While I think there are some flaws with this proposal, my biggest question is “Why not do other things that are done abroad and we know work?”
The US system for deals is really strange. In the UK and many european countries there’s no such thing as a deal. The police can charge you with a crime. The earlier in the process you admit guilt, the bigger % a sentence reduction you get. This seems to solve the overcharging problem, a prosecutor can’t charge you with crime X and then give you a deal for crime Y, and aligns incentives better as prosecutors can’t fear people into taking plea deals as easily. It also preserves much of the benefit of plea bargaining by still allowing suspects to confess when the evidence is overwhelming and hence save lot’s of time and money.
In Germany where I live a prosecutor has a legal obligation for prosecuting cases of crimes if he believes the defendent is guilty. A prosecutor is not allowed to say “Well this law is stupid so I won’t prosecute people for breaking it” while in the US that’s within the rights of a prosecutor. This right allows for plea deals to happen in the US.
If you change this basic part about what the mandate of the prosecutor happens to be, you will suddenly get a lot of very bad laws enforced that currently aren’t enforced. If laws against oral sex in some states suddenly get enforced that will create pressure to get rid of those laws but it’s won’t be pretty.
But even if the US would get rid of their current legal system and switch to the German one (which is obviously much better thought out and superior ;) ) and have a culture change to make American bureacrats as law abiding as German one’s there’s still a process whereby plea bargining could cut down on legal costs and time of the trial. There’s a benefit in getting a verdict in a few days instead of years through plea bargaining.
In many situation a plea deal is about more then just getting the person to admit that they are guilty but also to reveal certain other information that’s of interest to the prosecutor. Being able to make a deal to get the information can be useful for the government.
While I think there are some flaws with this proposal, my biggest question is “Why not do other things that are done abroad and we know work?”
The US system for deals is really strange. In the UK and many european countries there’s no such thing as a deal. The police can charge you with a crime. The earlier in the process you admit guilt, the bigger % a sentence reduction you get. This seems to solve the overcharging problem, a prosecutor can’t charge you with crime X and then give you a deal for crime Y, and aligns incentives better as prosecutors can’t fear people into taking plea deals as easily. It also preserves much of the benefit of plea bargaining by still allowing suspects to confess when the evidence is overwhelming and hence save lot’s of time and money.
In Germany where I live a prosecutor has a legal obligation for prosecuting cases of crimes if he believes the defendent is guilty. A prosecutor is not allowed to say “Well this law is stupid so I won’t prosecute people for breaking it” while in the US that’s within the rights of a prosecutor. This right allows for plea deals to happen in the US.
If you change this basic part about what the mandate of the prosecutor happens to be, you will suddenly get a lot of very bad laws enforced that currently aren’t enforced. If laws against oral sex in some states suddenly get enforced that will create pressure to get rid of those laws but it’s won’t be pretty.
But even if the US would get rid of their current legal system and switch to the German one (which is obviously much better thought out and superior ;) ) and have a culture change to make American bureacrats as law abiding as German one’s there’s still a process whereby plea bargining could cut down on legal costs and time of the trial. There’s a benefit in getting a verdict in a few days instead of years through plea bargaining.
In many situation a plea deal is about more then just getting the person to admit that they are guilty but also to reveal certain other information that’s of interest to the prosecutor. Being able to make a deal to get the information can be useful for the government.