The legal system has been (claimed to be) backed up since I was born. My question, as someone not familiar, is what are the plans to resolve this perpetual backlog? And, are these massive backlogs concentrated in certain areas (bigger cities?) or are they pretty evenly dispersed?
> My question, as someone not familiar, is what are the plans to resolve this perpetual backlog?
Plea deals are the current tool attempting to address that. They take drastically less time and resources. Scholars estimate 90 to 95 percent of cases are resolved via plea deals at this point. It's been going on long enough that I think we've actually adjusted prison sentences to entice it; we have incredibly long prison sentences relative to the rest of the world, to scare people into taking a deal where they serve a more normal numbers of years.
It's not unheard of for innocent people to take a plea to serve 30 days in jail instead of risking trial and serving 4 years or something like that.
If a majority of defendants actually exercised their right to a trial, our judicial system would fall apart. We don't have nearly enough judges, lawyers, or courthouses for that to happen, and it would start triggering 6th Amendment "right to a speedy trial" issues.
I'm of the opinion that the current system of plea deals is unconstitutional, because it establishes a penalty for exercising 6th Amendment rights to a trial. If the plea deal is 60 days in jail, or they're going to go to trial and recommend the maximum, we are coercing people into not exercising their rights. If the court believes that 60 days is a reasonable sentence for the crime, it shouldn't matter whether guilt is established via a plea deal or trial.
> And, are these massive backlogs concentrated in certain areas (bigger cities?) or are they pretty evenly dispersed?
I can't seem to find any readily available data on that, it's an interesting question. I did read that basically everyone had issues during COVID because courts were closed, and a lot of charges were dropped because they couldn't be handled quickly enough to satisfy the right to a speedy trial.
I'd love to see data if anyone knows where to get it online.
