> It therefore sounds like your argument isn't really with the plea system. It is with overly harsh maximum sentences.

But that is how the plea system operates. That is why the sentences are so long.

If the maximum penalty approximated what people are actually sentenced to, the prosecutor would have less leverage in plea bargaining and a much higher percentage of people would go to trial. Or the pleas would have to be more generous which would under-punish actually-guilty people who take the plea -- and reintroduce the incentive for innocent people to plead guilty.

The only way to get rid of that incentive is to get rid of plea bargaining. (Which would then allow maximum sentences to be much lower.)

No. The root of my argument is that the plea system causes a disproportionate distortion/inflation of sentences for those wrongly found guilty.

Sure, if the plea system disappeared tomorrow, then initially sentences would probably be universally high. But at least wrongly convicted innocents wouldn't be treated more harshly than the guilty.

In time, different (probably mainly political) forces would bring down sentences to what society considers acceptable (two years in our example). Even if sentences didn't go down, at least they'd be aligned with society accepts for both guilty and wrongly convicted innocents. In any case, the absolute length of sentences is outside the scope of my argument.

You seem to be focused on the idea of fairness in the justice system, so let me try to rephrase part of the problem here. Without the plea system the justice system would grind to a crawl as there would be no incentive for anyone to ever admit guilt. That would lead to innocent people sitting behind bars for even longer as they await a trial because they either weren't offered bail or couldn't afford it. Much less has to go wrong for those people compared with the numerous failures that would need to result for an innocent person to be convicted and sentenced.

People's inability to afford bail isn't an argument for plea bargains, that's an argument for letting people go on their own recognizance and abolishing cash bail, instead of keeping half a million unconvicted people in American jails.

Objecting to one criminal justice reform because it might exacerbate how the criminal justice system is also completely unfair in another, equally terrible way isn't very convincing, when you could actually be advocating to eliminate both problems.

And hey, no more innocent people railroaded into guilty pleas like they are under the current system. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-peo...

After rereading my comment, I did kind of garble my point. I wasn't meaning to imply that bail is an argument in support of pleas in general. My point was that you can't change part of a system without thinking of the possible effects. Removing the plea system without a plan how to handle the roughly 10 fold increase in criminal trials or how that increase might affect people awaiting trial is like removing a leg of a table without considering how stable it would be with three legs. When proposing a reform you should either be practical, like reducing maximum sentences, or at least holistic if the reforms are impractical. Arguments for simply removing the plea system without considering how it would affect courts or bail is neither practical nor holistic.

Other countries seem to manage just fine. As crunchatized mentions, that's because their bail system isn't also broken.

I am really not familiar with how the the legal system works outside of the common law world. As far as I'm aware, Canada and England work very similarly with pleas reducing sentencing, the vast majority of cases not going to trial, and a cash bail system. Which country would you say does it right?

> As far as I'm aware, Canada and England work very similarly with pleas reducing sentencing, the vast majority of cases not going to trial, and a cash bail system.

Quite the opposite (in terms of pleas and cash bail). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bail and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain.

For example in England plea bargains are based on timing of plea only and are limited to one third off the sentence only. Bail is given by default and a cash bond is not required.

> Which country would you say does it right?

I'm not sure I'm qualified to say that some country does it right, but England for example is quite the opposite of the US in terms of "presumption of innocence" really having a meaning. The system hasn't ground to a halt, yet innocent people don't rot in jail awaiting trial just because they're poor, and don't have to plead guilty for fear of getting a 10x sentence.

We were discussing the removal of these systems. In a spectrum with no plea system/cash bail on one side and the American system on the other, those countries are much closer to us then no plea/cash bail side. I stand by my statement that "Canada and England work very similarly with pleas reducing sentencing, the vast majority of cases not going to trial, and a cash bail system."

The rest of your post just goes back to my previous comment about max sentences. If we reduce the max sentence for that hypothetical crime from 20 years to 3 years, then our system would be the same in that people who plead guilty would receive two thirds the sentence that those found guilty at trial.

Also, one of the reasons that the UK is able to handle this increased case workload (although a majority of cases are still plead down) is they spend a relatively high amount per capita when compared with other countries. Once again, I am not against a holistic change that reforms the whole justice system. But doing away with the plea system doesn't have the benefits that you suggest and has various downsides that you are skipping over.