Resolved: Plea bargaining ought to be abolished in the United States criminal justice system.

Will do!

Understood! I want votes on this debate https://www.debateart.com/debates/338

Have thought about it, but am way way waayyy too biased on this debate to give my personal preference to properly judge it! As a consolation, I shall set aside some time to vote on any one debate either debater solicits from me starting . . . now. Consider this comment a free voucher on any one debate either debater would like for me to look at!

Thanks for the feedback!!

Well it kind of is your problem: because without that justification it’s just an assertion (which you seem to have denied), which makes it a weak argument (which you also denied), and wasn’t a conclusion that was supported by a source (which you denied), which, along with the fact you didn’t support any of your other arguments conclusions with sources (which you denied), is why you got marked as losing sources (which you angrily object led to).

So, if you have no response to any of it any more, then I accept your apology.

Not my problem.

Feel free to quote the place in round two - or anywhere - where you provided a justification of why people are going to be framed at a materially equivalent rate. Throughout, you hvs simple said this would be the case.

You don't know what my Round 2 quote said, do you?

For the moment, let’s ignore the fact that these points were considered and factored in to the vote: these arguments depend on the assertion that people or are going to be framed at a materially equivalent rate - an assertion that nothing you quoted serves to directly justify.

Totally wrong. I went further. It was so brutal that he was stuttering, barely able to type a fucking word in response; that's how you would be if you dared take me on.

He knew I had him totally cornered given that he'd conceded what I said was the worst and most desirable type of crriminal to arrest and deal justice to, in his R2.

See, while the framed stay framed there's two angles that absolutely are unique to PB being taken and offered and two angles that take his case down with his own attack:

1. The person realises they gain nothing by confessing to the crime they didn't do (or did only half as bad or involved as is being made out).

2. The prosecution team has still got no reason to assume that suspect isn't the one that did it.

3. The entire reason they'd confess in PB is the inevitable framing being a success in their eyes and this begins to sink in, in the non-PB system in an ugly way...

4. They do any and everything to hide the crime, now having motive to dirty their record worse and face worse punishment by perverting the course of justice (which was already perverted in this case, admittedly) by framing someone else or blackmailing cops to remove evidence by threatening their spouse and children and whoever/whatever else they can.

This is worded perfect, it was so brutal and eloquent that Pro knew he was fucked. I don't blame him for struggling.

If your Aussie source implies that PB is only used when a crime is already proven from multiple angles - then this directly supports your opponents contention that PBS are unnecessary. Right? So in actuality your source actually harms your argument, rather than supports it.

Now, secondly: I am always willing to hear objections to my interpretation. So, you claimed the innocent people would be framed any way with or without Pb. In the context of the contention of the debate, for your argument to be valid, framing must be so prevalent for innocent people, it must be equivalent to the existing bargaining system. You offered no evidence of that, and as the argument is inherently hypothetical, you have to offer practical justification of why it is reasonable to conclude this would occur. This argument was mostly asserted, meaning that you have just argued as if this is an inherently proven point. As you offer no real supporting justification of what would motivate prosecutors to do this and why it is reasonable to conclude this was the case: this was an incredibly weak assertion - and was dismissed accorsingly.

Hahahaha, whatever you say. You voted for me and I still am critical what's your excuse now?

Quite frankly though, if you have specific issues or particular areas in a way I determined the vote - I will be happy to discuss.

Whenever anyone strenuously objects to a vote I make with such generic summaries as “you made a poor vote”, or “you have poor logic” it makes me think that there wasn’t anything that specific you could really point out, but you have to hate on the vote anyway - because it’s critical of you.

Holy fuck you are beyond reason. The argument that they will be framed anyway is so incredibly strong that I don't know how to win as the other side at all when the opponent brings that up. I used the source of Aussie Plea Negotiations to explain that the bargaining only begins after they have you cornered from so many angles already that you're going to be the lead suspect and found guilty regardless.

Your sources did not support any of your conclusions. The first was delayed to psychopathy which was entirely irrelevant to the contention. The second was supporting the idea that cartels hurt snitches, which you then used to support a conclusion - but didn’t support the conclusion itself and the third (which you posted twice) gives some background information on PB but does not support your argued conclusion that - people would be framed otherwise, that you need PB to catch criminals, and that people would otherwise be framed. None directly support your conclusion. Pros main position is that it leads to the innocent pleading guilty, and he provided direct evidence of that in sources. They support his position much better than yours as a result.

If you had paid a little more attention to my RFD, you would have noticed what I was talking about when I was looking at the list. I was specifically looking for rebuttal points to the first argument about innocent people - one of your points I felt was a direct rebuttal, the other points included claiming people would be framed anyway, which if you read the whole RFD I covered - and mostly rejected as incredibly weak - on its own, and two points about the effect in the guilty. So only one of them - as I pointed out - was directly relevant to the point I was discussin at the time.

You mixes up a lot of your rebuttals for multiple points with your argument in multiple places - while there was somewhat of a good reason for doing so, it lead to a stilted and unstructured argument (which is what I was also pointing out), and made it hard to judge this debate in a linear fashion.

All the relevant points on your list were covered elsewhere in the RFD - all of which, if you spent more time reading it rather than accusing me of having poor comprehension - you would have noticed.

My sources did support me significantly and my arguments all mattered. You told me that only one of my four steps in explaining why PB makes the framed end up in a worse situation and encourages then to do more to cover it up by framing someone else instead of themselves, was disgustingly poor effort and indicative of poor logic and reading comprehension skills. Don't fucking talk down to me like you know where my argument went right or wrong, you couldn't even follow it properly.

No, your argument didn’t “go over my head”. I point out what was strong and what was weak, and feel I summarized your points fairly consistently.

You posted 3 sources, and none of the really supported pretty much your key main contentions you made. If you think I misrepresent or misunderstood the point you were making, go ahead. I will say a substantial bulk of your arguments were absolutely unnecessary, added nothing to the strength of your argument, and appeared at best tangental to the resolution -

Your sources backed up the facts, you then used those facts to draw a conclusion. Pros main sources in the first round backed up the conclusions he was drawing. That key distinction means his sources helped make his argument much stronger, while yours did not.

If you had posted links about how plea bargains had helped take down major criminal gangs, then I would have probably have awarded sources either to you or as a tie for that reason a but you didn’t.

I don't respect the RFD at all. My case simply went over your head. My sources we're used just as good as his which were merely copy and paste excuses. I provided irrefutable lines of logic about negotiating position and turns pros case against itself.

Yeah. That's always been my downfall. I get into too many debates at once.

To start with, don’t do multiple debates at the same time. You obviously didn’t have time to really dig into things, it probably cost you both these two last debates.

Thanks so much for your feedback and a great RFD!! I'd definitely love to improve my debate skills.

Feel free to ask questions for any clarification or information for future improvement.

It would incite people to frame the innocent. I found this very difficult to disentangle what con was attempting to argue here: it was spread over multiple posts. In my view con offers very little in the way of actual justification here, and seems to be more opinion than anything else.

While I feel pro offered no direct rebuttal: I can’t score this for con either.

From all of this added up, I have to award arguments to con. To summarize:

- the benefit con presented to plea bargaining was not refuted
- The direct blame of Plea Bargains (rather than just as an element of the problem) was not established.

Pro was a victim of the contention here, and the lack of real substantive rebuttal in two rounds. If the contention was “reform” or “is problematic” rather than “abolish”, his arguments would have been weighted more strongly. Burden of proof was shared, but what you needed to prove was shifted.

Sources: Pro. Pro underpinned his primary points with factual sources that made it far harder for con to attack pro from a factual basis, as a result, pros sources directly underpinned his position. Con needed to establish more factual evidence for some of his claims, and the lack of these made his position weaker as a result.

This is a good initial point, but has some fundamental problems for me: specifically con does not provide a good justification of why fear of death due to powerful cartels is a problem for informants, but not for PB, so in my view this substantially weakens this arguments.

Pros counter to this point was with data indicating PB informants (from his source) are a major source of wrongful convictions, this obviously adds weight into his wrongful conviction argument in a roundabout way, but doesn’t address pros claim, nor does it offer plausible alternatives to PB for hardened criminals.

As a result, I felt that the core of this primary argument is left mostly unrefuted. I found this argument to be somewhat weak however as mentioned: con needed to come up with examples of big criminals caught with PB, and all pro has to do was do the reverse. I was a little disappointed neither side did.

Con 1.5: 0.5

The guilty have no reason to plead guilty.

This was a very short and weak argument. Con points out that if there is no plea bargain, there is no incentive for anyone not to go through a major trial. Con didn’t argue or set up what benefit this gave, or why this is preferable. As a result, even thought this wasn’t directly refuted by pro, I can’t score this very strongly.

Con: 1.75: pro: 0.5

Saying this, pro did not really offer any substantial analysis here. Offering a very narrow set of conditions that non PB systems fulfill as well as PB conditions. His argument and source does show that in Alaska, they CJS hasn’t fallen apart, and there are some differences, but I do not feel pro justifies the claim that PBS are unnecessary with the arguments presented. Given the limited subset, I felt even the argument that non-PBS were “better”, was limited and therefore also weak as a result.

Pro needed to have spent more time justifying the perceived benefits and ensuring that all of them are unaffected without PB, I think this may have been pros intent with this argument, but this didn’t appear clear.

Importantly the unnecessary argument was eroded by cons argument about major criminals, this wasn’t fully rebutted, and in my view, presented a clear case that PBS are necessary. Thus, I have to award this point to con on rebuttal.

Con 1:0.5

It’s the only way to catch big criminals.

Cons primary opponent in this debate was his own argument and logical style, which I felt massively detracted from my ability as a voter to understand the core of his argument. His position was frequently muddled by unnecessary explanation and irrelevant information, and to me this meant that he had both himself and pro as debate opponents.

Cons key point in his opening argument, is that law enforcement needs plea bargains in order to catch the really bad criminals. That informants don’t work (as they get killed).

Con argues that pro has failed to establish that PB is the reason the innocent pled guilty, which I reject as an argument- as i feel pro did a good job in outlining why this is the case originally.

So, I felt pros position had key flaws here, but con did not fully capitalize on this weakness with more than a throwaway line. I can’t give a full point, but will give half to pro as a result.

Pro 0.5-0.

PB is Unnecessary.

Pros position is that PBs are unnecessary. He supports this by claiming that if prosecuters can’t prove a defendant guilty at a trial they shouldn’t be using a PB.

While this seems reasonable, in my view, pro needs to establish that it is the case that most PBs are made because prosecutors can’t prove the defendant guilty, vs for other reasons (time, resources, etc). He doesn’t do this, with this being a gaping structural flaw in this argument.

Cons primary argument and objection, is how plea bargaining has usage other than simply to allow prosecution of those who they don’t have enough evidence to convict in court. Cons response here, in my view: refuted this point in essence by showing that this wasn’t the case.

Pro argued in addition that when removing PBs, it made police investigations better, and improved disposition time citing an example of an Alaska ban - and claiming (with no citation) that the same is true elsewhere.

I actually thought this was the most compelling of pros arguments - but he did not spend any significant time on it.

Arguments:

Perversion of Justice.

Pros argument is almost self explanatory. Plea bargains allow the innocent to be unfairly punished, and criminals to have unfair reduction in punishments. I felt these claims were fairly well supported by the sources pro provided.

My main issue with this argument, is that I felt pro needed to establish that the issue was with the plea bargain itself - rather than prosecutors usage of them: pro mentions PBs in relation to multiple facets of the criminal justice system but fails to adequately separate cause - which weakens his position. Con points this out with a minimal rebuttal - which casts substantial doubt on this part of the argument, but due to brevity I did not consider a full rebuttal

Pro undermines his case with the second part: he muddies the water between guilt and innocence (which is a fair argument), and then presents statistics he claims applies to the guilty. This somewhat erodes his second point, which is further muddied as he doesn’t provide a justification of causation rather correlation. How much does the conciliatory admission of guilt vs not accepting their actions play into this?

As a result I found pros first argument lacking some key ingredients to make it particularly compelling.

Con, offered little in the way of rebuttal here. (I consider the turning of this on its head as a new argument - not a rebuttal). The primary response that I felt was offered to rebutt this was essentially cons argument that “it’s not like prosecutors are going to view them as innocent, they’ll still be prosecuted”. Out of the list of 4 items con presents, this is the only example that is obviously relevant - the others appear laboured and to me, I’m not sure how they play in. In this case, I feel cons argument fundamentally ignored much of pros case that the availability of PBs causes prosecuters and police to be lazy and charge people that they wouldn’t necessarily prioritize in trial.

It's done.

IQ isn't the same as output. You didn't grasp me at all in a couple of debate you've voted (magicaintreal and death23 enemy debates are highlights of this but even when you've voted for me you have sometimes not fully grasped my case) but you are unbiased overall and quality in the depth you justify votes with which is always welcome.

I'll add it to my favorites.

“Just stop this low Iq voter cult. Pass a quiz to vote please.”

- RationalMadman about Ramshutu.

Do follow this, brethren. I believe this to interest you and you to be a great voter overall if I have tagged you.

You will realise that yours is later on. You have first a set of irrational absolutes in morality and then from there you will point out my inconsistency to match your values/morals. ;)

Interesting opening. It's a shame your syllogism is woefully invalid.

I’m fine with that

No matter how I make a case here, it is going to directly rebuke points in your case. The case for please bargaining is naturally, when spoken second, going to directly rebut a speech/case for the abolition of plea bargaining.