Pleading Out: How Plea Bargaining Creates a Permanent Criminal Class

by Dan Canon

Overview

A blistering critique of America’s assembly-line approach to criminal justice and the shameful practice at its core: the plea bargain 

Most Americans believe that the jury trial is the backbone of our criminal justice system. But in fact, the vast majority of cases never make it to trial: almost all criminal convictions are the result of a plea bargain, a deal made entirely out of the public eye. 

Law professor and civil rights lawyer Dan Canon argues that plea bargaining may swiftly dispose of cases, but it also fuels an unjust system. This practice produces a massive underclass of people who are restricted from voting, working, and otherwise participating in society. And while innocent people plead guilty to crimes they did not commit in exchange for lesser sentences, the truly guilty can get away with murder. 

With heart-wrenching stories, fierce urgency, and an insider’s perspective, Pleading Out exposes the ugly truth about what’s wrong with America’s criminal justice system today—and offers a prescription for meaningful change. 

  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541674677
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	03/08/2022
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	628,262
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Dan Canon is a civil rights lawyer and a law professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. In his practice, he has served as counsel for plaintiffs in the US Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, which brought marriage equality to all fifty states, and in a number of other high-profile cases. He lives in southern Indiana. 
 

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I

1 Brahmins, Bargains, and Bootmakers 15

2 The Ordinary Men Standing Around 37

3 The Vital Force of Progress 47

4 The Rise of the Criminal Class 63

Part II

5 Tense, Uncertain, and Rapidly Evolving 81

6 A Finger on the Scales 101

7 Lucy and Ethel's Conveyor Belt 125

Part III

8 The Weakest Defense 151

9 Affluenza 177

10 Conditions, Coercions, and Castrations 197

Part IV

11 For the Sake of Expediency 215

12 Spare the Rod, Spoil the Trial 237

13 Greater than Their Hoarded Gold 257

Acknowledgments 283

Notes 287

Index 309

Editorial Reviews

01/24/2022

Plea bargaining is a “tool for satisfying the insatiable appetite of the prison-industrial complex,” according to this well-reasoned polemic. Contending that the U.S. justice system serves the wealthy at the expense of the poor and marginalized, civil rights lawyer Canon traces the rise of plea bargaining to 19th-century Boston, where upper-class Brahmins sought to stifle worker solidarity by bringing labor unions under control of the courts (rather than outlawing them altogether) and simultaneously stripping juries of their “law-finding function.” Canon also documents the steady expansion of the criminal code from Prohibition through the war on drugs, contending that the “endless supply of criminal laws”—which require the expediency of plea bargaining to enforce—serves to turn “large swaths of the working class into criminals.” He litters the book with examples of miscarriages of justice, including the story of a man who was given a mandatory life sentence under California’s “three strikes” law for stealing $150 worth of videotapes, and spotlights those who have advocated against the misuse of plea bargaining, including Alaska attorney general Avrum Gross, who banned the practice in the 1970s. Full of persuasive evidence of how the courts are used by those in power to enforce the status quo, this is a cogent call for change. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

[a] well-reasoned polemic…. Full of persuasive evidence of how the courts are used by those in power to enforce the status quo, this is a cogent call for change.”—Publishers Weekly

“Pleading Out brings a new language, analysis, and urgency to this struggle.”
 —The Nation

“A full-throated denunciation of a judicial system grown lazy, complacent, and overly given to forcing confessions for its own convenience….A compelling document of interest to anyone concerned with civil rights and an equitable system of justice.”—Kirkus

The reality of the American criminal justice system, as Dan Canon illustrates, is that most defendants never get a trial, and instead are coerced into ‘plea bargains’ that are, principally, good deals for the state. Pleading Out offers a compelling critique of the practice of plea bargaining and a vision for abandoning it in order to reclaim criminal justice.—David Cole, national legal director, ACLU

To understand the tragic failure of American criminal justice, you must understand the scourge of plea bargaining. To understand plea bargaining, read this book. With riveting storytelling and sharp analysis, Canon describes the everyday monstrosity, unchecked and ruinous, lurking behind the legal system’s closed doors.—Adam Benforado, New York Times–bestselling author of Unfair

Canon questions a core tenet of American justice with a keen mind and sharp pen. Plea bargaining is held up as a necessary norm but Pleading Out exposes a system that is coercive and inequitable—while also offering hope for the future. This accessible book should be read by anyone who believes our legal system should be just.—Andrew L. Seidel, author of The Founding Myth

“Canon provides not only the statistics but powerful stories to demonstrate the extent to which plea bargaining has bankrupted the justice system.”
 —The Arts Fuse

From the Publisher

★ 02/11/2022

The majority of criminal cases in the United States don't go to trial; instead, prosecutors obtain convictions through plea bargaining, in which defendants plead guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for a more lenient sentence. With this astute work, civil rights lawyer Canon (law, Univ. of Louisville) argues that this devastating, absurd practice has ruined countless lives. Canon chronicles the origins of plea bargaining and discusses how it is weaponized against people—especially low-income people and people of color—to pressure them into accepting punishments for crimes they didn't commit. He weaves together stories of the major players, including the accused, the victims, and the jurors, as well as the prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and lawmakers who are caught up in a system that punishes those who seek access to a trial. Readers will be infuriated by accounts that illustrate all too clearly how plea bargaining has ruined lives and maintained historical inequities. Canon also lays out a nuanced, practical strategy for achieving lasting change in the criminal justice system and analyzes the barriers and misconceptions that keep plea bargaining alive. VERDICT Written clearly and persuasively, with compassion and expertise, Canon's work is an essential read, especially for those who interact with or are interested in policing, incarceration, and the justice system.—Sarah Schroeder

Library Journal

★ 2021-12-12
A full-throated denunciation of a judicial system grown lazy, complacent, and overly given to forcing confessions for its own convenience.

Civil rights attorney Canon, whose legal work helped secure nationwide marriage equality, argues that the plea-bargaining system on which courts rely originally served the ruling class by “dividing up America’s ever-growing working class before it got big enough to take over.” He opens with a 1972 case in which a Kentuckian caught up in a check-kiting scheme in the amount of $88.30 insisted on his innocence and rejected the prosecution’s offer of a five-year prison sentence without trial. That refusal earned him a life sentence, according to a statute that allows the prosecution to seek maximal penalties for the recalcitrant. Small wonder that so many accused Americans take plea deals, “a quotidian injustice that most of the public doesn’t know or care much about.” This injustice, Canon insists, is a feature and not a bug of a legal system that would otherwise have to bring cases to trial, which, he argues, would not be a bad thing, since it would force prosecutors to actually prove guilt before a jury. Of course, as the author also shows, the jury system is fundamentally flawed since it penalizes workers whose employers don’t make allowances for public service—workers who are mostly minority and working-class, which explains the overwhelming Whiteness of juries. Canon incisively demonstrates how the rise of plea bargaining is a way for prosecutors to decrease their workloads. “Expediency, not fairness, is the principal concern,” he writes. Since plea bargains usually carry mandatory jail time, the ploy explains why our population of the imprisoned and the criminal class is so much higher than that of other nations. There are cures, Canon argues at the end of his well-reasoned argument. For one, “prosecutors can voluntarily screen cases to streamline the docket rather than just scramble to resolve a high volume of cases in a short amount of time.”

A compelling document of interest to anyone concerned with civil rights and an equitable system of justice.

Kirkus Reviews