Innocent Until…?

There’s an interesting (but lengthy) piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that covers broadly many of the problems that exist in our justice system. It is at once one of the more fascinating pieces I’ve read in quite a while, and one of the most frightening. ‘Tis the season, I suppose. If you have an hour, I suggest you peruse it, if not, I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version.

Perhaps the largest problem is summed up thusly: “Whether suspects are guilty has come to matter less than making sure they are indicted or convicted or, more likely, coerced into pleading guilty.” Aiding in the achievement of this goal is the fact that “A person who fights a federal charge must, by law, receive more prison time than someone who pleads guilty to the same crime.“

What the fucking fuck is that? How dare you protest these accusations! The presumption of such a measure is guilt and cannot be construed otherwise.

In this sort of environment where the incentives are perverted by the politics, it’s simple to pile on a few additional or excessive or punitive or spurious charges, and offer to drop some of them in favor of a plea. It’s no longer about what a person might be suspected of, but rather with what can he be charged? Imperfect men are just doing their jobs (albeit, imperfectly) and the corrupted ones are encouraging or enabling injustice, as they always have and always will.

Furthermore, since 1974, there’s been an even more interesting quirk which allows federal agents “to set up an illegal enterprise with the goal of luring in criminals and then arresting them.” Conveniently, this allows Prosecutors and Federal Agents a broad power over sentencing — they become de facto judge and jury — since they are the ones creating the crime or conspiracy upon which the sentencing will eventually be based, a problem which has only been exacerbated by the unintended consequences of federal minimum sentencing guidelines, as “Federal prosecutors and agents now have the power to manipulate the charges a suspect will face and, as a result, the sentences that suspect will serve.

Growing up, I was always taught that because these imperfections (including but not limited to a pesky lack of omniscience) a proper justice system would be designed to err in favor of the accused — better to let a hundred guilty men go free than for an innocent man to spend years of his life in prison, as has irrefutably happened more than 100 times in the past, or worse yet, to be put to death.

But people respond to incentives, and when convictions are incentivized, when acquittals are viewed as “failures,” instead of a necessary byproduct of a justice system maintained by imperfect men, results like these should come as no surprise to anyone.