Originally shared by Robert Hansen
“What does it mean, ‘the process is the punishment’?”
That the American system of justice is so broken that a guilty plea is in many ways a better option than a verdict of not guilty.
Let’s say that I’m involved in a shooting. I claim self defense: the government claims I was motivated by animus. My lawyer is very certain we can meet our burden of proof for my affirmative defense. The prosecutor also knows he can’t prevail at trial. Unfortunately, there’s some reason that putting me in the slammer is in the prosecutor’s best interests: maybe he’s running for re-election on a gun control platform and I used one of those evil black AR-15s, whatever.
The prosecutor makes me a deal: he’ll allow me to plead an Alford (“I didn’t do it but I want to take advantage of the government’s plea deal”) to criminally negligent homicide with a two-year sentence recommendation. It lets him walk away with a technical win just ahead of his re-election campaign and I get out of minimum security in two years. I can do that standing on my head and I know it.
My lawyer is screaming at me to not take the deal. I’m innocent, after all. Of course, defending my case will cost about $500,000. (That’s not an unrealistic number, incidentally: for violent deaths you’re looking at about a quarter million minimum, and it only goes up from there. That’s the number my real-life, non-hypothetical attorney cited me when I asked what I’d be looking at for bills in a straightforward case of justifiable homicide: $250,000 just to take me to the trial date, and it only goes upwards from there.)
On the one hand I can pay $500,000 and walk away from it a free man, or I can forsake two years of income, reduce my lifetime earning potential, and hit pause on my life for two years. That would be a hard, hard choice for me. On balance, after a lot of thought and consideration, I tell my lawyer to take it to the jury. I’m a free man, but I’m now $500,000 in debt: it’s unlikely I’ll live long enough to fully pay off the bill.
Maybe I made the wrong call.
The process is the punishment. We like to think punishment starts only once the jury has found you guilty, but the reality is punishment starts at the moment of arrest.
One more thing to consider: my calculus made it a really close call. I make pretty good money and the prospect of losing two years of income, plus future earning potential, is what made going to trial and getting a not-guilty verdict worthwhile.
How would it change if I was a lower middle class guy working at a $15/hr job making $30,000 a year? I can pay $500,000 to walk away a free man and know that for the rest of my life I will never, ever, ever break out of poverty… or I can take the deal. I’m giving up two years of my life, some future earnings, and $60,000 of income. That’s so much better than $500,000 to be a free man that the two aren’t even in the same ballpark.
The process is the punishment: and the lower you are on the socioeconomic ladder, the more the process punishes.