This morning I find myself mulling over the question of whether or not it should be legal for the judicial system to accept a plead of guilty as proof positive of guilt. Television “cop” programs often include a segment showing someone pleading guilty to a lessor charge to the original one as the path of least risk for the suspect, and least cost for the District Attorney (DA). The suspect “wins” because they don’t face the risk of losing their defense case with a much harsher punishment. They are faced with questions such as “is 5 years in prison better than the rest of my life?” – they have to make a decision about how likely it is to get convicted even though they are innocent. The State wins because they don’t have to spend the time and money associated with “proving” guilt. This is an apparent “win-win” for all involved – but is it? Is this actually a common event in “real life?” My understanding is that it is common, especially for people that do not have the resources to effectively mount a defense. Currently, about 95% of convictions are based upon guilty pleas, and almost 15% of the people who are exonerated pleaded guilty. What we don’t know is how many of the 95% that pleaded guilty were actually innocent, but the research indicates it is probably around 10% of those that pleaded guilty were actually innocent, and since almost all convictions are obtained by confessions, perhaps 10% of those in prisons are innocent. However, since very few are exonerated the actual percentages are unknown. What is known is that at least 10,000 innocent people are in prison at any given time.

Assuming that falsely pleading guilty in order to minimize the risk of a much more severe punishment happens, does this help, or harm, society? It seems pretty clear that when this happens justice has been knocked out of alignment in major ways. Obviously the original offense was either not true, or the reduced one after the plea bargain was false. The person either did the bad thing and “deserves” the punishment (assuming the punishments actually align with “justice”), or they didn’t. If they actually did the lessor thing, then the original charge was false. It appears that the introduction of the more severe charge was more along the lines of a threat, rather than an understanding that the charge was valid. My most generous interpretation of this is that the police (and DA) believe the suspect is guilty of the lessor charge, but want to avoid the high cost of actually “proving” it with objective evidence. Therefore, they make up a more severe change in the hopes that the suspect will confess to the crime that they actually committed – saving a great deal of time and money. However, it also has the obvious potential for incarcerating innocent people based upon their desire to reduce risks of a severe punishment rather than upon solid, objective evidence. This is clearly a problem based upon the numbers of people that get exonerated by organizations such as the Innocent Project that has helped about 400 innocent people get released from prison, many after spending decades in prison. These are usually high profile cases that were cleared because of DNA test results. How many “less important” cases exist that are based upon false confessions but no refutable exonerating evidence because the case never came to trial with no evidence to refute?

I wonder if we shouldn’t always require criminal cases be competently and completely tried. Maybe we should consider a person innocent until proven guilty. Perhaps confessions should be inadmissible as evidence – not only should everyone have a fifth amendment right to not be required to “be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”, but no allowed to be a witness against himself. Every case should require evidence as “proof” of innocence under the assumption that everyone is innocent until proven guilty – and history shows that confessions are not necessarily proof, or true.

I don’t have good data concerning how prevalent this problem is in our justice system, but it is very clear that it isn’t unknown, or particularly rare. It seems to me that this is an important area to research to find out how big of a problem it actually is, and then find solutions (perhaps along the lines of my recommendation). It is unconscionable for innocent people to be convicted of a crime just because they are terrified by the possibility of being convicted of a much worse crime (that they also didn’t do) because of a lack in trust of the judicial system.