Guilty with No Chance to Be Proven Innocent

T.V. shows like Law & Order captivate us with dramatic courtroom scenes in which the lawyers passionately make their case to the jury and judge. These shows flood our imaginations with ideas of how prosecutors must prove a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. They tell us that even if the lawyers know someone is guilty, it is the jury that must ultimately decide. In reality, though, hardly any defendant ever gets a trial. 

During my time as a court watcher, I saw case after case resolved with a plea deal. At Dutchess County Court, the bargaining took place behind the closed doors of the judge’s chambers. Meanwhile, it was in Poughkeepsie City Court that I witnessed only one case proceed to trial when a white man, who arrived of his own volition, insisted on his right to a trial. Agitated by this man’s demand, Judge Mora attempted to dissuade him for several minutes but to no avail. After the defendant left the courtroom, the judge huffed a big sigh and later commented on how trials later that month would be taking up all of his time. 

In The New Jim Crow (2010), Michelle Alexander explains that most criminal cases are resolved with a plea bargain rather than a trial. Through plea bargaining the defendant pleads guilty to a charge in exchange for leniency – often for a lesser sentence (in prison, in jail, in money, or on probation). Though judges have to approve of any plea deal, prosecutors hold most of the power in this arrangement, with the ability to add more charges against the defendant as long as probable cause can be argued, even if such charges could not be proven at trial (Alexander 109). Especially with the long mandatory minimum prison sentences that the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, people often feel forced to plead guilty rather than face the threat of a much longer sentence if they lose their trial (110). 

The double-bind of a plea deal hit home for me as I sat one day in County Court and watched as one black man, shackled and in his orange jail tracksuit, struggled to hold the pen to sign his guilty plea. Quite literally, he was chained into signing a plea deal.