No. of Recommendations: 5
"Three Felonies a Day" sense. That's a book that came out about fifteen years ago that outlined how both the number of federal crimes and the scope of interpretation of broadly-worded federal crimes had expanded so much that there isn't a single adult in the country who doesn't inadvertently or unknowingly commit several federal crimes a day.SNIP The very expansiveness of federal law turns nearly everyone into lawbreakers. Like the poor Soviet citizen who, on average, broke about three laws a day, a typical American will unwittingly break federal law several times daily. Many go to prison for things that historically never have been seen as criminal.
Writing about the Kafkaesque nature of the federal system, Silverglate notes:
Prosecutors are able to structure plea bargains in ways that make it nearly impossible for normal, rational, self-interest calculating people to risk going to trial. The pressure on innocent defendants to plead guilty and “cooperate” by testifying against others in exchange for a reduced sentence is enormous—so enormous that such cooperating witnesses often fail to tell the truth, saying, instead, what prosecutors want to hear. SNIP
https://fee.org/articles/three-felonies-a-day-how-...Had to look that one up. I had a pilot friend who had lived in Singapore. One day he said, "You know Singapore has made so many things illegal, against the rules, that you can be just walking down the street on the sidewalk and violate the law." I talked to another Singaporean, and that person said, "If they want to question you, they just need to watch you, question people who know you, and they then have enough to take you in and question you."
I think that the system is becoming more pretext prone because of the example of Trump. YOU brought up plea bargains one time and said you'd have to take it into serious considerations if you got an offer of 18 months with six months already served, and 25 years if you lost in court, and you have kids. There is no doubt in my mind there are people who've plead guilty to things they didn't do because of this. Rude conclusion.
