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Good points. Fact is, many people are forced into taking plea bargains. They have a crappy court appointed attorney who is all but forcing them to take a plea.
Myself, its all or nothing. I've never so much as had a parking ticket in my life. For real. However, if I were ever to face a criminal, or civil proceeding, and assuming I was innocent, it would be all in for me. All the way to the jury of my peers. I leave nothing in the bucket, no stone unturned. No way in hell I would take a plea or settle, EVER if I was innocent. Make the state spend millions or the party coming after me. Screw the plea, it should be abolished. If you're innocent, you're innocent. It should be all or nothing, no pleas, no bargaining. It's become almost like negotiating a used car deal. Feeling each other out. If the state, or other interested party really feels you did something, then let them prove it or go away.
I also believe that you should be able to recover legal costs in cases you are found not guilty, or non liable in a civil case. I think attorneys, their clients and or that state and federal prosecutors should not be allowed to have legal fishing expeditions. Unfortunately extortion and a swing in the dark happen all the time.
No one is forced into taking a plea bargain. You say it yourself...you would never take a plea if you were innocent, so apparently you couldn't be forced to.
No one is forced into taking a plea bargain. You say it yourself...you would never take a plea if you were innocent, so apparently you couldn't be forced to.
But there is a very close parallel between copping a plea, and waking up with a race-horse's head on your pillow. It's an offer that very few can afford to refuse, and the people making the offer have nearly infinite power.
But there is a very close parallel between copping a plea, and waking up with a race-horse's head on your pillow. It's an offer that very few can afford to refuse, and the people making the offer have nearly infinite power.
Oh please! Pure Hyperbole!
Pleas are offered for a myrid of reasons not the least of which is case loads - if a case goes to trial, it might be literally YEARS to get to trial and issues dealing with witnesses - both on the prosecution and the defense sides become issues.
Financial reasons on both sides.
BUT, if a defendant wants to go to trial - we go to trial! No one is forcing a defendant to accept a plea. I will discuss the Pros and Cons of the plea offered - and every defendant asks the same question - "what should I do". And, I give the same answer - "it's not my decision - its' yours"
Pleas are offered for a myrid of reasons not the least of which is case loads - if a case goes to trial, it might be literally YEARS to get to trial and issues dealing with witnesses - both on the prosecution and the defense sides become issues.
Financial reasons on both sides.
BUT, if a defendant wants to go to trial - we go to trial! No one is forcing a defendant to accept a plea. I will discuss the Pros and Cons of the plea offered - and every defendant asks the same question - "what should I do". And, I give the same answer - "it's not my decision - its' yours"
First, if we don't have the court system to handle the arrest load, why do we continue to arrest so many non-violent offenders?
Second, if a peson cannot make bail, he sits in jail for that "literally years" in which he is presumed innocent. (Another laugher.) Financial issues affect only one side. The prosecution has a virtually infinite amount of money. LA County spent 6-million trying to convict OJ. They do not have money issues. Even John Gotti would have run out of money before the prosecutors did.
Third, according to the constitution, the prosecution has the onus of proving the guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a speedy trial in which the defendant is entitled to due process. If the prosecution can't do it, get off the pot, instead of turning it into a lottery.
Fourth, yes, it does constitute "force" in the practical sense of the word, if the prosecution says "If you want a triai, you will sit in jail for years and years waiting for it, and you will sell your house to pay a lawyer, and lose your house even if you win, because if there is a not-guilty verdict, we just turn our backs and walk away and we don't even say we're sorry that we destroyed the life of a perfectly innocent man. We just turn the page and do it to somebody else."
Fifth, if you are so sure that every person arrested and charged is actually guilty, then go before a jury and prove it. If there is actual guilt, a few hours work by the prosecution will get a guilty verdict in a one-day trial at least 90% of the time, and 10% will go free.. But with your plea bargain system, you release at least 50% back into society immediately or in a short time --- what have you gained? So you are putting about half the criminals back on the street, to save the effort of a few hours investigation and a day of jury trial. It makes it sound like justice is pretty low on your order of priorities.
First, if we don't have the court system to handle the arrest load, why do we continue to arrest so many non-violent offenders?
Second, if a peson cannot make bail, he sits in jail for that "literally years" in which he is presumed innocent. (Another laugher.) Financial issues affect only one side. The prosecution has a virtually infinite amount of money. LA County spent 6-million trying to convict OJ. They do not have money issues. Even John Gotti would have run out of money before the prosecutors did.
Third, according to the constitution, the prosecution has the onus of proving the guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a speedy trial in which the defendant is entitled to due process. If the prosecution can't do it, get off the pot, instead of turning it into a lottery.
Fourth, yes, it does constitute "force" in the practical sense of the word, if the prosecution says "If you want a triai, you will sit in jail for years and years waiting for it, and you will sell your house to pay a lawyer, and lose your house even if you win, because if there is a not-guilty verdict, we just turn our backs and walk away and we don't even say we're sorry that we destroyed the life of a perfectly innocent man. We just turn the page and do it to somebody else."
Fifth, if you are so sure that every person arrested and charged is actually guilty, then go before a jury and prove it. If there is actual guilt, a few hours work by the prosecution will get a guilty verdict in a one-day trial at least 90% of the time, and 10% will go free.. But with your plea bargain system, you release at least 50% back into society immediately or in a short time --- what have you gained? So you are putting about half the criminals back on the street, to save the effort of a few hours investigation and a day of jury trial. It makes it sound like justice is pretty low on your order of priorities.
Go to the opposite side of extremism and you will find plenty of people arguing the same thing...no plea bargains (Go to trial every time and give em' the max). It's kind of funny how that works. If it's any consolation though, I personally would love it if you were a defense attorney (in general I mean and not mine if I ever needed one...no offense).
If it's any consolation though, I personally would love it if you were a defense attorney (in general I mean and not mine if I ever needed one...no offense).
From time to time, I ask myself if I could have been an attorney, but I wind up thinking that it would be way too depressing. My job would consist of telling people "You're right, but you're F***ed." It would be worse than being a doctor who tells people they have cancer.
". . . police used the fact that motorists were carrying large amounts of cash as evidence that they must have been involved in laundering drug money, even though Guillory said each of the drivers he contacted could account for where the money had come from and why they were carrying it—such as for a gambling trip to Shreveport, La., or to purchase a used car from a private seller.
"Once the motorists were detained, the police and the local Shelby County district attorney quickly drew up legal papers presenting them with an option: waive their rights to their cash and property or face felony charges for crimes such as money laundering—and the prospect of having to hire a lawyer and return to Shelby County multiple times to attend court sessions to contest the charges."
". . . police used the fact that motorists were carrying large amounts of cash as evidence that they must have been involved in laundering drug money, even though Guillory said each of the drivers he contacted could account for where the money had come from and why they were carrying it—such as for a gambling trip to Shreveport, La., or to purchase a used car from a private seller.
"Once the motorists were detained, the police and the local Shelby County district attorney quickly drew up legal papers presenting them with an option: waive their rights to their cash and property or face felony charges for crimes such as money laundering—and the prospect of having to hire a lawyer and return to Shelby County multiple times to attend court sessions to contest the charges."
First, to add some thoughts on the question of plea bargains. My observation back in the day was that the motivation behind plea-bargaining was to move cases through an over-crowded court system. The prosecution had the incentive to plea-bargain because they would get some sort of a penalty for the bad guy (and one thing that you seem to be losing track of here, JTUR, is that the vast majority of people who are sent into the system are guilty, though it is certainly a tragedy when an innocent person is convicted), rather than having to drop many charges for lack of space on the court docket. The defense, again keeping in mind that in fact the vast majority of those sent up have done the crime, had the incentive to get the defendant off with a lighter sentence than he'd get if found guilty in court of the original, more serious, charges. Both sides had the incentive to make a deal because of uncertainty of what might happen if the case got in front of a jury.
Where an innocent person is most likely to be in trouble with this system is when it becomes too much of an automatic procedure to plea-bargain certain kinds of cases. While obviously I cannot say what happens everywhere, in the county where I worked back when, it was usually the most minor cases, like traffic violations, and the occasional really big case that ended up in court. The minor and mid-level criminal cases were routinely plea-bargained. And these people were not held in jail for months or years if they refused to play the game. Basically everyone who was not arrested for something major--and by major I mean major--was either OR'd (released on own recongnizance), if the offense was minor and the person was a local resident (often even if he was not local), or was released on a ten-percent cash up front bail, which might amount to a hundred dollars typically.
Another point worth noting is that the vast majority of arrests do not result from investigations, but from relatively minor incidents the officer witnesses, or deals with in the immediate aftermath. Kind of difficult for there to be any doubt about guilt if the officer witnesses the commission of some petty crime. It's also worth keeping in mind that the police--who are, after all, the subject of this thread--have little or nothing to do with the plea-bargaining process. Plea-bargaining occurs between the D.A. (or D.A.'s staff) and the defense, after the case is turned over to the D.A.'s office. It's reasonable to bring in some discussion of the entire criminal court system, because it is all related, but maybe we need a reminder that this thread is about the police, who have little involvement in the plea-bargaining process which has been the main topic of the last couple of pages.
Clearly, a system that relies heavily on the almost automatic plea-bargaining of certain kinds of cases, meaning that from the get-go you know that a guilty party will not ultimately pay for the crime he actually committed but will plead it down to something with a lighter sentence, is a flawed system. Trouble is, the situation is complex, and finding a solution would be very difficult, if not impossible. It is possible that realistically, this is simply how it is, like it or not. ("Democracy is the worst form of government . . ." Winston Churchill)
Regarding the post quoted above, careful here. If you just start making posts about various stories of polcie corruption you've dug up, this thread could quickly devolve away from good intelligent discussion, and degenerate into the cop-bashing that the "schizophrenic attitude" thread turned into. I doubt that anyone here will claim that this kind of corruption never happens. It's also good to keep people aware of such situations, so that we (the public, the people, etc.) can work on keeping them to a minimum, but really, if you or anyone else wants to just start posting links to stories about bad cops, this will quickly become a lobsided bashing thread. It's too late at night for me to be inclined to go back through the thread and find the post where this was pointed out, but someone a number of pages ago rightly pointed out that you can easily dig up stories about excessive force by the police but will find it difficult to counter these with many stories about the polcie doing their job competently, or even very well, because that does not make good news, even though this is what happens with the vast majority of officers on nearly every shift they ever work. The same is true with stories about corruption. You won't find the stories to counter those, because the very fact that it's such an overwhelming portion of the time that cops just do their jobs in appropriate fashion makes the typical shift of the average basically honest, competent cop so routine that it's not newsworthy.
Sort of reminds me of Andy Rooney's bit on 60 Minutes one time years ago. Andy addressed the question of why the news was usually bad, with a routine that showed how a story that was not about bad news would sound. It went something like: "A plane took off from New York this morning, bound for London. Six hours later, the plande landed in London. The flight was uneventful, except for a spell of mild turbulence, though one passenger was heard to remark that his coffee had tasted a little stale."
Not much of a news story there. Neither would be a story that would go something like: "Officer Smith was on duty for eight hours today. In the morning, he assisted a motorist whose car was stalled, wrote a speeding ticket, and took a report from a woman whose lawn chairs had been stolen. There would be little chance of recovering the lawn furniture, but the woman was heard to remark that it made her feel better just to have that little bit of human contact with someone who had taken the time to offer his sympathy, and to listen patiently as she vented her frustration over the loss of her property. That afternoon, after Officer Smith had lunch, he found a young girl crying in front of the elementary school. She had missed her bus, and had no idea how she was going to get home. Offcr. Smith arranged for transportation for the child, who arrived home safely, and everything was safe and secure in Podunk at the end of Offcr. Smith's shift." This will never make the news, though this is more like the job most cops do day in and day out. Therefore, there won't be so many stories about decent cops to counter those about the bad incidents if you start making this thread all about posting stories about bad cops, but what would be the point in making this thread about nothing but that? Where would the serious discussion be then?
You have no idea what I do for a living, what my specialties are, what my educational level is or what studies I have personally conducted. Everything you have described as far as the downfall of an investigation (tunnel vision, fabricating evidence, etc.) is and investigator being an idiot. It's not Reid. Once again...Reid doesn't tell cops to lead people. You can lie to criminals (as long as it doesn't shock the conscience), some people are not as smart as others for sure, but you will NEVER have the right person if the evidence/scene doesn't match the story. If the cops are idiots, they will feed the person the details. That, once again, isn't Reid. It's an idiot investigator.
I do not know one cop who wants to get the wrong guy. For every "wrong guy" you get, the "right guy" is still running around out there. Dumb x10!
You show your lack of "personal experience" that you have over me by some of your examples. These are not examples of a good police investigation that morphed into a wrongful conviction through an interrogation, and you are giving examples of a cop who winds up a kid and then arrests the kid for disorderly conduct? WTF does that have to do with Reid? It sounds like...yes you guess it...another idiot cop (given you have the "real story"). I don't even get your medical report sentence???? Once again...nothing to do with Reid. Threatening people with bodily harm?...nope...not Reid.
Man I sure am becoming more appreciative of where I live.
I'm also wondering about your spelling of pandemonium. Does that mean something the way it's spelled?
Pay attention: This is the line that indicates that I am changing subjects
"But beyond the Reid Interrogation Method"
see? Then the rest are examples of why people do not trust the police Like the following rest of that:
"how many hours is a juvenile allowed to remain at a police station before that minor must either be released or transported? " Got it?
Since my original post stated that people don't trust the cops I continued on with other reasons that were outside of Reid.
Further, I don't care what you do for a living or your educational attainment. Are we clear on this?
With that, go back and reread my post.
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