“Innocence Is Irrelevant”

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In the article “Innocence Is Irrelevant” from the September 2017 issue of The Atlantic, Emily Yoffee wrote:

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy acknowledged this reality in 2012, writing for the majority in Missouri v. Frye, a case that helped establish the right to competent counsel for defendants who are offered a plea bargain. Quoting a law-review article, Kennedy wrote, ‘Horse trading [between prosecutor and defense counsel] determines who goes to jail and for how long. That is what plea bargaining is. It is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system.’

As prosecutors have accumulated power in recent decades, judges and public defenders have lost it. To induce defendants to plead, prosecutors often threaten ‘the trial penalty’: They make it known that defendants will face more-serious charges and harsher sentences if they take their case to court and are convicted. About 80 percent of defendants are eligible for court-appointed attorneys, including overworked public defenders who don’t have the time or resources to even consider bringing more than a tiny fraction of these cases to trial. The result, one frustrated Missouri public defender complained a decade ago, is a style of defense that is nothing more than “meet ’em and greet ’em and plead ’em.”

“Our system makes it a rational choice to plead guilty to something you didn’t do,” Maddy deLone, the executive director of the Innocence Project, told me [author Emily Yoffee].

Take a position. Is plea bargaining an effective or ineffective alternative process?

First, title your post either “Plea Bargaining Is an Effective Alternative Process” or “Plea Bargaining is Not an Effective Alternative Process.”

Then, using the information gained in this module and the resources noted above, make your case. Based upon the volume of court cases, the societal implications, and the impact that plea bargaining has on the defendant, do you believe that plea bargaining represents justice? Why or why not? Be sure to build your case with factual resources.

Sample Solution

“Innocence Is Irrelevant”

Many successful criminal prosecutions in the United States end not with jury trials, but with plea bargains. Plea bargains are agreements between defendants and prosecutors in which defendants agree to plead guilty to some or all of the charges against them in exchange for concessions from the prosecutors. The plea bargaining represents justice. The prosecutor and the judge may prefer to dispose of cases through a plea bargain because doing so helps to manage caseloads and reduce the number of cases that require a full trial. This helps to decrease the expense that the state will pay for this portion of the criminal justice system.

When considering the history of Nola, Jackson Square plays an essential role. French colonials originally named the park Place d’Armes, translated as “weapons square”. This park served as the spot for public executions of criminals and rebellious slaves, and the heads of the hanged criminals were often placed on the city’s gates. In 1803, this park saw Louisiana made United States territory in accordance with the Louisiana Purchase. 12 years later, Place d’Armes was renamed Jackson Square, following the vital victory under Brevet Major General Andrew Jackson, in which American forces held off the city from a British attack and only suffered 70 casualties, compared to the British forces’ 2,000. Today, street artists, palm readers, and voodoo witches surround the square’s fence line, creating a lively atmosphere and unique entertainment.

30 miles southeast of the Big Easy sits Hopedale, built in between the winding channels of brackish water that serves as transportation systems for the guides and crabbers that inhabit this small town. I remember travelling to Hopedale for the first time in 6th grade and seeing the eye-opening conditions these blue-collar Louisiana natives live under. Hundreds of people lined the roads, fishing for redfish and speckled trout in the runoff trenches, not knowing that saltwater fish had no way of getting into these drainage systems, nonetheless living in them. Our group packed 12 people into two doublewide trailers, which proved to be a pain at 4:45 in the morning, with people scrambling around to find PFG shirts and Costa sunglasses before the Cajun guides left the docks. With lines in the water before daylight and fish striking lures faster than you could reel them in, we’d be worn out and ready to make the thirty-mile trek back to the docks around 3:00 in the afternoon.

Nicknamed “Sportsman’s Paradise”, the Mississippi River Delta earned its name due to the plethora of fresh and saltwater fish, oysters, shrimp, crabs, and millions of migrating waterfowl. The Mississippi River has deposited rich sediment in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico for thousands of years, allowing for the growth of plants, marshes, and barrier islands. This region stretches all the way across the southern coast of Louisiana, from the Vermilion Bay in southwest Louisiana to the Chandeleur Islands off the coast of Biloxi, Mississippi. The Delta is the largest drainage basin in the country, draining about 41% of the continental United States into the Gulf of Mexico.

The second day of the trip, my dad and I drew a guide with a reputation of being a hot head, but by God, he could put you on some fish. A rat-nested spinning reel resulted in 15 minutes of timeout on the back of the boat, unfortunately close to his “sh*t bucket”, but he put me on the biggest red drum of my life, 35 inches. Usually, there’s no need to worry about overcrowded fishing spots, but as soon as we anchored and started reeling in reds, other guides swarmed us like flies. Fed up after 3 or 4 ruined spots, our guide mumbled “Well, this is a clusterf*ck if I’ve ever seen one”, hauled up the anchor, and motored out of the spot, cutting a handful of other boats’ taut lines.

As the coast vanishes, species are losing the habitats they need to survive. Thousands of diverse species inhabit the once-plentiful Mississippi River Delta, from red drum to swamp rats to snow geese. All in all, the vast system of forests, swamps, marshes, river channels, estuaries, and islands make up on

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