A line has to exist somewhere where the is unfair and coercive, right? If the choice was between a 3 month suspended sentence or a potential 20 years in prison, even an innocent person is going to take the plea deal and lie about not being coerced as part of the condition.
Depending on circumstances, yes this could happen. But let's take one step further and say guilty pleas DON'T exist.
Well, then you just go to trial and potentially (but not very likely) face the 20 year sentence. Max sentences are almost never used, but I promise you if you make the judges, prosecution, and the defense show their asses up, it's going to be more than the plea deal. You'll also be remanded to custody in nearly every court. Once again I'll mention the no contest, or even an Alford Plea, but as one of the others here noted, not all courts accept those. The vast majority of these cases though are not innocent people being ground beneath the gears of justice though. They're nogs or retards facing charges such as retail theft, or domestic violence.
Another part of guilty pleas are terms of probation. Probation is important because it shows you whether or not someone is capable of actually behaving like a decent person, or if they're going to go right back to doing the dumbshit thing that got them locked up in the beginning. I have my own issues with probation in some cases though where it can get prohibitively punitive, but again, imperfect solution for imperfect world.
lie about not being coerced as part of the condition
The coercion you're referring to by the way is not the courts, but an outside influence. To use Rekieta as an example, let's say (and I'm not saying this happened because I'm sure it didn't,) April put a gun to Nick's head and told him he has to take this deal so she can get off.
That would be the coercion the court is referring to. The court will often say "Did anyone promise you, anything other than the terms of this agreement or threaten or coerce you in anyway to take this deal?
It's also not our problem if the courts are overburdened.
It's our tax dollars. If you want them all to go to trial, then you're going to start spending a significant amount of money in taxes to hire more judges, build more courthouses, hire more lawyers.
You can find some line between making it easy for them to just admit guilt and punitive measures.
I had to go back to the original post to find it, but the original gripe wasn't with the punishment or innocent people going to jail.
ut the state going extra hard and making people promise they arent pleaing out under coercion, a state that itself is forced under threat of further imprisonment is pretty fucked up.
A guilty plea should just be a single box you check to move your trial along, it shouldnt be equivilated to moral or factual admission of anything.
It was complaining that people had to actually admit guilt. Which, you know, if you're going to have a guilty plea, it's probably best to have them say they're guilty so they can go through the probation process and hopefully not do the dumbshit thing that got them there in the first place.
This also seems like a weird hill to die on in the thread where the guy we know is guilty is having to plead guilty because he knows if he goes to court he's going to have a truckload of evidence he himself created driven directly up his ass by the state while we point and laugh.
