When they can dangle such a massive prison sentence in front of someone and then say, "or just plead guilty and you can go home" I have to wonder how many possibly innocent people accepted this "offer you can't refuse" and now have criminal records.
This sounds like something that they would do in China or some other authoritarian country.
Not saying this guy is innocent but it's easy to say you would never plead guilty to crime you didn't commit until you are looking at 40 years in prison vice just going home.
The length of sentence is due to previous convictions as well as this one.
His choice to turn down the deal was a poor one, but so were his choices to continue to commit crimes. Read the article. There’s no doubt to his guilt.
Trial by Jury, a Hallowed American Right, Is Vanishing
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3463745/posts
“I have to wonder how many possibly innocent people accepted this “offer you can’t refuse” and now have criminal records.”....
Believe me when I say, it happens a LOT!
We had a guy in Buffalo who had been in prison for twenty years for a couple of rapes. He would have been paroled, except he would never personally admit that he had committed the crime. Then, the use of DNA came to be used in crime investigations. The reason he wouldn’t admit guilt was because he was innocent. He was released when they finally caught the real serial rapist/murderer.
Our “justice” system has adopted all the main features of the Nazi system (forcing acceptance of punishment by innocent individuals lest they be subject to draconian alternatives), except that Nazi courts found ten times the number of innocents charged as ours do.
That is not how it worked. They did not say, “plea guilty and you are free or you will get 40 years in the slammer.”
They offered him a plea deal that would let him free. He turned down the plea deal, wanting to take his chances in court.
Because of his long criminal history, any court conviction would result in a sentence from 25 years to life in prison.
So the perp decided to gamble on a trial jury getting him off, even knowing he was facing at least 25 years if convicted.
He was an idiot to not take the plea deal. He clearly committed the crime.
My guess is, we are better off with this jackhole behind bars for the next 40 years than out on the street, so thank you Mr. Idiot T. Perp for making this easy on the rest of us and putting yourself behind bars until you are old and gray. Thanks, job well done.
I have a problem with this and I believe it makes a mockery of our treasured legal principal of “innocent until proven guilty.”
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But he was proven guilty. It’s more likely that the DA offered to let the thug off easy due to political pressure from blacks but he was too dumb to take the deal.