Lets face it, our judicial system is less than perfect. With a high volume of cases coming in daily, it could take months for an individual’s preliminary hearing. Even then, it will probably go to a plea bargain. After all, 96% of cases are plea bargains. With this type of system, we see a lot of innocent people getting convicted of crimes they did not commit because of plea bargains and other factors.

Plea deals are set up by the prosecution. It works kind of like this. They speak with the district attorney and the county judge. They decide the severity of the crime and what the sentence should be. For the sake of this scenario, we will say 10 years. Then they take their deal to the defense which would look like this:

• Plead Guilty: 5 years with the chance of parole.
• Plead Not Guilty: Possible 10 years with no chance of parole.

Now imagine that you are poor and don’t have family that can help you with a defense attorney and you are being charged with a crime you did not commit. Are you going to trust a public defender? A lot of the times, no people don’t. They take the five years with the chance of parole and just move on. Plea deals are a bad way to run our system, but if we didn’t operate this way, then trials could be backed up for years.

Lack of zealous defense. In the 90’s there was a famous case known as the “Central Park Five”. A woman was found raped and beaten in central park and police apprehended five young boys from the ages of 14-15. The police interrogated the boys for over 12 hours that night and would not allow them to leave the precinct. The boys, being young and scared, eventually confessed to the crime that they had nothing to do with. Mind you, they all gave their confessions separately and when you watch the videos, none of them correlate with each other in the slightest. They also had to use a public defender, there is video footage of one of the boy’s attorneys sleeping while court was in session. The boys did not receive a good zealous defense because they were poor. Years later, they were found innocent when another boy confessed to the crime and gave accurate details that only the offender would know. The boys all spent 15 plus years in prison before they were exonerated.

The fact is, there is only a 50/50 chance you will be found innocent if your case goes to trial. It is a scary gamble and there are hundreds of people that have paid the ultimate price. Visit https://www.innocenceproject.org/ and comment below on a case that you found to be interesting.