Plea Bargaining Ought to be Abolished in the United States Criminal Justice System

Thanks to MiGatto for the debate. MY CASEI. Sources OverviewIt is too late for my opponent to present sources for arguments he made previously because these sources are newly introduced in the final round. I should've had access to his sources earlier so that if they were problematic, I could have explained why. I don't have the space to do that in a final round where I must also devote characters to voting issues. If debaters were always allowed to only post their sources in the final round like this, they could handicap their opponent's ability to respond to their arguments; that is, of course, abusive. Therefore, judges should entirely disregard the sources my opponent has introduced. II. Court ClogA. Arrest RatesMy opponent claims he made the argument that "officers feel obliged to arrest millions of people annually. " It appears Pro is referring to a R2 argument in which he says: "The plea bargaining process forces police to have a mandatory minimum to arrests. Now, police arrest millions annually for a fracture of the major crimes. " First, this argument was incredibly unclear when it was made (as I pointed out in R2, the phrase "mandatory minimum to arrests" is not exactly understandable or grammatical, and was reasonably confused with his earlier argument about mandatory minimums). Because the claim was unclear when it was made, I should not have to respond to it. Imagine a world in which debaters could make deliberately unclear, ungrammatical arguments so that their opponents wouldn't understand what they meant. Then, in the final round, these debaters suddenly clarify all of those unclear arguments and say, "oh well, my opponent dropped these points, so I am winning them all. " You understand how this would be abusive. Even if my opponent's ambiguity was not deliberate, it is still abusive to count this argument against me because of how garbled it was in its original articulation. Second, Pro has not presented any reasoning or warrant in this round for why this argument is true. Yes, he cites a source (which should be disregarded per my overview) but none of the reasoning that source gives is included in the text of the debate. This means that Pro is relying on arguments made outside of the text of this round (in his source) to do his work for him, which unfairly violates the character constraints. We both have 10,000 characters to make our points each round, so when Pro his able to use outside text to make arguments, he places me at an unfair disadvantage by, in effect, using more characters than I can. For these two reasons, you must disregard Pro's arguments on police arrest rates because they are unfair. B. Connecticut vs. AlaskaPro drops all of my arguments against his Alaska example, so set that example aside. Pro instead makes a new argument about how my example is cherry-picked. First, this is a new argument in the final round so it should be disregarded. Second, Connecticut is the best example we have in this round of how abolishing plea-bargaining will actually turn out. It's denser and more populated than Alaska, and so it doesn't suffer the same pitfalls I identified in my opponent's example. Yes, it is only one state, but it's not as if we have oodles of examples to choose from--not many places in the US have tried to abolish plea-bargaining. We have to use what we've got, and Connecticut is the best example we have. C. 82%First, Pro says that when he wrote that 99.5% of cases were settled accurately, what he really meant was that 99.5% of cases were settled speedily. This is a material misrepresentation of evidence which, if intentional, merits a loss in conduct (because it's essentially lying about evidence to win a debate) and, if accidental, calls into question the accuracy and trustworthiness of all the evidence Pro has presented us. Has anything else been materially misrepresented? Second, you should still disregard my opponents sources per my overview. Even so, I clicked on his source and did a super quick ctrl+f search for "82," "eight," and "innocent" and found no reference to the 82% statistic Pro offered. Third, my evidence has been reliably sourced throughout and never materially misrepresented. Given that I have been more trustworthy in describing my evidence and more reliable in sourcing it, you should prefer my previously-dropped source 10 to Pro's numbers. III. Solving Other CrimesA. Inducing FlipsPro says that prosecutors are in it to win it. How does this rebut my argument? If prosecutors' goal is to win the most possible cases, why wouldn't they use plea-bargains to collect evidence on other criminals to maximize the number of convictions they can get? Pro also never disputes that pleas can be effective inducements to get criminals to flip on their compatriots. Whether or not you buy my Gravino evidence, it is certainly common knowledge that prosecutors use plea-bargaining to induce flips and it is certainly logical that they would do so. The logical extension of the Gravino case-study to literally thousands of other cases is what insulates it from accusations of cherry-picking. B. Erma Faye StewartPro's arguments about prosecutors falsifying evidence and such are new in the last round and should be ignored as a result. Erma Faye Stewart was cherry-picked and it is an appeal to emotion. Consequentialism is concerned with net results, not with individual sob-stories. Certainly, her tale pulls on the heartstrings, but it has nothing to do with pleas as inducements to flip and, as a solitary case study, it does nothing to show any net detriment to plea-bargaining. C. HorsetradingPro literally does not respond to my argument about horsetrading. Merely repeating his own argument doesn't address my substantive attacks on it. Pro's argument is premised on the notion that only those with information to sell benefit from the plea-bargaining process. This is wrong, because prosecutors will consider other factors (e. g. past criminal history, the circumstances surrounding the crime) in making an offer. Moreover, Pro also drops that "it's better for an innocent person to take 2 years probation than 5 in the slammer; there's no guarantee they'll be exonerated at trial. " So clearly plea-bargaining benefits more than just guilty parties. IV. MiscellaneousPro drops my contention about helping victims. Pro says I use my "OWN logic instead of evidence and information to counter my own cases. " We should not conceive of debates as source wars. Debate is a clash of logic. If I use my logic to effectively impeach a source or to rebut a cited claim, should Pro just be able to say "well, I had a source, my opponent only had logic"? If my opponent can dismiss my logic by merely engaging in fallacious appeals to authority, there is little point to this activity at all. Moreover, how is logic not a kind of evidence or information? Good logic should trump bad logic (even if the bad logic is sourced) any day of the week. Judges should consider what was said after the "guilties only benefit" because (a) Pro is to blame for his own mismanagement of his time, and it would be unfair to me to ignore arguments I made because of Pro's mistakes, and because (b) there is really no loss of fairness to Pro in considering these arguments. Pro had the opportunity to address them, and my extension of these arguments is not itself a new argument, so there doesn't seem to be any grounds for Pro to object. Moreover, some of the arguments Pro wants you to disregard were previously dropped, so Pro wouldn't have been allowed to address them even if he had had the time to do so. PRO's CASEPro drops his entire case. Extend my arguments in their entirety; they take out Pro's case. There are a few quotes from last round which I wish to briefly highlight: 1. "Pro's 7,125 number is not relevant because his calculations weren't specific to the plea-bargaining process. .. My study (R2, source 10) was specific to plea-bargaining, and found it less likely to result in innocent convictions than trials. "2. "Pro fails to engage with the logic I offered regarding why his world will produce more wrongful convictions. .. Because courts will have to become more 'casual' to cope with an increased workload resulting from abolishing plea-bargaining, their error rate will increase. "3. "My turns showed that (1) abolishing plea-bargaining would lead to more innocent people being convicted, (2) that public defenders, because they use the plea-bargaining system, get better results for their clients than more expensive attorneys who go to trial, and (3) that going to trial would harm defendants with substandard lawyers. " VOTING ISSUES1. Argument PointsA world with plea-bargaining (a) has fewer innocents being convicted, per my source 10 and my turns; (b) helps victims who would be severely traumatized by having to testify; (c) benefits innocent defendants by giving them a risk-minimizing alternative to trials, (d) has more convictions of guilty parties because it can use plea-bargaining to induce criminals to flip on their compatriots; and (e) has less court clog per my Connecticut example. Pro's arguments have repeatedly failed. He made numerous drops (including: his own case, the risk-minimizing alternative, helping victims, my response to his Alaska example, my turns, and more). He also failed to respond to the substance of many of my arguments (including: horsetrading, the logic which extends Gravino, etc. ).2. Sources PointsPro repeatedly made unsourced claims throughout the debate, and not just those he tried to source in his final round. His use of sources in the last round was unfair (per my overview) and he occasionally used them to circumvent the character restrictions.3. Grammar PointsPro made more grammar errors, and these had a real and negative impact on the debate (see the "arrests" argument). Thank you!