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Why plea bargains serve justice

A while ago, I had two jury trials scheduled in a row. The same District Attorney was handling both cases. We met before the trials to work out last minute details and we both admitted that I would probably win the first case and he would probably win the second one.

The exact opposite happened.

The lesson is this: You never know what a jury will do. Many times a trial has ended with a result that has both sides (and the judge) scratching their heads wondering what happened. justiceGuilty people have gone free and innocent people have been convicted. Our system of justice may be one of the best in the world, but it’s not perfect, because human beings are involved.

And that’s why we like plea bargains.

Here’s a more recent example. My client was charged with a number of serious felonies. The only evidence against him was the word of the alleged victim, and I believed that testimony would not be enough to convict him (especially since he would also be testifying and I had other witnesses that would challenge the victim’s testimony). I honestly believed my client to be innocent of the charge. If we went to trial, I fully expected to win.

But I could not guarantee it.

So I spent a lot of time negotiating with the District Attorney. His job is to protect society and this witness wanted to testify and bring charges. If a jury believed her, then justice would be done. He knew he didn’t have the strongest case and he knew he would probably lose but he also could not guarantee it.

So we tried to work it out. It was better for both of us to get something than to risk it with a jury.

Because I knew I had a good case, I was able to get a very good deal for my client. Instead of facing years in prison with a felony charge, he entered a “nolo contendre” plea (meaning he didn’t technically admit guilt but instead admitted that the DA could prove his case) to a minor charge with an agreement to place him on probation for one year.

The same thing happens when I have a bad case. Even if it’s clear that my client is guilty, there’s still no guarantee that the DA will win at trial. After all, besides the worry about juries doing unexpected things, sometimes other surprises happen during a trial — witnesses change their story or don’t show up, evidence and testimony is challenged, something else goes wrong — so the DA has the same thoughts I had in the example above: I will probably win, but what if I don’t? It’s better to get the guy found guilty of something than to risk him going free completely. In cases like that, I can usually work out a deal for my client, although since the odds favor the DA he won’t give up too much and thus he ends up with the better deal.

The only time you really go to trial is when you can’t work out a reasonable deal — when it’s better to take your chances with a jury because even if you lose, you won’t be that much more worse off than what the DA offered. (You also go to trial if the client insists even knowing the odds — it’s always the client’s choice whether to take a deal or not.)

So when people say that plea bargaining is bad or that it subverts justice, they’re wrong. You never hear anyone who actually does this for a living say that. The DA asks for something way over there, I ask for something way over here, and when we compromise somewhere in the middle — well, that’s probably as close to justice as we are going to get.

 

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Editorial cartoon: Appropriate candidate logos

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“GMOs are evil” is the left’s version of “There is no climate change”

Liberals whining about GMOs are the left’s version of conservatives whining about climate change.

Every scientific group that has examined this have said that GMO foods are safe. We eat lots of GMO foods every day and have been doing so for many many years.  veggang

Just ask Neil DeGrasse Tyson.  “Practically every food you buy in a store for consumption by humans is genetically modified food. There are no wild, seedless watermelons …You list all the fruit, and all the vegetables, and ask yourself, is there a wild counterpart to this? If there is, it’s not as large, it’s not as sweet, it’s not as juicy, and it has way more seeds in it. We have systematically genetically modified all the foods, the vegetables and animals that we have eaten ever since we cultivated them. It’s called artificial selection.”

Is Monsanto evil and doing things it shouldn’t? Absolutely. But that’s because they’re evil and bribing politicians (oops, sorry, I meant “donating to campaigns”) to get away with putting out dangerous things. There are dangerous substances they are releasing — but they’re not dangerous because they are GMOs. The fact that these dangerous things are GMOs does not mean all GMOs are dangerous.

“The science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe … The World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Society, and every other respected organization that has examined the evidence has come to the same conclusion: consuming foods containing ingredients derived from GM crops is no riskier than consuming the same foods containing ingredients from crop plants modified by conventional plant improvement techniques.”

When people say, “Climate change isn’t happening” I say, “Well, what do the experts say?” When they say, “Vaccinations cause autism” I go “Do the scientists who deal with this stuff agree?” So when people say “GMOs are bad!” I reply, “What do the people who know this stuff best have to say about it?”

I don’t want to fall into the trap of doing the exact same thing I criticize conservatives for doing — ignoring science when it contradicts your political leanings.

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Editorial cartoon: Hell No

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The Most Important Question to Ask When Dealing with Human Sexuality

Human sexuality is more complicated than many people wish to acknowledge. The kind of person we are attracted to can change over the years. Men can be interested in women and then men and then back to women again. Some people are only interested in tall companions, some want fat ones, some only want one race … there is an infinite variety of possibilities that people find attractive.Sexuality

Then to complicate things even more, people do not always identify with the sex to which they were born, and even that can change over the years. Sexuality is a fluid thing with many gray areas and it cannot easily be placed into set categories and boxes. And you cannot always tell by looking at someone what those categories might be.

So when you are thinking about someone’s sexuality, there is one overriding question you should always ask:

Who cares?

As long as everything is between consenting adult humans, who cares? How does it hurt you or anyone else in the slightest? In fact, if those consenting adults are happy, why aren’t you happy for them?

So someone is still female but identifies a male and wants to use the male restroom. Who cares? Are you hurt in some way? So two people of the same sex want to express their love and get married. Who cares? Isn’t marriage a great thing that we should be encouraging? So someone is into all sorts of sexual behavior that disgusts you and makes you cringe at the thought. Who cares? No one if forcing you to get involved.

So much stress, hatred, and anxiety could be relieved if we all just remembered to ask ourselves that question.

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War is for the poor

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War over diplomacy

Barack Obama may have finally earned his Nobel Peace Prize by getting many nations to join with us to get Iran to agree to an historic treaty. Under this treaty, Iran will reduce its nuclear capability and we will be able to inspect to make sure that they do. 131124102022-01-iran-deal-1124-story-topIn exchange, we will get rid of many of the sanctions that worked to force them to the treaty table in the first place.

Seriously, how can someone be against this?

Answer: Be an Obama-hating Republican. You know these guys — Obama could come out in favor of drinking water and they’d object. (Oh, right, they did.)

In the simple world view of these people, America is the world ruler and we should always get everything we want. If we don’t get what we want, we should bomb everyone until we do. (Because that has worked so well for us in the Middle East before. That was sarcasm.)

But that’s not how the world really works and that’s not how mature adults understand relationships, where there are compromises that must be made in order to get along. Iran is a big country and we can’t just order them to do whatever we want so we have to negotiate. We will never get everything we want when we negotiate so we get as much as we can while they try to get as much as they can. That’s how it works, you see.

So we’ve gotten a pretty good deal. Not the absolute best deal but pretty much 90% of what we want.

Not good enough, say people who are willing to let poor people die in another unnecessary war. Go ahead, ask them what their alternative is. Many of them are openly suggesting we should just declare war and bomb them because, you know, they’re an evil country and they are trying to build a nuclear bomb. (As opposed to Pakistan, China, and other evil countries that already have nuclear bombs.)

I have an idea. Let’s try diplomacy first. Let’s save violence for the last resort when everything else has failed.

I am told that is what mature, intelligent people do.

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Editorial cartoon: Miracle whipped

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Let them eat cake

A conservative who thought he was being clever recently called a bunch of bakeries owned by gays and demanded that they make him a cake saying “Gay marriage is wrong” and all said no.

Aha! Clearly there is a double standard here.cake

Well, no, there isn’t. A bakery has the right to say they won’t make a cake that says “gay marriage is wrong” or “gay marriage is right” or “support Barack Obama” or “Vote Republican.”

If a bakery gladly makes penis-shaped cakes for heterosexual parties but refuses to make one for a homosexual party, then I think that is wrong. Clearly, they do not object to what they are making at that point, just who they are selling to. And that’s the problem. It’s the exact same product!

If you offer a product to the world, you should not be allowed to discriminate. You can’t say “I will sell this wedding cake design to everyone except the Irish,” for instance. And that’s the issue — when a gay couple asks a baker to give them a cake exactly like a straight couple gets, the bakery should not be allowed to say no. (I say “should” because in most states, it is perfectly legal for individuals to discriminate against gays, even when the state can’t discriminate.)

This is different from a service. A band can certainly refuse to play at a KKK rally or even a “Ted Cruz for President” event. A caterer can say that they don’t want to cater to you. A hall can refuse to rent to a group it disagrees with. I, as a lawyer, do not have to accept every single client that comes into my office with money.

There are plenty of gray areas here, but I think this is the basic distinction that many do not understand (or agree with).

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Editorial cartoon: Iran (So Far Away)

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