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LochFarquar t1_j2a8c6u wrote

Reply to comment by deep_sea2 in ELI5: Why aren't there more hung juries? by appa-ate-momo

>Still, it's a 95% chance of a guilty verdict.

We've had many people let off of death row from DNA evidence exonerating them. These are the cases that are supposed to be the most scrutinized and the cases where the system is the most certain. And DNA exonerations are only a subset of the people who are actually innocent and on death row -- it would be foolish to think that DNA has caught all of the actual innocence cases.

Why do we have so many exonerations? Because trials are a highly imperfect tool of determining guilt -- police and prosecutors have vastly more resources than public defenders, people tend to trust the system (I think many people agree with your view that prosecutors only bring cases to trial when they're sure), the guy in the jumpsuit and cuffs looks guilty, jurors have a view that an innocent person would testify but defendants almost never testify based on how the rules of evidence work, etc.

If I say, "many defendants who insist on going to trial do so because they are innocent," and your response is "but they're almost all convicted." That only disproves my point if we assume that all convictions are correct, and I don't make that assumption.

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deep_sea2 t1_j2ahcu4 wrote

> many defendants who insist on going to trial do so because they are innocent,"

I don't necessarily disagree with that. However, if a person is truly innocent, they have evidence to back that up, and fights all the way in every pre trial option available, there is good chance that it won't go to trial. The state does not like to lose, so they don't take cases to trial that they don't think they can win.

What I am saying is that innocent people rarely go on trial. They don't go on trial because if their evidence is good, it won't make it to trial. The legal work exists in the pre-trial. The main reason innocent people go to jail is because they can't afford good legal representation. They can't afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to mount a legal defense. Since they can't afford it, they typically plead out early.

But, sticking to OPs question, juries are rarely hung because of the state is willing to go to trial, they have a dynamite case (most of the time). The state might be wrong, but they appear be right, and so the decision is rather easy for the jury.

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flamableozone t1_j2bhfpc wrote

As a percentage, maybe it's rare, but people who are innocent frequently go to trial - people who are innocent frequently even confess in a plea deal. The idea that innocence will produce evidence is just false.

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