So you think that every case should be tried, even if it's plainly obvious the perpetrator is guilty? After all, even if the perpetrator has a 1% chance of winning, there's no reason not to go to trial under that system.
If the perpetrator is willing to plead guilty, there is no need for a trial.
Threatening people with massively larger penalties if they exercise their right to a trial rather than take a plea deal (often time limited before the defense has a chance to see the evidence) is coercive extortion and is morally wrong. There is plenty of evidence of innocent people (especially poor people) taking plea deals due to these prosecutorial tacits of threat and decite.
I don't really think courts should take guilty pleas. I believe in some times/places in the middle ages, courts would not take guilty pleas in case the prisoner had gotten coerced into pleading. Sometimes, we have people with mental illness or other issues that will plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit.
Along the same lines of "reasonable doubt" in the US generally being enough to escape criminal conviction, I think we should err on the side of safety and perhaps even inefficiency in (not) letting the state exercise its monopoly power of force, coercion, and imprisonment against anyone for any reason, ever.
It’s okay for guilty people to be offered plea deals. It’s actually probably in their best interest sometimes.
He did a thing, that doesn't mean that thing qualified as a felony, or even a crime. It certainly did not merit 50 years in prison.
> It’s okay for guilty people to be offered plea deals. It’s actually probably in their best interest sometimes.
It is simply not OK to threaten people with penalties that are well more than an order of magnitude higher than the plea deal.
This isn't the kind of plea deal that furthers justice by obtaining a cooperative witness in a more serious case. This sort of plea deal is offered to advance the Prosecutor's career.
> Swartz was very rich, and well represented.
As the article explains, Swartz was out of money, well into debt, and faced with begging people for money to continue fighting the case.
