Our 6th Amendment states in part: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury….” Yet, in the United States, it is estimated that more than 95 percent of Federal and State convictions are the result of a plea bargain, of which, those that give up their 6th Amendment rights, whether effectively coerced or not, have done so, without ever having the opportunity, or the fairness, of seeing that their case was actually heard by an impartial jury, in which they had their fair say.
There is, in essence, very little criminal justice before a jury in America, of which it would appear that the only people who are accused of crimes that actually go to a trial, are those who have the assets to engage an attorney of merit to defend them, or are those that simply will not plea bargain, because they don’t think it is right to make a plea without having had their case heard by an impartial jury. At this point in American jurisprudence, the criminal justice system, could not function without such an exceedingly high percentage of those accused of a crime, plea bargaining to something that would appear to be lesser, because this criminal justice system does not have even close to the capacity to handle an increase of nineteen times more cases, going through the complete process of a jury trial. So then, in recognition that the prosecuting arm of the state knows that they don’t have the resources to take case after case to trial, and have little interest in seeing that this is accomplished, they deliberately and with foreknowledge have a strong tendency to “trump-up” charges on those so accused of crimes, to thereby make their bargaining position stronger when it comes to plea bargains, so that the bargain, is seldom a fair bargain, for those so accused of criminal activity.
It has to be said, that perhaps every criminal law on the books is a just law, and perhaps every penalty so associated with those criminal laws is fair and well-reasoned, which would thereby signify that if this is true, there shouldn’t be any plea bargaining at all. Rather, those who commit the crime, should thereby duly face what they have to face as their fate, and if that so means that even more people would be incarcerated for ever lengthier periods of time, so let it be. The reason that this doesn’t occur, is not only because we do not have the capacity for all these criminals to be incarcerated, but also the perceived injustice of it, would make this supposed land of liberty and justice for all, appear to other nations to be nothing much more than a modern apartheid state, in which the poor, disadvantaged, and ill-educated are thus rounded up and dispose of in prisons throughout the nation.
In point of fact, those who are the biggest proponents of the necessity of plea bargaining, are the very same, who have little or no interest in justice being served, but rather they just want to take off of the streets, those that annoy them, or are perceived as being an inconvenience, as if these unfortunates are the wretched refuse, which have invaded our pristine shores. To those then who think and act this way, they represent thus the mantle of injustice and falsehood, to their lasting shame