{"id":4508,"date":"2013-01-15T00:43:31","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T04:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=4508"},"modified":"2013-01-15T00:43:31","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T04:43:31","slug":"plea-bargaining-and-torture-in-light-of-the-aaron-swartz-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/15\/plea-bargaining-and-torture-in-light-of-the-aaron-swartz-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Plea Bargaining and Torture in light of the Aaron Swartz case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An interview with <a href=\"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/12\/aaron-swartz\/\">Aaron Swartz<\/a>&#8216;s defense attorney reveals that, though the government was threatening Aaron with between 30 and 50 years in prison if he went to trial and was convicted, a prison sentence of as little as six months was being discussed as part of a plea bargain (<a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424127887324581504578238692048200404.html\">Wall Street Journal<\/a>; <a href=\"http:\/\/bostonglobe.com\/metro\/2013\/01\/14\/mit-hacking-case-lawyer-says-aaron-swartz-was-offered-plea-deal-six-months-behind-bars\/l8Cq70KJXNWwdKlF1V0yoJ\/story.html\">Boston Globe<\/a>). This reminded me of the classic <a href=\"http:\/\/www.judicialstudies.unr.edu\/JS_Summer09\/JSP_Week_4\/JS710Wk4.LangbeinTorandPleaBargtxt.pdf\">&#8220;Torture and Plea Bargaining&#8221;<\/a> by John H. Langbein (University of Chicago Law Review 1978). Back around 1995 I wrote a summary of Langbein&#8217;s paper:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Catholic Church decided in the Middle Ages that too many people were getting convicted of crimes that they hadn&#8217;t committed. They instituted a rule that said nobody could be convicted without either two eyewitnesses or a confession. Convictions became difficult to obtain. Since it was not possible to obtain extra witnesses, the Church decided to torture defendants until they confessed.<\/p>\n<p>Today we have a legal system with many safeguards for defendants&#8217; rights. However, in our heart of hearts, we don&#8217;t believe that we could convict enough defendants if we actually gave all of them all of their rights. Consequently, we set\u00a0<em>nominal<\/em>\u00a0penalties for crimes at absurdly high levels, e.g., &#8220;life plus 100 years.&#8221; The\u00a0<em>actual<\/em>\u00a0penalty received by 95% of the people who commit such crimes is in fact 12-15 years. This is what they get if they agree to a plea bargain. However, if they choose to exercise their right to trial, they face the nominal penalty of life plus 100.<\/p>\n<p>Having these really high penalties is more subtle than physical torture, but the basic idea is the same and probably a fair number of sensible people are pleading guilty to crimes they didn&#8217;t commit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>See also: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cato.org\/sites\/cato.org\/files\/serials\/files\/regulation\/2003\/10\/v26n3-7.pdf\">A 2003 look at plea bargaining by the Cato Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interview with Aaron Swartz&#8216;s defense attorney reveals that, though the government was threatening Aaron with between 30 and 50 years in prison if he went to trial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - 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