Law and Order: SVU surprises me

I wrote a piece for the National RSOL (Reform Sex Offender Laws) website: 

A friend asked me to watch this week’s episode of Law and Order SVU, a show I stopped watching years ago because its enjoyment of perversion–what awful crimes can we detail for our audience this week?–was disturbing. My friend told me this episode, “Collateral Damages” (season 17, episode 15), was about child pornography, so I expected the show to get the details all wrong. Television so often does. 

Stop reading now if you do not want spoilers. 

The episode begins with an undercover operation in which the cops set up a popular local celebrity so that he will commit a sex crime against an undercover cop posing as a girl “almost 16 years old.” In a bare few minutes, the celebrity meets the “teen,” tells her she is a bombshell, gives her alcohol, convinces her to pose topless for him, photographs her, and begins to unbuckle his belt. That’s when the cops move in to arrest him for producing child pornography and for attempted rape of a child. 

I rolled my eyes and settled in for more simplistic nonsense. Then the show gets interesting. 

The celebrity makes a deal to help the cops nail a “pedophile ring” in exchange for a lighter sentence. (The word “pedophile” is tossed around in the show in a facile way that makes it obvious the writers did not bother checking the definition.) He provides information that helps the cops identify IP addresses, and they move in to arrest several men. In a twist, one of the members of the pedophile ring turns out to be one of their own, the Deputy Commissioner no one likes. 

The Deputy Commissioner’s wife, though, is well-liked, and her work as a children’s advocate attorney is respected. She and her husband have two children. 

We watch as their home fills up with cops. We watch the cops take the husband and father away. We watch the confusion of the wife and kids. We watch as they are told to go to a hotel so the cops can search the apartment. 

I wasn’t rolling my eyes anymore. My heart was pounding. I remember this. 

I remember the chaos, the anger, the fear, the confusion. 

Law and Order gets the bad guy, as usual, but this episode, too close to real life, is not neatly wrapped up. 

To protect the children from the media firestorm, they are sent to live with grandparents. The wife is told to take leave of absence from her job. She moves to a hotel to avoid the press. 

The husband tries to kill himself. The wife wonders how she could have missed seeing that her husband was sick. 

The celebrity who actually did sexually assault kids? He will serve about six months. 

The Deputy Commissioner heads to prison for four years as part of a plea deal that includes heavy duty treatment and registration. His anguish and shame and self-disgust is obvious. This time it is clear that he, while disliked by the cops and while guilty of looking at child porn, is also a beloved father and husband. 

A good man whose family will suffer because of what he did. And his family is my family: collateral damage.

When TV shows begin to show the inequities in the criminal justice system and the effect on the families involved, change is on the way.

lessons from Waco biker shootout: dubious behavior by authorities crushes families

The Dallas Observer carries an interview with John Wilson who was at the Waco Twin Peaks restaurant May 17, 2015, when all hell broke loose and nine men were killed in a shootout. Reports say 177 people were arrested that day; 171 were charged with organized crime activity, and 106 were indicted for murder. 

That's a lot of paperwork.

The interview includes some interesting and infuriating details--the cops refused to give aid to bikers who were dying of gunshot wounds, and refused to let anyone else care for them, either--but some of his observations apply to more than the Waco biker gunfight.

Asked if the prosecutor had information on each of the 106 people indicted on murder charges, Wilson says:

No. No — that’s why the grand jury indicted 106 people in a day. They obviously didn’t review 106 cases. The DA says, “Here’s a list, and this is what we allege they do, and indict ‘em for these murders.” And one of the guys — shows you how much the grand jury looked at this case — there were nine people killed out there; they had 10 people listed. They had a guy that wasn’t even out there shot listed as one of the killed, yet they were able to indict 106 people for that person who wasn’t even shot there. A completely different person. That shows you how much burden of proof there is for the grand jury — how little the grand jury looks at anything … The grand jury indictments are a complete joke. They don’t mean anything. All it does is let the DA go to the next step, where he’ll sit there and try to make plea bargains with people so they can’t sue him for false arrest. If they plead anything, they had reason to arrest you. I did nothing illegal. As far as I know, I’ve seen no evidence that they have saying that I did. If they come up with something, it’s wrong, because I didn’t. [My emphasis.]

It is worth remembering that prosecutors have powerful motivations to push defendants to take a plea agreement; protecting the government from false arrest accusations is only one more.

The interviewer asks how the aftermath affects families and Wilson's answer is all too familiar:

Well, you know, most of ‘em weren’t self-employed. Most of them not only have that to deal with, but they lost their jobs. Some of them have lost their homes. Some of them have lost custody of their children. Then go try to find a job when you’re under indictment for killing 10 people. [Chuckles.] It’s had a terrible effect on them. I can’t go out and contact these guys and reach out to them and stuff, but I can assure you there are families being crushed over this. You have 177 families, not individuals, that were affected by this. There are children who will not go to college now because of this. And their parents, in 90 percent of the cases, had nothing to do with the violence or anything wrong. And these children are being punished. These wives are being punished. And this is gonna resonate for generations …

Heartbreakingly familiar.

Over 100 were indicted for murder before a proper investigation was completed and without serious consideration by the grand jury. 

And it’s all being done just so that the local DA can save face for handling this the wrong way. It’s a tragic thing. I’m not saying there aren’t people who should be in trouble. There probably is. But it’s hard for me to believe that [McLennan County District Attorney] Abel Reyna didn’t wake up in the middle of the night and think, 'Dang, I wish I’d have done this thing differently.' Because now if he drops charges on everybody, then he’s gonna face a storm of civil suits. They’ve got to make this thing stay alive long enough to try to get people to plea. [My emphasis.]

Again, the need to get defendants to take a plea agreement. If defendants take plea agreements, there are no trials, no need for the prosecution to prove their cases.

It's a sweet deal for the prosecution but families are being crushed.

Conor Friedersdorf has a piece in The Atlantic about the Waco biker gunfight in which he says it seems likely that two to four of the dead bikers were killed by rounds fired by police. Friedersdorf is appalled by the way the cases have been handled.

[Prosecutors] are entrusted with charging murders in a state with the death penalty. Their due diligence is sufficiently inadequate that individuals totally innocent of murdering William Anderson––and known to be innocent of that by everyone––still find themselves on the wrong end of an indictment for that crime. And an indignant district attorney calls that “a minor error”! 

Dubious behavior by the Waco authorities hardly ends there. From the start, they’ve actively suppressed evidence, making it impossible for the public to know how many of the nine dead bikers were shot by other bikers and how many were shot by police. In September, I noted an Associated Press report that the gunfire that day “included rounds fired by police that hit bikers, though it isn't clear whether those rifle shots caused any of the fatalities.”

Dubious behavior by authorities? Hardly a surprise to anyone who has been through the criminal justice system.

prosecutors defend plea agreements

In Oregon, a Clatsop County man was convicted of sexual abuse of a child in the first degree, bribing a witness and tampering with a witness. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail, 60 of which would be served under alternative sanctions.

His case led to a discussion about plea agreements.

The Daily Astorian published a letter from a friend of the convicted man who pointed out that an innocent man was essentially forced to take the plea, and thereby prevented from defending himself against the charges.

I completely understand the horrendous nature of the accusations that were made against him, and the sensitivity that must be exercised in child abuse cases, but these were accusations that Mitchell was never given a fair chance to defend himself against. Any honest attempt to get at the truth of the matter would have involved interviewing the alleged criminal, investigating his background, and speaking with character witnesses. This never happened.

I have no idea if the defendant was guilty or innocent but guilt and innocence too often have little to do with whether a defendant takes the offered plea agreement or not.

The Daily Astorian followed up by publishing a guest column written by Joshua Marquis, the Clatsop County district attorney, and Dawn Buzzard, the senior assistant district attorney, in response to the letter.

Marquis and Buzzard call the letter from the friend an "angry letter." It isn't. The friend sticks to the facts:

The district attorney’s office inflated the accusations at every opportunity, originally charging him with crimes that could have resulted in over 300 years of prison. Even after the most serious of the charges were dropped, they continued to use the blunt sledgehammer of a “choice” between the possibility of spending 180 years in prison with a trial, or taking a plea for 60 days of alternative sanctions.

Yes. That is the way plea agreements work. The prosecutor holds all the cards. The choice is no choice at all.

For those of you who think that you would never plead to something you did not do, think again. The choice is stark: charges that could result in 180 years in prison or a plea agreement that guarantees you will do only 90 days. In a world where sex offenders only rarely win at trial, going to trial is not the opportunity to tell your side that Perry Mason led you to believe it was.

The fact that the district attorney was willing to settle for a couple months over the original 300 years speaks to the weakness of their case. [My emphasis.]

This is a point beyond intriguing. I would call it telling. If prosecutors believed the original charges, why would they settle for such a light sentence? Oh, I know...they are all about sensitivity to the victim and not wanting to put her through hell. But if this guy is such a bad dude, why not go for, oh, I dunno...HALF of the 180 years, or even half of the 300? Dropping all the way down to 90 days tells us one of two things: 1. The prosecutors, if they believe he is dangerous enough to deserve 300 or 180 years, do not care at all about public safety, or 2. The prosecutors know all along that this guy is not dangerous.

The friend continues:

Not once was Mitchell given an opportunity in court to tell his side of the story.

The district attorneys dispute that in their guest column.

Mr. Mitchell had every opportunity to “tell his side.” They are generally called trials.

Here, the district attorneys could offer up the information about how the trial would have worked but they never had any plans to go to trial. When 97% of federal cases and 95% of state cases end in a plea agreement, why would they worry about a trial? When they can threaten the defendant with multiple charges that would result in a extremely long prison sentence, the defendant is certain to take the plea agreement because there is no other choice.

They continue:

He had a right to remain silent in court, but now some of his supporters are trying his case in the court of public opinion and in that forum he’s chosen never to tell “his side.”

This cannot be the only case where supporters try to throw light into the darkness but this is the one that the prosecutors decided to defend in the court of public opinion.

The prosecutors blather on about the defendant taking an Alford plea, trying to convince readers that the Alford plea is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill guilty plea.

The “Alford plea” comes from a 1970 U.S. Supreme Court case where a murder defendant claimed he only entered the guilty plea because of fear he might be convicted of something worse or receive a harsher sentence. The Supreme Court held that claiming you were “really innocent but still pleading guilty” meant … you were pleading guilty … period. More recently, in 2006 a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge held that an Alford guilty plea is a “variation of an ordinary guilty plea.” The only difference is that the defendant, who often has vehemently denied his guilt to friends and family can claim, “I didn’t do it, but they’ll convict me anyway.”

When pleading guilty is the only way to get the 90 days instead of a sentence of half a dozen lifetimes, you plead guilty. Using an Alford plea is a way to grab the 90 days without admitting guilt. The prosecutors know this but they choose not to explain that. In some cases, using an Alford plea leaves some opportunity for appeal, where a plain old guilty plea may not. Plea agreements often explicitly exclude the possiblity of an appeal.

A defendant who vehemently denies his guilt to friends and family because he is innocent can still be railroaded into accepting a plea agreement because the threat of 300 or 180 years is a real threat when it is a sex offense case.

The existence of the sex offender registry has helped to expand the myth of dangerous sex offenders. If these criminals are so dangerous that they need to register, then they must be frightful indeed. With news media that loves a sensational story about sex offenders, the public from which a jury is drawn has been primed to convict.

The prosecutors know that. They have known all along that they can convict with very little work on their part. Point a finger at the defendant, call him a sex offender and, wow, you'd be surprised how dirty an ordinary man will look.

Almost as dirty as some prosecutors but then, we don't have a dirty prosecutor registry, do we?

NOTE: When you read the prosecutors' guest column, make sure not to miss the comments. Good stuff there.

sex on the beach

A man convicted of having sex on a Florida beach is facing 15 years in prison and his girlfriend, convicted of the same, will do some jail time. Both will be on the sex offender registry for life. 

...Assistant State Attorney Anthony Dafonseca said they will pursue a harsher sentence for [the man] than [the woman], since [she] has no prior record and [the man] has been to prison for almost eight years for a cocaine trafficking conviction. 

The state will ask for jail time for [the woman] and prison time for [the man]. Dafonseca said due to [the man] being out of prison less than three years before committing another felony, he's looking at serving the maximum time of 15 years. 

"We gave them a reasonable offer, what we felt was reasonable, and they decided it wasn't something they wanted to accept responsibility for," Dafonseca said. "Despite the video, despite all the witnesses."

The prosecutor's reasonable offer was rescinded when the couple decided to see whether a jury would interpret the video and hear the witnesses differently. If it was reasonable to offer them a lesser sentence, how does a decision to go to trial make the lesser sentence less reasonable? 

If the prosecutor thought the initial offer was reasonable, the actual sentence is, by his own judgment, unreasonable. After all, the crime has not become any worse between the offer and the decision to go to trial.

To accept responsibility for a crime is to plead guilty. It is not a crime to go to trial. The prosecutor is punishing the couple for choosing to make the justice system work the way it is supposed to work.

It is clear that the initial sentence was for sex on the beach and the eventual sentence is for making the prosecutor prove his case.

The judge has little to no discretion, in this world of mandatory sentences.

Ed Brodsky, elected state attorney for the 16th judicial district, joined Defonseca in prosecuting the case. When asked why the case was an important one to the state attorney, Dafonseca said it was important that the community knew what wouldn't be tolerated on public beaches.

Because no one knew that openly having sex on the beach was a bad idea until this case. 

"We're dealing with basically tourists, that came from Brandon and Riverview and West Virginia, and they're here on the beaches of Manatee County, our public beaches," Dafonseca said, referring to the witnesses. "So you want to make sure that this isn't something that just goes by the wayside. And that it is well known to the community, what will be tolerated and what won't be."

Kicking people off the beach when they misbehave is so old fashioned. Today, everything deserves prison.

Publicity like this--15 years in prison for canoodling--could scare away more Florida tourists than seeing suggestive behavior on the beach ever could, especially in the state with a reputation for wild spring breaks for college kids.

"some of the most lethal terrorists are prosecutors"

Norm Pattis talks about prosecutors employing dark arts at trial:

Trial, some say, is a search for the truth. That’s specious tomfoolery. In fact, trial, at least a criminal trial, is guerilla warfare. Some of the most lethal terrorists are prosecutors. Fear and the dark arts of intimidation are common tools.

Fear and intimidation, indeed. Only a small number of criminal cases ever go to trial because of those dark arts. Who would risk being tried on the most severe of charges and a much longer sentence when the plea agreement offers lesser charges and a shorter sentence? After seeing the prosecution's enormous power to force the outcome it wants, not many will risk a trial.

The dark arts of witness intimidation pit prosecutors against defense counsel. The accused wants to avoid prison and a felony record. The government wants testimony sufficient to convict as many as possible. 

A grant of immunity from prosecution is a homerun for the defense, but the government doesn’t like giving free passes to those it believes to have broken the law. For one thing, jurors are wary of immunity agreements, especially in white-collar cases. “How come he gets to break the law with impunity?” are not the words a prosecutor wants to hear about a witness. 

So an elaborate charade is constructed, a game designed and intended to keep jurors from learning as much of the truth as possible. The government enters into cooperation agreements with those prepared to testify against co-conspirators. 

Here’s how it works: A witness pleads guilty, typically to reduced charges. But his sentence is deferred until after the main event. ... 

Deferring sentence permits the government to deny that the witness has been promised leniency for his cooperation. The witness is reduced merely to saying that he hopes the judge will take into account his assistance to the government when his own sentencing occurs.

Read the whole thing. Pattis outlines an actual trial to show how it works.

In other words, the government, not the jury, decides what is and is not true; those who disagree with Uncle Sam get clobbered.

When the prosecution routinely forces a plea agreement and bypasses any trial, the prosecution rarely has to prove its case.

So, yes: the prosecution decides what is true.

why I admire defense attorneys

Radley Balko interviewed longtime Louisiana defense attorney Sam Dalton for an August 2013 article on prosecutorial misconduct. As his final Huffington Post piece (before moving to the Washington Post), Balko published the whole Dalton interview.

Dalton is something of a legend in Louisiana courtrooms. He has just entered his seventh decade of practicing law. In that time, he has defended more than 300 death penalty cases. Of those, he spared 16 defendants from execution -- this in a state that's rather fond of executing people. He has also been a voice for civil rights, he chartered a model public defender system, and he's currently leading a charge to impose some accountability on Louisiana's more egregiously misbehaving prosecutors. My favorite thing about him: Outside his office door there's a "welcome" mat that reads: Come back with a warrant.

Talking about why prosecutors still try to avoid handing exculpatory evidence over to the defense, even though it has been the law for 50 years, Dalton said:

[Y]ou have to look at what the system rewards. The best way to get attention for yourself as a prosecutor is to put a lot of people in jail. There's no votes to be won for deciding not to prosecute someone in the interests of justice. No prosecutor runs for higher office by touting the charges he didn't bring, or the fairness he showed to those accused of terrible crimes. You put those two problems together, and you get a culture that encourages deliberate indifference, especially once they're publicly invested in a particular suspect. 

Anyone who has watched someone go through the meat grinder of our justice system knows this already. It is a sad time when prosecutors fear being accused of being fair. We also know the Department of Justice is publicly invested in a particular type of suspect--drug offenders for one, sex offenders for another. These offenses are easy to detect, easy to prosecute, easy to convict. I would note, too, it is easy for law enforcement to entrap someone for these offenses.

Now that Colorado and Washington have legalized marijuana for recreational use, it seems clear that public opinion will support further legalization. Perhaps that is why federal law enforcement has increased its investment in catching those who download child pornography--easy pickings will make it possible for a prosecutor to continue to boast the number of convictions on his watch.

I think it's a mistake for a defense attorney to define success by how many acquittals he wins. I define it by whether I've forced the state to do its job, and to do it fairly and in compliance with the Constitution. 

But let me say something about convictions. Convictions are important. And it's important for attorneys to represent even clearly guilty people. There's the obvious reason -- that everyone deserves a fair trial. 

But here's a less obvious reason: Ask yourself, what contribution do convictions make to criminal case law? The answer is that they're responsible for almost all of it. When you're acquitted, you don't appeal. Only convictions are appealed. And it's on appeal that you argue that your client's rights were violated. Appeals are where the appellate courts enforce the Constitution. At least where they're supposed to. It's only because someone was convicted that we have the rules in place today that protect the accused. There's a kind of beautiful symmetry to that. It's because of convictions that we have the rules that protect the innocent.

I had not thought before about the role convictions play in the important battle to change laws. Dalton makes me see them differently, though I have to wonder if Dalton overlooks the fact that when prosecutors have been given the power to pin a defendant between a plea agreement and a mandatory minimum sentence, convictions lose that importance. 

Plea agreements often require the defendant to waive his right to appeal. No appeal means no way to argue that rights were violated, even when it is clear that a plea is less about admitting guilt than about avoiding the mandatory minimum.

Dalton talks about punishment:

We focus too much on retribution, and too little on protecting society from harm. 

Let me give you an example. Two men commit an armed robbery on the same night. The first man is a father of four. His family is about to be evicted. Or if you want to make him less sympathetic, let's say he's a drug addict who needs money to buy his next fix. He's nervous, he's sweaty. He's desperate, and he's panicky. He approaches his victim and roughly accosts him. He puts his gun to the victim's head. He's screaming profanities. He screams out for his victim's wallet, then screams louder and threatens the victim for moving too slowly. He takes his money and runs off. His victim is terribly frightened. 

In the second scenario, our mugger is calm, cool, and methodical. He approaches his victim from the front, puts a light hand on the victim's back, and slowly and unemotionally explains that he has a gun in his coat pocket. He tells his victim that if he hands over his wallet, no one will get hurt, and they can both be on their way. The victim hands it over. The mugger walks off. The victim is angry at just having been robbed, but he isn't terrified. And he was never in real fear for his life. 

Which of the two armed robbers is likely to get the longer sentence? Almost certainly the first one. Which of the two is the bigger threat to society? Unquestionably the second one. In fact, the second one is not only a likely career criminal, he's more likely to actually kill someone. The first one is scared because he knows he's doing something wrong. He feels some empathy for his victim. He's committing a crime of necessity. That isn't to say it excuses him. But his aggression comes from fear. The second mugger is incapable of empathy, or has learned to turn it off. He's cold-blooded. 

So you see we impose punishment based on fear and a desire for retribution, not based on rational evaluations of what crimes and criminals are most dangerous. [My emphasis.]

Sex offenders and their families know this well. The majority of those convicted of sex offenses are unlikely to commit another sex offense and yet they are sentenced according to the fear engendered by the term sex offense instead of any rational evaluation of danger.

Punishment should include alternatives to incarceration because incarceration is often a training ground for criminals and because the United States prisons are overcrowded. Another reason to avoid incarceration when possible is to avoid giving more people power over others.

Though Dalton is talking about judges and prosecutors, his warning also applies to correctional officers:

Power is insidious. It will creep up on even the most decent people. Always be aware of that, and be vigilant against it.

Read the whole interview. Defense attorneys take a lot of heat for their part in letting criminals go free but they stand between us and unjust convictions. I have great admiration for attorneys who defend the obviously guilty and especially those obviously guilty of terrible crimes.

Obvious guilt should be defended just as fiercely as innocence is.

another judge gets it

A federal judge in Ohio shows mercy by refusing to sentence a defendant according to the sentencing guidelines. Twice.

Appalled at the harsh sentencing guidelines for child pornography offenses, a federal judge sentenced an ailing, 67-year-old defendant to only one night in jail — and when an appeals court ordered the defendant resentenced, the judge imposed the same punishment. 

“If I have got to send somebody like [this man] to prison, I’m sorry, someone else will have to do it,” said U.S. District Judge James L. Graham of Columbus, Ohio. “I’m not going to do it.” ...

The unusual act of judicial disobedience by Graham — who was appointed to the bench 27 years ago by President Ronald Reagan — is the latest protest of sentencing rules for pornography possession, which other federal judges have described in opinions as “irrational” and “bordering on witch hunts.” 

...Graham declared the guidelines were seriously flawed because, among other things, they require an enhanced sentence if a computer is used — even though, as Graham pointed out, a computer is nearly always used.

As far as I can tell, the defendant is pleading guilty to possession, a charge that does not carry a mandatory minimum. Sentencing guidelines are advisory, not mandatory.

The defendant has already had two strokes and his wife is in poor health. The judge said he worried that the defendant wouldn't get sufficient health care in prison. In another article, the prosecutors blithely brush aside those concerns:

The 6th Circuit pointed out that prisons have doctors and that [the defendant] has four adult children living near him who could help take care of his wife.

The prison where my husband is incarcerated has no doctor on staff. I do not know if that is usual.

“We’re not of a belief that someone should get a senior discount because of their age,” said Fred Alverson, a spokesman with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Well, that's certainly true. Federal prosecutors have been busy putting elderly people in prison and keeping others there until they are elderly--the majority of them for non-violent crimes.

The population of aging and elderly prisoners in U.S. prisons exploded over the past three decades, with nearly 125,000 inmates aged 55 or older now behind bars, according to a report published Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. This represents an increase of over 1,300 percent since the early 1980s. 

More than $16 billion is spent annually by states and the federal government to incarcerate elderly prisoners, despite ample evidence that most prisoners over age 50 pose little or no threat to public safety, the report said. Due largely to higher health care costs, prisoners aged 50 and older cost around $68,000 a year to incarcerate, compared to $34,000 per year for the average prisoner. 

The feds want to put this man in prison, putting his health and that of his wife at risk, and they want taxpayers to pay the increased cost of incarcerating an elderly man in poor health. Why?

In the article linked above, the prosecutors explain that

...he was participating in a global market with millions of members that “constantly demands that more children be abused in order to create new images.” 

“Child pornography images themselves are their own currency,” prosecutors wrote. “Possessors are the engine of demand that fuels the molestation of children to create more supply.”

Note that prosecutors do not have to prove these assertions. They don't have to prove that this man's online activities demanded new images or that he wanted more children to be molested. They are allowed to make broad accusations about a general practice of looking at child pornography as if it naturally applies to everyone charged with possession. No one challenges them.

Welcome, Judge Graham, to the ranks of those who recognize that sentences for child porn users are not proportionate to the crime. There is probably a large number of judges in that group. If only more of them would stand up and publicly acknowledge the wrongs done to those who look at pictures.

Bordering on witch hunts, indeed.

more U.S. attorneys, less time spent in court

Hmmm. 

In 1989, the 2,632 U.S. attorneys spent 947,000 hours in court-related work.

In 2010, the 6,075 U.S. attorneys spent only 596,000 hours in court-related work.

I am not quite sure what to make of these numbers except to connect them to this:

Guilty pleas last year resolved 97% of all federal cases that the Justice Department prosecuted to a conclusion. That is up from 84% in 1990. During that period, the number of federal defendants nearly doubled amid a crackdown on crimes ranging from drug trafficking to fraud, while the number going to trial fell by nearly two-thirds.

When mandatory minimum sentencing lets prosecutors force the defendant to choose between the very, very long sentence probable if he goes to trial and the very long sentence offered in a plea agreement, few defendants go to trial. No trial, less court-related work.

Those numbers start to make sense except I don't know how to explain the huge increase in the number of U.S. attorneys. Unless the phrase "gravy train" helps.