Friday, December 14, 2012

Excellent piece in USA Today on snitching

By Brad Heath.  Almost one out of every eight federal prisoners have had their sentence reduced for cooperation.  That's a huge number.  And here's an interesting graphic on how that breaks down:

at

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:29 AM

    Nobody talks...MOST people walk....and therein LIES the problem.

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  2. Bob Becerra2:55 PM

    A result of the construct of the Federal Guidelines and Sec. 5K1.1 and Rule 35(b), which encourage snitching and provide the government with unfair advantages.

    Bring back old Rule 35(c) from the pre-guidelines days where the defendant could move to reduce his own sentence within 120 days of sentencing and level the playing field....

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  3. Anonymous4:39 PM

    Only a defense lawyer believes that 12.5% is a huge number of defendants cooperating. Frankly, I see it as quite paltry.

    I think it shows that most defendants fail to see the error in the ways and come forward to fight crime and accept responsibility for their actions.

    Shouldn't the individuals who cause the crime bear some of the responsibility of helping to fight it, but obviously very few do. It's actually a sad statistic and reveals much about those in the criminal justice system.

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