The vast majority of convictions are obtained by plea bargaining to a lessor crime then the primary offense. In most jurisdictions, over 90% of convictions are obtained by pleas.

It is absolutely true that the DA has to decide which cases he has the resources to prosecute. It simply isn't going to be even 25%. Without resources, successful prosecution is unlikely, even if the evidence is strong.

Judges require that the DA keep cases moving otherwise they risk violating due process rights -- which would necessarily increase the number of failed prosecutions if the DAs were disincentivized to plea.

Guns are not medicine.

I understand what you're saying. Let me be more clear so you understand what i'm saying.

Who gets to create the animation and/or control it? The state? The prosecutor? The defense? The judge? Some third party?

The state. 'State' as in country/government - not as in one of those US state thingy's.

So in teh UKit would be under the control of parliament like the rest of the justice system.

The prosecutor represents the state.

If I'm on a jury and a Black person is on trial, but I'm not allowed to know they are Black, how am I going to take into consideration the racism of the cops, the prosecutor and the eye witnesses when evaluating their testimony?

This is a goalpost shift. I was responding to your statement that prosecutors would seek fewer plea deals if the burden of proof was lowered, which implies that the burden of proof is the key driver of whether a prosecutor chooses to try a case or accept a plea deal. As you yourself admit, resource constraints among both prosecutors and defense lawyers is a much more significant factor than the burden of proof.

In the current system, with a strong burden of proof, prosecutors must consider resource allocation, to avoid attempting prosecution where even potentially strong evidence does not reasonably stand up to defense scrutiny before a jury using that strong standard. It is not a goalpost shift to point out that likelihood of success is a driving factor before employing resources.

In the DS/Chezlaw proposed system where "probably guilty" is an outcome, minimal resources can be allocated to many more prosecutions. The prosecution doesn't have to worry about having an "iron clad" case to bring before fickle juries. Anyone who has disputed a traffic ticket in civil court has seen this first hand.

A question to the "probably guilty" side:

What would your plan be to defend a case against a "probably guilty" standard?

Is it even possible?

Is "probably not-guilty" good enough, and is that what you'd attempt?

I would really like to read a detailed outline/description of how one would defend under the "probably guilty" standard.

Actually... David. Why don't you take first crack at it. You've said you've been writing about this for years.

Are you arguing The State is immune to corruption?

Why, as a defendant, would I ever agree to have the Prosecution, i.e. The State, employ Hollywood to make a movie to show the jury about how guilty I was?

"Back and to the left... Back and too the left..."

Apparently, not only are you the jury not allowed to know these things, but the Defense is not going to be allowed to cross examine the witnesses.

How can you cross examine an animation?

No

Nothign to do with hollywood. It's not a movie, it's a real time representation of the live trial


The trial would be the same as now.

Who is The State going to hire to create the animation? Pixar?

That's an issue but I'm not saying at all that when race is an issue it shouldn't be allowable.

Still it might well be better to have the jury decide purely on the evidence as to whether or not the cops were acting lawfully when they kill someone. If found guilty then the racially aggravated element of the crime could be considered.

Chez hasn't thought this through at all... lol

Whoever they hire for the technical skills, it's nothing like a movie. The action is not being created by anyone.

Determining whether or not the cops acted lawfully will usually depend on whether or not you believe their testimony. Your presumption that the state, its officers and officials are better than the jury and other regular people goes hand in hand with your irrational lack of fear of the state. imo.

You're lookign at it wrong. I have faith in the juries well above faith in police testimony which should (wothjout any doubt in my imo) be rendered irrelevent as fast as is possible by all police interactions with the public being maximally recorded. Then the jury can decide based on real evidence of what actually transpired.

What seems less rational to me is defending the incredibly flawed status quo by pointing out that any changes aren't utopian.

It's not like we have to guess how to litigate with this sort of burden of proof. In practice, it would be much the same as the preponderance of the evidence standard that governs all civil cases.

Again, a probably guilty option is very likely a bad idea, but not for the reasons you outline above.

I'm not saying the changes are bad because they aren't perfect. I'm saying they are worse than the status quo. The default in the US/UK should be to take power away from the state - it has too much - especially in regards to the criminal justice system. The state shouldn't be further limiting the information available to juries and they shouldn't have more options to charge people. The process should be maximally exposed to the jury.

Here's how you should change the criminal justice system in the US: Make drugs legal, eliminate private prisons, cut the number of prison and jail spaces by about 75%.

I agree with the bolded bit totally. I dont think it goes far enough but it's all good stuff.

I think you approach the state power thing from the wrong angle. The power of the state has to be controlled by us holding it to account both in how it does things and what we want it to do. That has to come via parliaments and democracy.

I would add reducing sentences, and making a much bigger commitment to reintegrating ex-cons into society.

Can we also ban sending people to prison if they wont be safe and well treated.

What are the reasons then?

I thought I explained in post #99 why I thought it was a bad idea.

Oscar Wilde wants you to stop stealing his quips.

I think so to, but I'm at least tooling with the notion that things actually play out in certain ways based more on physical features than on rules. Of course there's interplay and rules affect features, but having a large military leads to war, having a large police force, judicial and prison system leads to incarceration. The Republicans are onto something with starving the beast. They will damage the EPA and State Department more by decimation than by the Executive Orders that could be undone in the first week of a new administration. In practice it's not easy to send people to prison in California anymore because the prisons are overcrowded and the courts have limited further overcrowding. Politically in California the momentum is not for building a lot of new prisons at the moment. So, sentences are being reduced and fewer things are being prosecuted. (my brother is a Superior Court Judge in CA and that was based on stuff he's said)

So, I'm all for fewer things being illegal, most sentences being smaller, more mental health care, and more opportunities for people let out of prison to rejoin society (I taught solar to people just out of prison for a while and my wife teaches in prison now). But, let's smash 3 out of 4 prisons, burning some bridges, and making it harder to get back to the bad ways.