THE ECONOMIST: A plea for change: American prosecutors have too much power. Hand some of it to judges.
More than 95% of convictions in America are reached through plea bargains, in which the defendant agrees to plead guilty in return for leniency. Many convictions also depend on the testimony of a “co-operating witness”, who snitches for the same reason. Defenders of the system argue that it is efficient. By avoiding long, costly trials, America can lock up lots of villains. Without plea deals, the courts would be swamped.
I think that without plea deals, prosecutors would have to be much choosier about who they charged, which is not a bug, but a feature.
Related: Department of Injustice:
Every week there are new revelations of the decrepit and often barbarous state of the U.S. criminal-justice and prison systems. The most egregious aspects of its dysfunction are not the absurdly severe sentences and world-record incarceration levels, or the North Korean conviction rates, or the frequent murders of prisoners by correctional officers in some of the state prisons, but the politically motivated antics of the prosecutors. . . .
In the assault on Governor Scott Walker, Democratic district attorney John Chisholm’s long-running criminal investigation of the governor and his entourage ended in 2013, and has been followed by a criminal investigation into the most prominent individuals and organizations that support the governor, expressing concern about improper collusion in support of the governor’s political, if not statutory, offense, which was to curb rapacious and irresponsible public-sector unions. This is a John Doe investigation (so called because it is a blind search into whether a crime was committed at all, and if so by whom — a procedure certain to lead to abuse).
Nothing is said in public, except that evidence of the existence of the investigation is conveniently leaked, and the subjects cannot speak about it. Unfortunately for Chisholm, a longtime friend of his and his wife’s (she is a militant shop steward for the teachers’ union) brought forward extensive allegations of the political and spousally generated motives behind the investigations.
Prosecutors need more accountability.