Just watched a crime program. And can't help sharing this...

...that someone who deserved to be thrown in jail for life without parole, with keys thrown away got just 7 years and served only 3.5 due to a plea deal!!!

I think plea deals are evil, counter productive and a form of bribery by the justice system (who should be setting perfect examples) and therefore should be illegal

I think to get a person to further cooperate once guilty rather than bribe with leniency and a reduction in sentence, there should be a threat of a more severe sentence

If normal sentence is 10 years, if no cooperation double to 20 years

If normal sentence is life with parole, if no cooperation increase sentence to life without parole

If normal sentence is life without parole, if no cooperation increase sentence to life without parole plus permanent in isolation unit

Plea deals in the US are designed to avoid trial. The majority of these cases are where the evidence may not be strong enough to carry a verdict, but the defendant can be coerced into pleading guilty anyway. Unsurprisingly, these are heavily used as a weapon against those who are underprivileged and may not fully understand the legal system or have the wherewithal to defend themselves. So the biggest problem with plea deals isn't leniency, it's innocent or underprivileged people getting forced into confessing and accepting fines or jail time that someone with means would be able to avoid.

This interacts with a broken public defender system in bad ways. John Oliver has a good overview.

Plea deals in the US are designed to avoid trial. The majority of these cases are where the evidence may not be strong enough to carry a verdict, but the defendant can be coerced into pleading guilty anyway. Unsurprisingly, these are heavily used as a weapon against those who are underprivileged and may not fully understand the legal system or have the wherewithal to defend themselves. So the biggest problem with plea deals isn't leniency, it's innocent or underprivileged people getting forced into confessing and accepting fines or jail time that someone with means would be able to avoid.

^
I got arrested once on trumped up charges. I cooperated and willingly let them interrogate me without a lawyer because I knew I wasn't a criminal... but ended up with multiple charges that could end up with a 20 year prison sentence. I'm a pretty typical, "robust, hetero man" type of guy, but I was in hysterical tears by the time they unlocked the interrogation room...

I was offered a choice between rolling the dice with a magistrate, where I'd almost certainly be found guilty of one minor charge and get a conviction on my record (which would prevent me from ever getting a USA work visa, etc...), and at worst go to prison for decades... or, I could lie and plead guilty to their bullshit, pay a fine, serve an hour once a week for a few months, and most importantly: not have any conviction recorded. Afterwards, my lawyer basically just said "oh fantastic, they've already offered a good deal, there's no need for me".

Needless to say, I took the deal.
That's the last time I cooperate with hostile police though.

I was offered a choice between rolling the dice with a magistrate, where I'd almost certainly be found guilty of one minor charge and get a conviction on my record (which would prevent me from ever getting a USA work visa, etc...), and at worst go to prison for decades... or, I could lie and plead guilty to their bullshit, pay a fine, serve an hour once a week for a few months, and most importantly: not have any conviction recorded. Afterwards, my lawyer basically just said "oh fantastic, they've already offered a good deal, there's no need for me".

Needless to say, I took the deal.
That's the last time I cooperate with hostile police though.

I can see where plea deals can become a life-saver, but mostly it is abused, at least from the crime documentaries that i've watched

it's innocent or underprivileged people getting forced into confessing and accepting fines or jail time that someone with means would be able to avoid.

Agreed. This is another form of abusing the system

This interacts with a broken public defender system in bad ways.

" title="External link">John Oliver has a good overview.

Would have liked to watch this but i got "The uploader has not made this video available in your country"

Plea deals can potentially be much, much worse than that. Just ask Richard Glossip.

Glossip's execution is controversial in that he was convicted almost entirely on the testimony of Sneed, who confessed to bludgeoning Van Treese to death with a baseball bat by himself and who was spared a death sentence himself by implicating Glossip.

He is on death row because the actual murderer Justin Sneed told police that Richard paid him in order to avoid the death penalty himself. No physical evidence ties Richard to the crime, and inmates incarcerated with Justin Sneed have stated that he brags about getting the blame pushed onto Richard.

I got arrested once on trumped up charges. I cooperated and willingly let them interrogate me without a lawyer because I knew I wasn't a criminal... but ended up with multiple charges that could end up with a 20 year prison sentence. I'm a pretty typical, "robust, hetero man" type of guy, but I was in hysterical tears by the time they unlocked the interrogation room...

Was this you up to typical teenage shenanigans that as a mature adult you now know better, or was this as an adult, doing something that really wasn't all that bad?

I'm not trying to pry into your personal life, I'm just trying to gauge how relevant that anecdote is to my own life.

Would have liked to watch this but i got "The uploader has not made this video available in your country"

Try searching for "Youtube proxy" and see if any of those sites help. I've never tried but they advertise getting around this.

90-95% of cases do not go to trial and instead end in a plea bargain. I suppose you should be aware that if this were not the case then the alternative would be 20X more cases going to trial which would possibly result in people spending long periods in prison because they cannot afford bail and have to now wait behind all the other cases wanting to go to trial.

Was this you up to typical teenage shenanigans that as a mature adult you now know better, or was this as an adult, doing something that really wasn't all that bad?

I never got caught for teenage shenanigans
I was 25, good paying job, long term relationship, two cats, yuppie. In hindsight, the fact that they threatened me with 20 years worth of extra charges but then made a deal for a small fine and no recorded conviction kinda shows they weren't that serious. The minor charge that I wouldn't have been able to get out of was basically "touching someone without causing injury" after they told me I should go kill myself.

After taking the deal, I still had to appear in court, but was not permitted to say anything. I just had to sign a declaration of guilt and get lectured by a magistrate for being an obviously violent criminal who needs to sort out his life(tm). Without the deal I at least would've been able to say my piece. The whole experience really undermined my worldview of the justice system :(

90-95% of cases do not go to trial and instead end in a plea bargain. I suppose you should be aware that if this were not the case then the alternative would be 20X more cases going to trial which would possibly result in people spending long periods in prison because they cannot afford bail and have to now wait behind all the other cases wanting to go to trial.

...That's the good side of (and good reason for) plea bargains. The ugly side are the ridiculous sentences. In the case mentioned, if the man had got 20 years instead of 50 years (or life), that would seem reasonable. But 7 years serving half is absolutely ridiculous, and there had been too many such deals. For instance in another crime program, a 50-50 complicit in first degree murder got just 8 years after plea (probably because she also ratted on her accomplice) while the other went to trial and got life (though she later committed suicide)