Trials

Innocent People Who Plead Guilty

Many innocent defendants plead guilty in part due to fear of what they call 'the trial penalty' -- that the punishment will be greater after trial.

By  
on

There’s an assumption that when someone pleads guilty to a crime, swearing to tell the truth and allocuting to all the elements, he actually committed it.  But this is not necessarily true.

We all know that innocent people can be found guilty of crimes they didn’t commit, but innocent people might actually choose to plead guilty simply because they’re afraid to go to trial.  The fear is based on a simple fact — people who go to trial and are convicted get much heavier sentences than those who plea-bargain.

Although the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a speedy and public trial, because the system favors plea bargaining, some defendants give up that right to save extra years in jail.  It’s a question of practicality.  Whether the person is innocent or not, jury trials are always a crap shoot, with the verdict uncertain until rendered. If you’re offered probation pre-trial by pleading guilty but know a judge will give you jail if you lose trial, you might choose to say you did something that you didn’t do just to avoid jail. It would take the most stalwart belief in justice (and your attorney) to go forward when a guilty verdict has you serving a much tougher sentence.

Adding to this watering down of the Sixth Amendment is the fact that most defendants take pleas without even knowing the strength of the case against them.  Prosecutors in most states are not required to share evidence they’ve gathered until the eve of trial.  But defendants who wait till then lose the benefit of a plea bargain. It’s not uncommon for judges to tell defendants as they’re being arraigned, “If you don’t take this plea today, it’s off the table.”

There are benefits to this system of course — it diminishes court dockets and saves the expense of conducting a trial.  Plus aren’t most defendants guilty anyway, so why gobble up scarce resources just to prove it?  Because that’s what the Sixth Amendment compels.

In an excellent report issued last week by the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys (NACDL), former Eastern District of New York Justice John Gleeson wrote, “No one should be required to gamble with years and often decades of their liberty to exercise their Sixth Amendment right. Our Constitution claims to protect the guilty as well, affording them a presumption of innocence and protecting them from punishment unless the government can prove them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. A system characterized by extravagant trial penalties produces guilty pleas in cases where the government cannot satisfy that burden, hollowing out those protections and producing effects no less pernicious than innocents pleading guilty.”

In its 84-page report, the NACDL cites specific cases, data and statistics illustrating how many defendants plead guilty in part due to fear of what they call “the trial penalty.”  This causes fewer and fewer defendants go to trial every year.  What used to be 20 percent of those arrested choosing trial 30 years ago, is now down to 3 percent.

Sponsored

This fear of trial saves the prosecution from having their evidence tested for both accuracy and sufficiency.  It makes them lazy, invites corruption, and coerces defendants who stand a chance of being acquitted to back off.  It also creates injustices.  A more culpable defendant,  let’s say the guy who pointed the gun in a bank robbery, might plead to a five-year sentence, while the guy driving the car who didn’t know what was going on inside but who went to  trial and lost, could get 15.

In every case I’ve tried (and there are close to 100), when the defendant lost, he always got a substantially higher sentence than what was offered pre-trial.  In one murder case, an offer was made of 11 years on a plea. After trial, the defendant was sentenced to 40.   The defendant did not take the stand, thus the prosecution could not argue that he committed perjury or obstructed justice.  He was given the higher sentence merely because he refused to plead guilty.

According to the NACDL report, “in most primary offense categories, the average post-trial sentence was more than triple the average post-plea sentence. In antitrust cases, it was more than eight times as high.”

Poor people often suffer the most.  Generally stuck in jail from arrest through resolution of their case, they’ll plead to crimes they didn’t commit just to get out of jail sooner.  It often takes longer to wait for trial, then to admit guilt and go home. What they don’t realize is, by pleading guilty even if innocent, they develop a criminal record that then follows them the rest of their lives making it  difficult to find work,  housing, loans, licenses, etc.

This begs the philosophical question — if a particular crime is worth a particular amount of punishment, why does that crime deserve greater punishment just because the person convicted went to trial?

Sponsored

Part of this is a holdover from our Puritanical Christian roots.  Admit guilt, accept responsibility, and benefit.  But that’s in direct contradiction with the Founding Father’s position — the defendant is not mandated to admit he did anything, it’s up to the prosecution to prove it.

The NACDL report is well worth a read.  It examines the causes and ramifications of the “trial penalty” and offers several suggestions for change, among them:

1) Provide defendants with full discovery early on.  That way defendants can make informed choices about whether pleading guilty is in their best interest.

2) Remove the “trial penalty” entirely unless there is proof that the defendant obstructed justice during trial or lied on the stand.

Punishing people who go to trial more severely squelches their right to be tried.  The knee-jerk reaction of the majority of judges to extract an extra pound of flesh from a defendant for the audacity of challenging the charges, causes injustice.   The NACDL report goes a long way in shining light on the “trial penalty” that, by virtue of its commonality, has been accepted as a given for far too long.

Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.

Topics

, , , ,