There's a podcast, by the name: 'Serial', in season two they go into regular courtrooms with non-fancy cases - fights, etc.
In one episode after the defendant has been found not guilty, the judge presiding over the case berated them for not accepting a plea deal, and wasting the court time. This is after the person has been found not guilty.
Serial season 3 - where they hang out at a courthouse for a year, learning all of the ins and outs - illustrates all of this very well.
There's a lot of injustice tied up in expediting cases. Massive backlogs of work, not enough people to do the work, and massively asymmetric funding for prosecution and defense.
Not having grown up in the US, I listened in fascination to the first episodes of Serial season 3, “... Cleveland. Not for one extraordinary case; instead, Serial wanted to tackle the whole criminal justice system. To do that we figured we’d need to look at something different: ordinary cases.”
After a few episodes I had to take a break. It is so upsetting. Justice is not a reality.
““Charge stacking” is a process by which police and prosecutors create a case with numerous charges or numerous instances of the same charge to convince the defendant that the risk of not pleading guilty is intolerable. The defendant may be convinced to plead guilty to a few of the charges in return for not being prosecuted for the remaining charges.“
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtroom_Workgroup
I think I’ve seen this kind of farce happen often enough in sitcoms. Odd Couple “My Strife In Court”, Seinfeld “The Parking Garage”, The Golden Girls “Ladies of the Evening”. People are always getting arrested in sitcoms for dumb reasons.
Oh cry me a river. This is criminals applying the codified "law" against each-other for their temporary enrichment and the entertainment of the spectators.
Specifically on the court element, don't forget that courts can be faked too. And for a better example of a faked court show, you need go no further than OJ Simpson. What an event that was!
reply