In the Pew Research article? I arrived at a trial acquittal rate of about 17%.
In fiscal year 2022, only 290 of 71,954 defendants in federal criminal cases – about 0.4% – went to trial and were acquitted, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the latest available statistics from the federal judiciary. Another 1,379 went to trial and were found guilty (1.9%).
While that’s still about 1 chance in 5, that’s still some really bad odds when it comes to the matter of possibly being imprisoned. I imagine most Americans think they’d have better odds than that, but the data shows otherwise, to a scary degree.
I did my math wrong lol. Hm. I guess that just seems really high to me. Like, if you’re in federal court, then you definitely should take it to trial, as you’ve got a super high chance of getting out of it. From the title of the article it just seemed way worse.
I’m not sure I’d characterize any of the figures as “a super high chance of getting out of it”, unless you mean leaving in handcuffs. Bear in mind that defendants that plead not-guilty but are then found guilty at trial get a worse penalty than if they had pleaded guilty in the first place. The federal sentencing guidelines intentionally recognize that people who plead guilty are taking some responsibility for their crime, and so it shaves a few months off.
Defense attorneys are supposed to help a defendant weigh the bird in hand (a plea deal with the prosecutors) against the two birds in the bush (prospect of acquittal at trial). And that’s only if the prosecutor wants to even do a deal: they don’t have to, since sometimes justice cannot be served by anything less than a jury verdict. Other times, a lack of a plea deal is part of looking “tough on crime” or to set an example.
In the Pew Research article? I arrived at a trial acquittal rate of about 17%.
While that’s still about 1 chance in 5, that’s still some really bad odds when it comes to the matter of possibly being imprisoned. I imagine most Americans think they’d have better odds than that, but the data shows otherwise, to a scary degree.
I did my math wrong lol. Hm. I guess that just seems really high to me. Like, if you’re in federal court, then you definitely should take it to trial, as you’ve got a super high chance of getting out of it. From the title of the article it just seemed way worse.
I’m not sure I’d characterize any of the figures as “a super high chance of getting out of it”, unless you mean leaving in handcuffs. Bear in mind that defendants that plead not-guilty but are then found guilty at trial get a worse penalty than if they had pleaded guilty in the first place. The federal sentencing guidelines intentionally recognize that people who plead guilty are taking some responsibility for their crime, and so it shaves a few months off.
Defense attorneys are supposed to help a defendant weigh the bird in hand (a plea deal with the prosecutors) against the two birds in the bush (prospect of acquittal at trial). And that’s only if the prosecutor wants to even do a deal: they don’t have to, since sometimes justice cannot be served by anything less than a jury verdict. Other times, a lack of a plea deal is part of looking “tough on crime” or to set an example.