https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
I believe that to be "working as designed" we would see a lot more guilty people going free than innocent people being convicted.
How do you know that’s not the case?
Doesn't jive at all with what we know of competence and bias levels observed in police and prosecutors in the US.
I’m a crunchy hippie on criminal justice, but I’ve also seen these cases first hand working for an appellate judge. Prosecutors go after cases that are open and shut. You wouldn’t believe how much evidence there is in a typical case that doesn’t go to trial. They have the guy on CCTV with stolen goods in his car and cell phone records of fencing.
Innocence Projects weed out hundreds of meritless requests for help for the relatively few meritorious cases they take.
I know many innocent people who plead out to avoid jail because they're looking at $250k in legal bills and a ~90% trial conviction rate. Juries, being amateurs, are not very good at avoiding bias, as they are completely untrained.
I'm not so sure that plea bargain rates are indicative of guilt either way.
Most people plead out because they can't afford expensive trials.
It's also a rational choice when prosecutors promise that they'll throw the book at you if you go to trial, and it's often your word against the word of cops, prosecutors and the expensive expert witnesses they can afford to hire but you can't. Juries and judges tend to side with law enforcement because they're authority figures and valued members of the justice system, after all.
I think it is the case that marginal cases would take a no-jail plea bargain. Going to trial on a marginal case with a public defender probably increases the risk of imprisonment versus taking a guilty plea that guarantees no jail time (but a criminal record).
Instead of recycling conventional wisdom, head over to your local federal court and sit in on some sentencing hearings (these are public). There will be a plea colloquy with the accused and the prosecutor will lay out all the supporting evidence. It’s quite eye opening.
He drove an old high school friend, who he hadn't seen for years, to a park. He drove into a parking lot on the way and turned around "as if trying to avoid tails." He returned to the car and the undercover cop put the key back in his hand after putting ingredients in the car.
AND...he was being accused of conspiracy (which raises the seriousness of the crime to a felony!) to create meth because...there were drug ingredients in the car and the keys were in his hand. He'd spent his time at the park napping on the grass with his hat over his head. Or, as the cops testified, "probably acting as a lookout."
We of course said "not guilty." No one even wanted to argue. No idea why they thought they had a case.
But the kid in this case was white. I could totally see a black kid deciding that accepting a "lesser plea" would have been preferable to taking a chance on a 95%+ white jury (was in a predominantly white area; I don't think there was a single black juror, though I wasn't keeping count).
"Most people" can be as low as 51%, which is not very useful here.
Sure, somebody who looks prepared to lawyer up often won't be charged.