> If you were found guilty, legally speaking you are guilty, so it follows that you must be lying if you say you're not.

Note that absolutely does not follow. There's a difference between wrong and lying; a court may find, in a case where self-defense was claimed, that the defendant was not in reasonable, imminent fear of the kind of unlicensed harm which warrants self-defense, and it may be correct in so doing. But that does not mean that the defendant does not honestly believe they had a reasonable fear of such imminent harm, and is lying when they said they did.

> well, I defend the notion of guilty pleas getting shorter sentences because it makes for a better overall system by placing incentives on not tying up the courts any more than they need to.

Creating a material incentive to reduce through accountability of the executive to the public—criminal procedure doesn't just protect the defendant, it protects the public from being deceived by the executive about their response to crime—doesn't make a better system, it makes a worse system. Furtherz it encourages overcriminalization by the legislature.