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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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As other posted pointed out, you can't make a quantitative pronouncement about a national system that deals with millions of defendants with just two cases. The theory that black defendants are getting special treatment by the criminal justice system is laughable by national statistics. It also definitely does not match my own caseload even though I'm in a super lefty jurisdiction though my own cases are far from representative (I tend to disproportionately get firearm cases and clients with "difficult" personalities). If I had to conjure up the "perfect" defendant, the biggest decisive factor by a mile would be a clean criminal history. Every other trait is basically noise.

Clean criminal history because you think juries take that into account directly (are they always allowed to know?) or because such people behave differently in court from repeat criminals?

What juries think is almost irrelevant since only a tiny sliver of cases make it to trial (~2-5%). Criminal history matters because it's the overriding factor prosecutors decide on what to charge and how judge decide on sentencing. People with no record tend to get a lot of leeway for their first crime, with almost everyone giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming it was a freak accident. For repeat offenders it's a lot of "here we go again".