter of the law, and find a way to return real wisdom and fairness back to the legal system, a system operating under the spirit, not the letter of the law.
I'd expect more wisdom and justice from Deborah, the judge under the palm tree in ancient Israel, than from any part of our legal system today.
and even if a few had to take a hit which they would, thousands of others would benefit from their sacrifice. I'm with you. it would be cool to see.
david zapp
One option is to eliminate mandatory sentencing guidelines and place the control of that back in the hands of judges instead of the prosecutors. Another is to legalize marijuana and mandate treatment (via the drug court system) for all addicts. That saves money and erodes the level off illegal drug use. Notice I said all addicts. Currently, if you commit a crime other than just using, you cannot use the system and its all State courts anyway - needs to be at the federal level as well.
Finally, if defense attorneys would explain to those charged the longer-termed consequences of a plea bargain, you might just have enough resistance to crash the system. The "Law of Criminal Justice Thermodynamics" proposed by Lindeman suggests that even minor resistance would result in fewer or lower charges being brought as happened in the 1970's with the Rockefeller drug laws tightening down the system.
If you tend to discount my belief, ask yourself: "What has our (supposed) judicial system done to bring the Wall Street criminal who crashed the economy to justice? What has our judicial system done to address the war crimes of torture and illegitimate war committed in our name? The answer is nothing - the victimless crime of growing weeds to smoke for self-intoxication carry penalties far worse than anything the financial or political elite will ever face.
The entire system is corrupt beyond redemption. The sooner any myth to the contrary is dispelled, the sooner the system might be reformed for the better.
If you believe we should punish all of those who use drugs, fine. Start doing drug sweeps at all of the college campuses across the country. Start putting those upper class whites through the system. Go to the boarding schools that dot the Eastern Seaboard. Start going to the house parties in Greenwich and Westport. We know there is drug use going on there, so let's start arresting these criminals and putting them through the system the same way we do poor African-American drug users.
As you say, these people need to learn a lesson. Their selfish and dangerous behavior needs to be punished. Put all the college coke heads in jail, too.
"Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress[...]"?
And doth not a Prosecutor deprive the accused of his Constitutional rights when he manipulateth him into taking a Plea Bargain?
I think your Prosecutors ought be brought swiftly to Justice, and if remedies at Law sufficeth not, then the People ought consider using more permanent methods of removing them.
That would bankrupt the prison system.
Fundamentally, people will always use drugs. Locking up some of them for using certain types of drugs doesn't solve anything.
1. We have no mandatory minimums or automatic three-strike laws in Texas. Such enhanced sentences for repeat offenders are an option, but are only used in a clear minority of cases - in my experience.
2. I have no doubt the system would 'crash' if everyone demanded a trial. However, so many of the Defendants concurrently demanding a trial in an effort to shake the system would likely be found 'guilty' by a jury (because prosecutors would not waste time pursuing cases with weak evidence) that the remaining Defendants awaiting trial may well decide to take a plea bargain - which is quite likely to be a lesser sentence than what an angry jury or political judge might hand down.
3. If prison overcrowding is an issue in a particular State, the parole laws are a way to control that problem.
4. The presumption of innocense is paramount in this country - as is the right to a jury trial - but in the big picture, I ask everyone to consider if there should be a civic and moral duty to take responsibility for the wrongs you have committed - thus, pleas of 'guilty'.
5. Final thought: If de-criminalizing drug possession was the collective response to an overburdened criminal justice system - I have no doubt that the number of drug addicts would increase - is society prepared to shoulder the economic cost of 'free' substance abuse treatment programs as a basic right ?
A debate would be worthwhile.
This is a common mis-conception for which there is no evidence. In fact there is evidence that it is false -- see Alaska after legalizing pot or many other states where decriminalization was tried.
Prof Jake Stevens
Director, Criminal Justice Clinic
Maurice Deane School of Law at Hofstra University
Just as one example, the only doctor ever charged with homicide in New York for a patent death due to negligence was offered a plea in exchange for a 1 to 3 sentence (a minimum felony sentence i n those days), he went to trial and got 25 to life. If in the opinion of the judge and prosecutors justice would have been served by serving a year in prison what does 25 years represent? Obviously punishment for insisting on a jury trial. There are similar examples among those accused of purely regulatory crimes.
There is a massive criminal-justice industry in this country that feeds on our expansive definition of crime and draconian penalties. The list is impressive: lawyers, judges, prosecutors, policemen, court clerks, bailiffs, court reporters, prison guards etc and all the contractors who supply everything from toilet paper to handcuffs to building courtrooms.
The only bright spot is the recession. With declining tax revenues and widening budgetary gaps states have begun to aggressively cut their prison population. Unfortunately any unemployment in the criminal justice system will probably be the first to recover; indeed refusing to take a plea will only increase the need for employees in Justice Inc.
I guess we'd have to build more jails to house the criminals. You wanna play hardball?...ok!
oh
Instead of threatening to crash our criminal justice system, why not work on reducing the number of people committing crimes? Or do you really believe behind every criminal in jail is a story of some kind soul wrongfully accused?
Better to reform the drug laws, which are a disaster.
Could it be that the law enforcement-prison bureaucracy perpetuates itself?
Is it a crime to possess and use a plant?
We should focus on only jailing those who are violent offenders. Though I might make an exception for corporate criminals.
In reality, they won't be able to do what they threaten, probably. But it's the threat that counts!
They often do these things only because the lawyers and judge want to leave court to get home for dinner with their families.
They are willing to threaten to kill a jaywalker in order they not be inconvenienced.
Remember the famous experiments on obedience to authority. Most people will do whatever they are "instructed" is the right thing to do. Go get arrested and you'll see.
Kudos to Michelle Alexander for her courageous, insightful, fact-filled book.
Perhaps it would make America finally and truly see that the easy availability of guns does kill people.
Perhaps it would teach America to distinguish between the guilty by dint of falling through the ever-widening tears in our social safety net, and the guilt of those that constitute a real danger to us all, and then incarcerate appropriately.
However, as long as conviction rates are bannered on the walls of the politicized offices of the District Attorney, as long as executions are cheered at primary debates it's doubtful that much will change.
Is this the kind of "creative destruction" described by Schumpeter as the engine of true capitalism and practiced by Gandhi and King with revolutionary political results?
The unintended consequences would likely be quite massive and, unfortunately I fear, not all come down on the side of greater law and order.
A plea bargin is a guilty person saying "OK , I did it...now lets get this over with"
You libs should be THRILLED with plea bargains. They get the criminals out on the street sooner.
My son was arrested several years ago, about a month after he was visiting a friend who got into a fight with a police officer neighbor. My son was not part of the fight. The police were able to "identify" him because he had been illegally (unConstitutionally) stopped and frisked on his friend's block while on the way to visit his friend because my son wore his hair in a mohawk. In the friend's fight with the police officer, the friend pulled a starter pistol (which only uses blanks and wasn't loaded). Dumb, yes - very dumb.
When my son was arrested he was charged with misdemeanor and felony assault and multiple firearms violations. I was working for a lawyer who had experience in criminal defense, who defended my son. There were 3 preliminary hearings, at which neither the complaining officer nor the arresting officer (2 different people) appeared, and a year later the charges were dismissed. And my son paid to have his record expunged.
He was offered a plea of misdemeanor assault early on, and refused. Should he have accepted it? And have a permanent criminal record for something he didn't do?