A small percentage of cases in which plea agreements have been reached should be randomly sent to trials. How often would the government be unable to secure a conviction after it has managed to induce a pre-trial guilty plea? Let's find out.
I do not understand this.
And there never should be the "inherently coercive" use of the threat of capital punishment or life without parole to induce a guilty plea.
What can we do to make sure that individuals who do exercise inherent coercion are rightly punished?
Then there is "stacking" — prosecutors piling on charges which, in a context of mandatory minimum sentences, force defendants to choose between risking potentially life-ruining trials and pleading guilty to lesser charges, even if innocent.
Why is stacking even a thing in our justice system? What benefit does it serve in contrast of looking a defendant's charges one by one?
Last year, 98.3 percent of federal criminal convictions, and about 95 percent in the states, resulted from bargained guilty pleas. Why? To a significant extent, coercion.
This statistic is extremely high and it shows how manipulative prosecutor's can be if they are able to coerce so many people into guilty pleas.
A just-published report by an American Bar Association task force says plea bargaining has not only become the primary way to resolve criminal cases, "some jurisdictions have not had a criminal trial in many years."
Can plea bargains be considered unconstitutional if we are taking away the defendants right to a speedy, public trial?
Witnesses become scared to testify; communal "justice" erupts in the form of retribution, pushing aside the rule of law. Murder rates flare, in short, when legal legitimacy falters in a community--when justice is corrupted, when power is in dispute, when authorities ignore violent injury and death. Isolation and segregation magnify the effects.
the author attributes witnesses become scared to testify to corruption in our justice system and when power is at the forefront.
weak police presence in these neighborhoods.
the author is strongly against our criminal justice system, believing that the presence of the police in African-American neighborhoods is weak.
Solving these murders and other serious crimes of violence in black communities should be a top goal for law enforcement--and it deserves to take priority over much more widely discussed issues such as racial profiling and the excessive use of force by police in black neighborhoods, from Ferguson to Staten Island.
central theme of the passage.
Normalizing mental health counseling will reduce the stigma associated with it.
Why is mental health counseling even stigmatized in the first place?
This means shifting the burden from taxpayer dollars to police department insurance policies.
I am astonished that this is even being discussed because it seems like it should have been this way from the start.
So, not only is the officer absolved from civil or financial culpability, but the police department often faces little financial liability. Instead, the financial burden falls onto the municipality; thus, taxpayers. This money could be going toward education, work, and infrastructure.
Why should taxpayers have to pay for the mistakes of police misconduct that occur because of poor training or evaluations within the police department? Take that money out of the department's budget and use the funds in a better way.
Nationally, officers receive about 50 hours of firearm training during the police academy. They receive less than 10 hours of de-escalation training. So, when they show up at a scene and pull their weapon, whether it be on teenagers walking down the street after playing a basketball game or someone in a hotel or even a car (like in the killing of Daunte Wright in a Minneapolis suburb), poor decisions and bad outcomes should not be surprising.
Obviously 10 hours of de-escalation training is too low, but I wonder what that number should be? Maybe the same amount as firearm training? Or should we switch it to 50 hours of de-escalation training and 10 hours of firearm training?
Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that courts invented to make it more difficult to sue police and other government officials who have been plausibly alleged to have violated somebody’s rights.
Why was this doctrine even established in the first place? This is stupid. The police and government officials do not deserve immunity. They deserve to be held accountable for their errors.
Maryland where the state legislature passed the Maryland Police Accountability Act of 2021
I am glad to see acts like this being passed by state legislatures. Holding our police force accountable for their mistakes is, in my opinion, the best way to transform law enforcement in a positive way. I wonder what other police reforms have been established recently?
mental health issues among officers,
I believe we do not focus enough on how important it is to take care of police officers mental health. These issues are not something to take lightly because of how it can affect the way they do their jobs.