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A comment on Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016). Parent comment

Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by pvg on Monday July 23, 2018 @08:35PM (#17597211)
Can you think of any practitioner or other serious critic of the US justice system who thinks the fundamental problem is plea deals? They always seem to be trotted out in these discussions as somehow obviously bad and unfair on the level of, say, abusive civil forfeiture. But the objection you are describing is the difference between a possible, usually highly unlikely maximum sentence and a sentence arrived at in a plea deal. Only one of those is a real thing, though.
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Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by AnthonyMouse on Monday July 23, 2018 @10:14PM (#17597621)
> But the objection you are describing is the difference between a possible, usually highly unlikely maximum sentence and a sentence arrived at in a plea deal. Only one of those is a real thing, though.

The maximum penalty does actually happen though, it's just not common. The problem is that you don't know if it will happen to you before the trial, so its existence is extremely coercive. It scares the crap out of people -- and people are risk averse. They'll take a 100% chance of 2 years over a 1% chance of 30 years, even if the expected value is lower, because on the off chance the coin comes up tails six times in a row, they lose their entire life.

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Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by pvg on Monday July 23, 2018 @10:28PM (#17597682)
That's not a particularly important detail of my question.
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Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by mikeash on Monday July 23, 2018 @10:53PM (#17597767)
It may not be the fundamental problem, but plea deals are still horribly unjust. They are punishment for asserting your rights. They should never have been allowed and should be abolished.
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Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by pvg on Monday July 23, 2018 @11:13PM (#17597848)
Ok, you feel strongly about plea deals but I still don't understand what the theory of supposed injustice is supposed to be. Why aren't people like Ken White railing against plea deals? Or maybe some are? Etc.
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Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by Digory on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @12:45AM (#17598172)
Harvard's Bill Stuntz wrote about plea bargains extensively before his death.[1] His last book was the "Collapse of American Criminal Justice."

The issue isn't the plea bargain itself, but the incentives to make lots of 'suboptimal' deals. I've seen similar, recent arguments about whether #MeToo perpetrators should be allowed to settle with victims, because of our public interest in identifying attackers.

All things being equal, negotiated resolutions are great. But politics, over-criminalization, career incentives, and budget pressure swamp any real negotiating power by defendants. No one wants to kill any individual's deal. But the deals are the best way to 'see' the effect of the system's incentives.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/4093405?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...

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Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by pvg on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @09:24PM (#17606286)
Thanks, I'll check it out. Curiously, Stuntz's names pops up in one of the article linked in thread by the cursory googlemaster as a supporter (presumably in fair conditions) plea bargains.
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Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by pvg on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @09:23PM (#17606281)
I haven't gone through every single one of these with a fine toothed comb but none seem to have a problem with plea bargaining itself - the root problems they describe are things like draconian sentences, overly broad prosecutorial discretion, outright fabrication of evidence, etc. The remedy suggested by the poster above - just getting rid of plea bargains isn't going to help in the cases described by these articles.
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Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by mikeash on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @07:54AM (#17600160)
The injustice is that they result in punishment for asserting your right to a trial.
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Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by pvg on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @09:26PM (#17606297)
This 'argument' reminds me a bit of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZy_VR1ifPc

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Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by mikeash on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @09:52PM (#17606372)
Scare quotes and an undescriptive link to a random YouTube video... if you want to actually have a conversation here, this is not the way to do it.
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Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by pvg on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @10:34PM (#17606539)
I asked you a question and you basically repeated 'it is wrong'. And they're not 'scare quotes', your response is not an argument and not an invitation to conversation.
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Re:Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016) by mikeash on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @11:30PM (#17606726)
You asked what was unjust about it and I answered. It’s repetitive because I assumed you had missed it in my first comment, otherwise you wouldn’t have asked.

If this answer is not satisfactory to you then perhaps you could tell me what you’re after. Because as far as I can tell, this is a really simple question and answer. What is unjust? Punishing people for asserting their right to trial. Boom, done. If you want more, ask for it.

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