Except that I know people who have accepted plea bargains for things that they probably would have prevailed at trial on, because the risk of losing at trial ou

Except that I know people who have accepted plea bargains for things that they probably would have prevailed at trial on, because the risk of losing at trial outweighs accepting the plea bargain (or they didn't have the money for a proper defense to refute police misconduct, etc). A particular instance I'm privy to the details of was a friend accepting a bargain on a resisting arrest charge (it probably got reduced to a more minor charge in the bargain) that only led to community service (and probation), when the reality is that the police officer had assaulted the defendant and they were covering it up. It simply wasn't worth the risk of going to jail and the certainty of financial trouble for him and his kids to fight the city on it. But the city got a conviction against a troublesome black, or whatever euphemism they're using these days, and didn't have to admit wrongdoing on the part of a police officer, so all good, right? I'm not saying all plea bargains are bad, I'm just saying that the US makes suspicious use of them and some of them have been noted to be abusive (eg, that they charge ridiculous things for the trial and agree to plea down to what the charges should've been in the first place). I view this as semi-rampant prosecutor misconduct, rather than a fundamental problem with plea bargains, though plea bargains make this kind of misconduct easier, if not otherwise policed.