In theory, criminal conviction in the US legal system is by the unanimous vote of a jury. In practice, the overwhelming majority of felony convictions are due to plea bargaining, the defendant pleading guilty in exchange for reduced charges or an agreement by the prosecutor to ask for a lower sentence. I have criticized the system in the past, mostly on the grounds that a prosecutor can make it in the interest of an innocent defendant to plead guilty by charging him with additional offenses, not because the prosecutor believes he is guilty of them and can be convicted but to persuade him to plead guilty of the lesser offense whether or not he committed it. The prosecutor has charged a hundred defendants. He correctly believes that ninety are guilty, does not know which. A trial will tell him whether a defendant is guilty with certainty ' this is a toy model ' but trials are expensive. The penalty for conviction is a hundred units ' dollars, weeks in prison, lashes. The prosecutor...
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