In Case You Looked the Other Way for Just a Second...

The Supreme Court, by 5-4 margins, decided two cases this week that recognize the right of criminal defendants to effective legal representation during the plea bargaining process.

I don´t usually read readers comments to news stories, or to anything else for that matter, but in this case there were two good comments. The first was that the decision was really 5-0, that Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito represent a 4-vote handicap that reasonableness has to overcome. The second was, what? you mean we didn't already have this? It's new?

In one of the cases before the court, the defendant's lawyer never even told him that a plea bargain had been offered. It meant the difference between 3 years in prison and 10 days in jail. In the second case, involving a shooting, the defendant, on the incompetent advice of his lawyer, turned down a deal of 51-85 months of prison, and ended up being sentenced to 15-30 years. It's amazing, but 4 of The Supremes have no problem with either situation. Scalia, in fact, thinks the rulings are "absurd" and that they allow guilty people "to escape a fair trial and get less punishment than they deserve."

What Scalia is ignoring is that something like 95% of all criminal cases are currently settled with a plea bargain, and not with a trial. We read about how backlogged the courts are already; what would the situation be like if everyone demanded a trial? Scalia is also ignoring the point made by a public defender in an op-ed piece I read recently that the plea bargain process is subverting justice, and not just in the way the get-tough-on-crime crown like to think.

Some people of course are outraged that defendants can plead to lesser charges and largely escape what seems to be their just desserts. Count Scalia in that group apparently. The story I read came at the problem from a different perspective, namely the number of innocent defendants who are convinced, even with good legal advice, to give up their constitutional right to a trial and take a plea bargain rather than risk a conviction in this world of mandatory, and frequently draconian, sentencing guidelines.

The writer of the op-ed piece told the story of a woman with a young child who pleaded guilty to a lesser charge rather than risk a trial, conviction and prison time for a charge of which she was innocent. What she didn't realize was how much her life would be destroyed by that plea bargain and conviction, even on a lesser charge. If you were charged with a crime of which you were innocent, and were relying on an unknown public defender, would you risk a jury trial or take the plea that was offered?

I wonder. Do we have the best legal system in the world too? I mean along with our medical system...before the Affordable Care Act.

In the meanwhile, the guy in Florida who shot Trayvon Martin hasn't even been charged with anything.