certainly most people executed are guilty of serious crime, probably a lot of people who plea bargain are guilty
There are also people too poor to afford a good lawyer (or too stupid to realize they need one), so the question is how large fraction of those who were executed or accepted a plea bargain they make.
The whole system of a plea bargain is essentially a lottery—imagine a situation where (a) you didn’t commit a crime, but (b) you are quite aware that from outside you seem quite suspicious. For example, you accidentally walked near the crime area, but for completely unrelated and difficult-to-explain reasons. Or you actually had a conflict with the given person yesterday, then you went home, but you don’t have any alibi for the night because you live alone and you didn’t expect you would need one, and the next day the person is found murdered. So, you can either play the lottery, insist that you are innocent, without having any good proof, and with some indirect evidence pointing against you… and depending on how the jury and judge will feel at the moment, you might walk home, or spend 10 years behind the bars. Do you feel lucky? Or you may accept the plea bargain, where you are promised an order of magnitude less serious punishment (and later it may turn out they actually lied about some details, but you didn’t know that at the moment).
In the past some people were executed, and when later the DNA evidence was examined it turned out it was actually someone else. Oops, shit happens.
There are also people too poor to afford a good lawyer (or too stupid to realize they need one), so the question is how large fraction of those who were executed or accepted a plea bargain they make.
The whole system of a plea bargain is essentially a lottery—imagine a situation where (a) you didn’t commit a crime, but (b) you are quite aware that from outside you seem quite suspicious. For example, you accidentally walked near the crime area, but for completely unrelated and difficult-to-explain reasons. Or you actually had a conflict with the given person yesterday, then you went home, but you don’t have any alibi for the night because you live alone and you didn’t expect you would need one, and the next day the person is found murdered. So, you can either play the lottery, insist that you are innocent, without having any good proof, and with some indirect evidence pointing against you… and depending on how the jury and judge will feel at the moment, you might walk home, or spend 10 years behind the bars. Do you feel lucky? Or you may accept the plea bargain, where you are promised an order of magnitude less serious punishment (and later it may turn out they actually lied about some details, but you didn’t know that at the moment).
In the past some people were executed, and when later the DNA evidence was examined it turned out it was actually someone else. Oops, shit happens.
To be clear, I think plea bargains are bad for exactly that reason.