Comment Re:You Disgust Me (Score 1) 382
Yes, a prosecutor can allow easy convictions to walk - but just like a cop who gives warnings instead of tickets, they will have a very short career.
Prosecutors are often gauged by the number of convictions that they have attained in their career and their conviction rate. This means that prosecutors are highly motivated to take easy to prove convictions to pump up their number and conviction rate while offering significantly reduced charges in a plea bargain to any case where a conviction would be hard to attain (e.g. Dropping statutory rape (felony) to corruption of a minor (misdemeanor).)
Finally, the high focus on conviction rates and the high cost of jury trials means that if the prosecutor wants to convict you for 4 specific charges, they will charge you with the 4 they know they can find you guilty on in court – then another 12+ charges that are unlikely to stick but possibly related to attain an astronomical penalty. The other effect is that if the case would ever go to court, the defense would have to address each charge significantly raising the cost. The prosecutor does NOT want the case to go to court – the jury is often very unpredictable and unreasonable their expectations of what constitute sufficient proof.
Once the prosecutor feels that they have a sufficiently terrifying case – even if only 10% of the charges are legitimate – they offer a plea deal for the charges they really want to convict on. If a plea deal is rejected, the prosecutor may either offer a better deal or a bigger list of charges. In the US, over 90% of criminal cases are settled via a plea deal - feel free to verify this claim.