“I took the plea”

Excerpt from Vicente, a defendant at the Hall of Justice in San Jose in winter 2022

Interviewer: If you could change the court system, what would you change about it?  

Vicente: Um... I don't know, I feel like they kinda are biased, like they kinda are you know, leaning um, in one direction towards another. So I, I, I honestly, if I could change one thing about the court system, like uh, they say, “You're innocent till proven guilty.” But I believe it’s the other way around. So if we could just stay by that like, you know, “You're innocent until proven guilty” not, you know, “You're guilty, you go to jail and, you know, then you have to find that you’re innocent.” So that was my only thing. ‘Cause I was innocent during the whole thing. And um, you know, some reason I took the plea and all that and you know. And I said, yeah, I did it. So, uh yeah: just try to keep it fair.  

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Related research:

Hessick, Carissa Byrne. 2021. Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining Is a Bad Deal.

Canon, Dan. 2022. Pleading Out: How Plea Bargaining Creates a Permanent Criminal Class.