What is the downside of plea bargains?
The downside for the defense is that the accused is giving up the right to have 12 people hear all the evidence and test the prosecution’s evidence against the defendant. The downside for the community is that it doesn’t get to have a process which attempts to get at the truth of what really happened in the case. And, the plea bargaining system can be abused: It can extract guilty pleas from absolutely innocent people who plead guilty to charges they did not commit because they can’t afford the risk of going to trial. Law professor Stephen Schulhofer offers this general critique of the system: “The major problem with plea bargaining is that it forces the party into a situation where they have to take a guess about what the evidence is, about how strong the case might be, and they have to make that guess against the background of enormously severe penalties if you guess wrong. So defendants, even if they have strong defenses, and even if they are innocent, in fact face enormous pressure
