On this side of the fence, we’re not overly enamored of plea bargains because of the sense that innocent defendants, or at least defendants not as guilty as charged, are coerced into pleading guilty rather than fighting as a “business decision.”  In other words, the offer is too sweet to risk rolling the dice on a monstrously long prison sentence.

There’s another view as well.  Via Berman, the  Hartford Courant writes about a letter from Michelle Cruz, a crime victim advocate.

Although some sentences arise from plea deals for valid reasons, Cruz wrote, “the plea bargain process has been exploited.”  Defendant often agree to plead guilty to a lesser charges in order to avoid a trial.  There are times when plea bargains are legitimate, Cruz said — such as if the state lacks evidence or wants to avoid having a child testify against someone who has sexually abused him or her.  But there are too many “administrative” plea bargains, she said.

“After three years of being in Connecticut looking at cases, what I see is a pattern of defendants who are allowed to plea to a more lenient charge that often doesn’t resemble the conduct,” said Cruz, who was a prosecutor in Massachusetts.  The lesser, substituted charge “doesn’t reflect the seriousness of the offense,” she said.

Before coming to Connecticut, Cruz was a prosecutor in Massachusetts.  And now she’s complaining about the sweet deals given defendants and the lack of trials, forcing defendants to pay the full tab for their crimes. 

Lest you get the misimpression that trials in Connecticut are going on all the time, or that those wielding authority in the criminal justice system wouldn’t fall for superficial, silly arguments, bolstered by a handful of anecdotes of recidivism that would naturally happen regardless of anything else, Cruz is being taken seriously.

State Rep. Michael Lawlor, chairman of the legislature’s judiciary committee, said he agrees that there are not enough trials and that it is a problem.  He said that he has spoken with Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane about the lack of trials — which he said is mostly a problem in lower courts where less serious cases are handled — and that Kane agrees there has to be more of an effort to bring cases to trial.

Lawlor, a criminal justice professor who also is a former state’s attorney, said prosecutors who don’t often take cases to trial get “rusty” and become more and more reluctant to try cases.  Good defense attorneys can sense this and will push for a better deal for their clients in exchange for a guilty plea, he said.  “I do think the end result is plea bargains are more lenient than you want them to be,” Lawlor said.

Is that what good defense attorneys do, push weeny prosecutors for lenient deals when their spidey sense kicks in?  Who knew? 

Too often, we hear only from our own “team,” voices that agree with our perspective on how the system works and runs and succeeds, or more often fails, to accomplish what we believe it should.  This tends to seriously skew our grasp of how the criminal justice system is perceived by those who are not intimately involved or personally concerned.  We do not reflect the prevailing view.  They are the majority.

More importantly, we come to realize that those with a finger in the functioning of the system are far less savvy about it then we might believe or hope.  They may know exactly who to put the touch on for a decent campaign donation, but they think a 95% conviction rate on pleas is a sign of a unduly lenient system.  They’re just giving it all away to the criminals.  That’s why we need to get tougher on crime, you know.

One might suppose that the media coverage of exonerations of men on death row, the joys of DNA revealing the terror of false identifications, might turn a few heads and make people wonder about whether the system is over-arresting, over-prosecuting, over-convicting and over-sentencing.  Apparently not in Connecticut, and it’s pretty doubtful elsewhere as well.  The conviction of an innocent remains an anomaly from the public’s perspective, while everyone not otherwise exonerated is guilty as sin. 

When we forget that there are other perspectives, or dismiss them as laughably simplistic and pandering to the fear and ignorance of others, we beg for the next smackdown.  It doesn’t matter how obvious all of this is to us, and how we, brilliant clear-thinkers that we are, know that the system is unduly harsh and grossly unfair. 

Hear all those townspeople marching our way with torches and pitchforks?  They’re not coming to join us, but coming for us.