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What causes the conviction rates in North America and Japan to be so high? Are the cases usually strong where this happens? And what happens to weaker cases, do they result in an acquittal or do they generally not get cleared at all?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate

Dale M
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    For what it is worth, the answer in North America and the answer in Japan have almost nothing to do with each other. – ohwilleke Mar 30 '23 at 16:34
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    Grammar-school math says that you get a high conviction rate by dropping weak cases. – RonJohn Mar 30 '23 at 18:47
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    The “conviction rate” is not a uniform measure across jurisdictions - it means different things in different places. While the numerator is the same (person convicted) the denominator varies wildly. – Dale M Mar 30 '23 at 21:26
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    @DaleM I'd argue that a "conviction" is hard to measure too. Do you count traffic infractions? Whether a particular traffic infraction is criminal or not varies significantly, even in the US (excessive speed, construction zone speeding, even DUI). Even overtime parking can be criminal in some states/countries. This also applies to ordinance violations (disturbing the peace, building code violations) and drug charges (marijuana, especially). – user71659 Mar 30 '23 at 22:18
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    Wikipedia says about Japan: "The conviction rate is 99.3%. By only stating this high conviction rate it is often misunderstood as too high—however, this high conviction rate drops significantly when accounting for the fact that Japanese prosecutors drop roughly half the cases they are given." Doesn't it answer your question? – Taladris Mar 30 '23 at 22:47
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    "so high" compared to what? – Aaron F Mar 31 '23 at 01:52
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    Adding to @ohwilleke's comment, it would be better if this question was split into two: one for the USA, one for Japan. There's a good answer here for Japan that says nothing about the USA and one for the USA that ignores Japan. Which one should be accepted? – SQB Mar 31 '23 at 10:10
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    @Jen I wouldn't be surprised if OP indeed meant the USA and not the other North American countries. – SQB Mar 31 '23 at 15:46
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    @Jen because ther eis no north america tag I did not add Canada, which might be an error – Trish Mar 31 '23 at 17:15
  • @ohwilleke While what you say might be wholly true, how can you justify it? – Robbie Goodwin Apr 03 '23 at 20:03
  • @RobbieGoodwin just... compare the Japan answer to the US answer and... the only factor both have in common is that the prosecution is bottlenecked. – Trish Apr 03 '23 at 21:57
  • @Trish Thanks and while again, what you say might be wholly true, how can you justify it? Whatever else, how does 'bottlenecked' come into this? – Robbie Goodwin Apr 03 '23 at 22:07
  • @RobbieGoodwin the amount of work any prosecutor can do is limited, and the states will not shell out for infinite lawyers. As such the amount the prosecution can do is limited - which is the bottleneck in prosecution. – Trish Apr 03 '23 at 22:18
  • @Trish Who could doubt that yet how could it affect the Question? Again your 'bottlenecking' might be wholly true, and still how can you justify it? Who says all Japan and the US answer have in common is bottlenecking and if that's true, how could it affect the Question? – Robbie Goodwin Apr 03 '23 at 22:28

5 Answers5

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Japan's justice system is sometimes called hostage justice

In general, the Japanese justice system has a more than 99% conviction rate! In part, this is because the number of state attorneys is super low - on about half the population of the US, there were only 2000 State attorneys out of 35000 lawyers in Japan, whereas the USA has a five-to-six digit number of state/district/... attorneys and 1.5 million lawyers in total. Or in other words: each state-employed attorney is responsible for more than 10 times the people and the caseload they create, and lawyers are prohibitively expensive.

This leads to a two-pronged result: on the one hand, only the best cases should be followed up on and brought to court. Depending on the statistics, about every other case (~50%) that the police investigators hand to the prosecution is not followed up on by the prosecution. The other result is, that the Japanese justice system relies heavily on confessions obtained from the defendants.

As I elaborated when comparing the detention time without charges, the Japanese justice system is unlike almost any other modern justice system in the world in some regards, even though it is a civil law system and most of the same principles can be found. The Japanese prosecution can detain people for up to 23 days without bringing the case, you can't have your lawyer present when talking to the police, and by clever tactic, the prosecution can hold a person nigh-indefinitely without even filing a case. As a result, the prosecution can often get confessions, and with a confession, the actual court case can become super fast: charges are brought, the confession is read, a little extra evidence is presented, and to spare the victim a lengthy trial with the confession in the room, the judge comes down with a guilty verdict.

This is compounded by how the rules of evidence are laid out: investigation and the court case are allowed to happen at the same time! As a result, the case of the prosecutor tends to become better the longer the case drags on, resulting in the defendant either settling or giving a (partial) confession to some of the charges just to get it over because lawyers are crazy expensive. By giving a confession, they throw themselves at the mercy of the court for a mild verdict.

And it's very much stacked

As shown above, the Japanese justice system is already stacked against the defendant. But it is even more stacked than what is shown up there. As ohwilke noted in excellent comments, I want to preserve them here:

Also the vast majority of Japanese criminal cases are tried without lay judges,

This is by the way a result of the Japanese legal system that was set up in the Meiji era being based on the Prussian branch of the Civil Law school. That was one of the dominant systems of the Meiji era next to the French and Spanish schools of Civil Legal Systems - and after WW2 they did not swap to a Common Law system but stayed with their own take on this Prusso-German branch of the Civil Legal System. This means there are no juries like in the common law system, and since 2009 lay judges in japan are increasingly used, but not in every case. Those lay judges are very much akin to the Schöffen in Germany, being allowed to question the evidence and such - the German school is based on an inquisitorial system after all - but it is not used in every case. And the whole system is lived extremely differently from the inspiring Prussian system, such as this part of the comment shows:

and from my experiences talking with several Japanese judges at length about the issue (back in the early 1990s, maybe it is different now), the institutional mindset is for judges to believe that all of the prosecution evidence is true and all of the defense evidence is lies unless the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming and unshakable. The level of judicial bias towards the prosecution is greater than in any other common law or civil law legal system, that is not in an authoritarian regime, in the world.

This for example shows in the 23 days without charge. Technically, 23 days is not the initial time, but the police has 72 hours. But they can extend this time by 10 days with a judge's order, and then again by another 10 days on the same charge offered on the paperwork. According to a statistic, 99.8% of these requests are granted, meaning they are almost rubberstamped. Legally, people that are detained are not yet defendants, they are suspects and kept in Substitute Prisons which are located in police districts - which further helps to get confessions.

And this plays directly into another factor that differentiates the Japanese system from other countries: There's a huge cultural factor, which is what makes the Japanese system so different from others.

Additional factors are that police officers in Japan have much more authority to handle minor cases outside the court system and routinely do so, that a certain level of criminal conduct from organized crime and by authority figures is tolerated, that there is much less crime per capita in Japan than most places, and that Confucian values re deference to hierarchy and the Japanese specific high cultural obligation to apologize influences how Japanese people interact with the criminal justice system as defendants and as implementers of that system.

This has its problems too: Because the prosecution is notoriously overworked, citizens with problems are often more reluctant to bring cases to their attention. Further, the shame culture works against not just the perpetrators, but also the victims and the people that report certain crimes - for example, a female police officer was groped on a train, and when she reported it, she became the target of shunning.

Further reading & Research papers

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Trish
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    Also, the vast majority of Japanese criminal cases are tried without lay judges, and from my experiences talking with several Japanese judges at length about the issue (back in the early 1990s, maybe it is different now), the institutional mindset is for judges to believe that all of the prosecution evidence is true and all of the defense evidence is lies unless the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming and unshakable. The level of judicial bias towards the prosecution is greater than in any other common law or civil law legal system, that is not in an authoritarian regime, in the world. – ohwilleke Mar 30 '23 at 16:20
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    Additional factors are that police officers in Japan have much more authority to handle minor cases outside the court system and routinely do so, that a certain level of criminal conduct from organized crime and by authority figures is tolerated, that there is much less crime per capita in Japan than most places, and that Confucian values re deference to hierarchy and the Japanese specific high cultural obligation to apologize influences how Japanese people interact with the criminal justice system as defendants and as implementers of that system. – ohwilleke Mar 30 '23 at 16:32
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    @ohwilleke I hppe to preserve your comments - and added them with some commentary. – Trish Mar 30 '23 at 19:15
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    You are welcome. Law.SE is about spreading knowledge as well as possible. – ohwilleke Mar 30 '23 at 21:11
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    About that German-derived justice system... I was listening to Dan Carlin's Supernova in the East podcast series recently, and he made the point that during the Meji era they sent people to major western countries to see what they could best copy from each, and as a more authoritarian group themselves, a lot about how the reactionary Prussians ran things just seemed a better fit for them than how the Brits or the Americans did. – T.E.D. Mar 30 '23 at 21:11
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    @T.E.D. Almost every country without an English colonial history, given the choice, chose a civil law system. It is much easier logistically to adopt without a corps of common law trained lawyers to run it. The main models for civil law systems were Germany, France, and Spain. German's code was more detailed so it made sense to someone coming to it cold relative to the France or Spanish civil codes. The Prussians were authoritarian, but not Nazi class totalitarian. – ohwilleke Mar 30 '23 at 22:58
  • "Also, the vast majority of Japanese criminal cases are tried without lay judges" confuses me (with zero legal background). I'd presume a "lay judge" is one who is not "ordained" by the legal system to be a judge (much as a "lay minister" is not officially "ordained" by a religious group). If that understanding is correct, then this statement makes sense, as one wouldn't want a "lay judge" presiding over a criminal case, and therefore, seems out of context. What am I missing? – FreeMan Mar 31 '23 at 13:06
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    @FreeMan There are no juries in Japan, but there are layman judges, which are selected randomly and sit in on low-level cases that are presided by a professional judge. They can not make judgements without a professional judge's oversight. However, as Ohwilke elaborated, only in very few cases they are called upon. All cases are held in front of professional judges, some have additional lay judges to increase the panel size. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lay_judges_in_Japan – Trish Mar 31 '23 at 14:18
  • Thank you, @Trish, that is the part I was missing. Making the erroneous presumption that the "lay judge" was the one sitting at the high bench in front of the court led to my confusion. – FreeMan Mar 31 '23 at 14:27
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    @FreeMan they sit at the high bench... together with one or three professionals. – Trish Mar 31 '23 at 14:29
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    Since this seems to be repeated by multiple people here - the typical romanization of 明治 is Meiji (see, e.g. https://www.britannica.com/event/Meiji-Restoration). – muru Apr 01 '23 at 04:51
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    Could you link any sources other than a couple of little-edited (so probably little-scrutinized) articles in the English-language Wikipedia and ohwilleke's decades-old hearsay – such as scholarly articles by people with direct experience with the system? The silly final paragraph about Confucianism and the Japanese compulsion to apologize especially makes me wonder about the accuracy of the rest of this. – benrg Apr 01 '23 at 04:58
  • The "hostage justice" Wikipedia page that you linked has no Japanese sources, and oddly says that it should be expanded with material from the French page, though a Japanese page exists. The Japanese page, like the English one, mentions only one specific case, Carlos Ghosn, and the reporting on it in the French and American press. It has some Japanese sources but they're all newspapers. – benrg Apr 01 '23 at 05:00
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    With a justice system like this, how come Japan didn't transform into an orwellian dictatorship in the span of a few years anytime during the past several decades? If your depiction is accurate, all it would take is a small political party composed of high-raking police officers to jail most of the higher ranking member of the opposing parties and the rest will be too afraid to say anything, else they risk themselves or their family members to be jailed as well. – vsz Apr 01 '23 at 11:39
  • Can you say "kangaroo court"? – Vikki Apr 01 '23 at 16:42
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    @Benrg See e.g. re apologies in the Japanese criminal justice system: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/toward-balancing-approach-use-apology-japanese-society and https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/confession-apology-repentance-and-settlement-out-court-japanese and https://www.jstor.org/stable/3053463 and https://www.jstor.org/stable/3053464 and https://www.stripes.com/news/japanese-tradition-of-apology-western-worry-about-admitting-guilt-can-clash-1.309 and https://restorativejustice.org/rj-archive/the-role-of-apology-in-the-japanese-criminal-justice-system/ – ohwilleke Apr 03 '23 at 21:13
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    @benrg See e.g. re confucianism in the Japanese criminal justice system: http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1646984/FULLTEXT01.pdf and https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/09/opinion/confucius-s-lesson-to-litigants.html and https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1508&context=auilr and https://commons.und.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3264&context=theses and https://lawjournal.mcgill.ca/wp-content/uploads/pdf/7669738-1224867088_Mayeda.pdf and https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&context=themis – ohwilleke Apr 03 '23 at 21:16
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    @vsz "how come Japan didn't transform into an Orwellian dictatorship" because even though Japan's formal rules are mostly Western, the people working within them have difficult cultural assumptions and norms that cause the system to play out different than it would in the West. The society does have intense hierarchy but it also has countervailing cultural forces that limit how far this goes - most of which aren't formally part of the legal system. For example, prosecutors feel a much greater duty to be fair rather than merely maximizing convictions. – ohwilleke Apr 03 '23 at 21:21
  • @vsz Europe and other western countries are socalled guilt countries - they work because people are indoctrinated in a culture that makes the person that did something bad feel bad for what they did. Guilt systems can become perverted by using a different culture system that does make a specific act OK - for example fashism. Asia operates on a shame system: If someone did something good or bad, it is the task of the society to elevate or cast them out. Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/opinion/the-shame-culture.html – Trish Apr 03 '23 at 21:26
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What causes the conviction rate in North America . . . to be so high?

Relative to what? What would you expect the conviction rate to be?

The conviction rate in the U.S. is not particularly high across the board, and is quite low in some U.S. states (59% in Florida), even though it is high in the federal courts (93%). As the cited link notes:

In the United States federal court system, the conviction rate rose from approximately 75 percent to approximately 85% between 1972 and 1992. For 2012, the US Department of Justice reported a 93% conviction rate. In 2000, the conviction rate was also high in U.S. state courts. Coughlan, writing in 2000, stated, "In recent years, the conviction rate has averaged approximately 84% in Texas, 82% in California, 72% in New York, 67% in North Carolina, and 59% in Florida."

In 2018, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that among defendants charged with a felony, 68% were convicted (59% of a felony and the remainder of a misdemeanor) with felony conviction rates highest for defendants originally charged with motor vehicle theft (74%), driving-related offenses (73%), murder (70%), burglary (69%), and drug trafficking (67%); and lowest for defendants originally charged with assault (45%).

There are frequent "guilty acceptance" plea deals in the United States. That said, the ostensible "conviction rate" may not be accurate because the charges are dropped.

Federal courts handle only a small share of U.S. criminal cases and the kind of cases it handles are highly atypical:

As of 2019, about 1,255,689 people currently behind bars in the United States—or 87.7% out of a total of 1,430,805 prisoners—had been convicted in state court for violating state criminal laws, rather than in federal court for violating federal criminal laws.

The proportion of criminal cases brought in state court rather than federal court is higher than 87.7% because misdemeanor and petty offense prosecutions are disproportionately brought in state courts and most criminal prosecutions involve misdemeanors and petty offenses. The number of trials conducted in each system is another way to illustrate the relative size of the two criminal justice systems. In Colorado, in 2002, there were approximately 40 criminal trials in federal court, and there were 1,898 criminal trials (excluding hundreds of quasi-criminal trials in juvenile cases, municipal cases and infraction cases) in state courts, so only about 2% of criminal trials took place in federal court. Most jury trials in the United States (roughly five out of six jury trials conducted in any U.S. Court) take place in criminal cases in state courts.

State courts do not have jurisdiction over criminal cases arising on Indian reservations even if those reservations are located in their state. Less serious crimes on Indian reservations are prosecuted in tribal courts. A large share of violent crimes that are prosecuted in federal court arise on Indian reservations or federal property, where state courts lack jurisdiction, since tribal court jurisdiction is usually limited to less serious offenses. Federal crimes on federal property in a state are often defined with reference to state criminal law.

Federal courts disproportionately handle white-collar crimes, immigration-related crimes and drug offenses (these crimes make up about 70% of the federal docket, but just 19% of the state court criminal docket). Federal courts have the power to bring death penalty charges under federal law, even if they arise in states where there is no death penalty under state law, but the federal government rarely utilizes this right.

Conviction rates are high in federal court because due to the overlap of the state and federal court system, federal prosecutors can choose to prosecute predominantly open and shut cases. Also, high mandatory minimum penalties for many federal crimes make the benefit of a lower sentence outweigh the modest probability of acquittal in all but the closest cases.

Conviction rates are frequently lower in state courts because they have to handle pretty much all criminal cases presented to them, the sentencing penalty for going to trial is often weaker causing fewer cases to be resolved by plea bargains, and the levels of resources and professionalism is lower in some (but not all) state courts relative to federal courts.

In a world with no procedural biases and near perfect information, most cases would result in plea bargains at modest discounts from the sentence that would be imposed at trial reflecting the cost of the trial process to the prosecutors, and cases that go to trial would have close to a 50% conviction rate among cases that go to trial, but a very high guilty plea rate, because the cases that go to trial would be only those cases where the outcome is hardest to predict.

We don't live in such a world, however. Indigent defendants are entitled to government paid public defenders at trial and on a direct appeal (and most criminal defendants are indigent). And, most criminal offense by number of cases (which is how conviction rates are calculated) have fairly modest maximum penalties, so the sentencing penalty for going to trial can be modest in a lot of low to medium level offense criminal prosecutions. And, as a practical matter, juries reach incorrect verdicts in cases close enough to go to trial at least about 10% of the time under normal state criminal court conditions, which is a nearly irreducible uncertainty involved in going to trial. So, even criminal defendants with a very high risk of being convicted will "roll the dice" and result in a more than 50% rate of conviction at trial (but a lower plea bargaining rate).

Ultimately, conviction rates for plea bargains and trials combined are a function of how well prosecutors and law enforcement prepare and screen their cases. The higher their standards, the higher the conviction rate will be, because close cases won't be prosecuted at all. The lower their standards, the lower the conviction rate will be, because even very weak cases will go to trial and result in acquittals. Ultimately, how strict those standards are ends up being a matter of institutional culture and the quirks of how minor differences in resources and formal rules between different criminal justice systems play out in practice.

In addition to institutional culture, the behavior of jurors in different places varies greatly.

For example, African American jurors are, on average, according to well designed studies including one from Florida, more skeptical of prosecutors and law enforcement, and hence, more likely to acquit criminal defendants at trial than other jurors (on average). So, jurisdictions in which African Americans make up a larger share of the jury pool tend to have higher acquittal rates at trial than jurisdictions with low percentages of African American jurors.

This is often a significant enough effect to significantly influence the overall conviction rate and jurisdictions with high percentages of African American jurors also often have fewer resources for prosecutors and law enforcement per crime prosecuted, which can reduce the quality of presentations that are made to juries in trials and the quality of criminal investigations, of all kinds, in those jurisdictions.

ohwilleke
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  • is it also true that most of the cases that go to trial have overwhelming evidence against the defendants which is also why conviction rate is high ? –  Mar 30 '23 at 18:28
  • @OldAccount2005 No. The cases that go to trial are usually the ones where the evidence is not overwhelming. – ohwilleke Mar 30 '23 at 21:09
  • and the opposite of that aren't ? or they are too ? –  Mar 31 '23 at 01:32
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    @OldAccount2005 Close cases go to trial. Easy cases plea bargain. – ohwilleke Mar 31 '23 at 01:57
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    in easy cases where a plea bargain is non favourable , is a trial futile ? –  Mar 31 '23 at 02:04
  • I think the conviction rate must be based not on the total number of cases, but on the number of cases that go to trial? Otherwise, plea bargains would muddy the water - they would probably lower the conviction rate, because most plea bargains involve dropping some charges (so the prosecutor wouldn't get a conviction on those). – Kevin Keane Mar 31 '23 at 05:52
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    @KevinKeane Plea bargains technically start the trial, but end with the bargain the moment the trial begins. so on a technicality, you can not discount them. Also, conviction for the statistics is found guilty of any of the charged crimes. If you are charged with the whole book and one section sticks, you are a +1 on convictions, not a +N on the non-guilty count. – Trish Mar 31 '23 at 08:48
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    @OldAccount2005 - Not futile, but inefficient for both parties. Plea bargain is a mutual discount on the time spent in the court / in the jail - assuming that the result of the trial is well predictable. – Jirka Hanika Mar 31 '23 at 14:07
  • @KevinKeane "I think the conviction rate must be based not on the total number of cases, but on the number of cases that go to trial?" No. This is not the case. So, plea bargaining rates are critical to determining the conviction rate. – ohwilleke Mar 31 '23 at 14:31
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In the case of the United States, Plea Bargaining is an accepted practice and is not stigmatized against, such that prosecutors are likely to cut deals with defendant and charge them for lesser charges than what they would have taken them to court for. This means less work (and less expense) to the prosecutor's office and a lesser sentence for the convicted (It's a high chance that most of the people convicted of simple drug possession in the U.S. were going to be charged with Possession with intent to Sell but had it reduced in exchange for avoiding going to trial. Simple Possession is a slap on the wrist compared to "Possession with intent to Sell" and is easier to convict (Do you have drugs on your person?) where as intent is much more difficult).

In Japan, the high conviction rate seems to be due to the fact that unless the police witness the defendant committing a crime, they must get judicial approval to make an arrest, meaning, they have to be pretty close to indicting the person already.

hszmv
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  • someone stated that majority of the convicts had outstanding evidence against them out of the 80% conviction rate , is this true ? –  Mar 30 '23 at 11:44
  • @TDUsolarcrownHype Can you specify jurisdiction? Japan and U.S. Criminal systems are very different. – hszmv Mar 30 '23 at 11:51
  • America of course –  Mar 30 '23 at 12:18
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    On that example of "simple possession" it may be worth pointing out that it also leads to many innocent people pleading guilty simply because they can't afford the time off work for weeks in pretrial detention until the lab tests come back to show that the "crack cocaine" found in their car actually was a pebble of road dirt. Add to that the extreme penalty for a trial (plead guilty and you'll get probation, or go on trial and risk 40 years in prison), and a false guilty plea can be the rational choice. – Kevin Keane Mar 31 '23 at 05:59
  • @KevinKeane Kinda like the Alford plea. "I didn't do it, but I know I look guilty so I might as well just take the blame." – pipe Mar 31 '23 at 14:48
  • Any U.S. wide answer is necessarily wrong because there is such a huge variation among the various U.S. states and the federal system respectively. – ohwilleke Apr 03 '23 at 21:25
  • do courts have the power to discharge accused people ? or can they only give guilty and acquittal verdicts ? isn't overcharging unethical –  Apr 11 '23 at 05:54
  • @OldAccount2005 The courts have powers to drop charges at time of trial, but typically it's because the Prosecution failed to prove the charges (Called a Directed Verdict). The Judge is also the final decider of sentencing unless it's a capital offense, in which case the jury will decide if the conviction warrants the death penalty. From there, the Department of Corrections or similar organization holds them in custody and runs the parole board. It's basically the executive branch of the government that convicts to allow clemency. – hszmv Apr 11 '23 at 11:23
  • why do they drop charges instead of an acquittal ? isn't acquittal meaningless then ? –  Apr 11 '23 at 11:50
  • @OldAccount2005 An acquittal comes from a Verdict that is determined by a jury found in Not Guilty. The charges being dropped prior to that means the jury could not find you guilty of that crime in the first place. Effectively the Judge is saying that the dropped charge is not a crime the jury should find guilt because the facts do not support the crime in law. – hszmv Apr 11 '23 at 13:06
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In prosecutors are directed to not bring a charge unless there is a substantial likelihood of conviction (or, in exceptional cases, a mere reasonable prospect of conviction), considering the anticipated evidence, its reliability, and viability of any defences or constitutional impediments. See the Crown Counsel Policy Manual's Charge Assessment Guideline.

This standard applies throughout the proceeding. If evidence comes to light that changes the assessment, such that there is no longer a substantial likelihood of conviction, the Crown should request a stay of proceedings.

Jen
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    how do prosecutors know weather a case will secure a conviction or not ? –  Mar 30 '23 at 11:13
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    @TDUsolarcrownHype they don't know, but they can estimate because they have functioning brains (most of them...) – user253751 Mar 30 '23 at 11:20
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    @TDUsolarcrownHype Prosecutors have experience. You don't make decisions fresh out of law school, you work years either as an assistant crown (district) attorney or a defense attorney before you get the position where you can make the final say. – user71659 Mar 30 '23 at 18:40
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In the US, part of the reason is political and an outgrowth of the "tough on crime" culture.

Local prosecutors, as well as judges, are usually elected officials, and at reelection time, voters tend to look at their conviction rates. There have been some cases where a fair but unpopular verdict led to an attempt to recall the judge.

So judges will tend to be biased towards the prosecution. Of course, the trials are usually jury trials, but judges still have a lot of influence, for instance by their jury instructions, and simply by how they run the trial.

Kevin Keane
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    The places where "tough on crime" culture is strongest often have the lowest conviction rates, while places where this is less true often have higher conviction rates, so taking the premise as true (the U.S. has high conviction rates - which isn't really true), this post is opposite and indeed backward in explaining it. There is also essentially no evidence that different judicial behavior accounts for any meaningful part of the difference. Prosecutors and jurors are far more relevant players in the differences. – ohwilleke Mar 31 '23 at 14:26
  • why is that ? @ohwilleke –  Apr 01 '23 at 02:35
  • Yikes. I cannot imaging a judge running for re-election bragging about his/her conviction rate. That would amount to an admission that he is biased towards the prosecution, and does not hold fair trials. – Wastrel Apr 02 '23 at 14:37