This is the Kader Daily Podcast for Tuesday, February 23rd, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

A tiny fraction of criminal charges are resolved at trial that has implications for the process of

criminal justice. The Vanishing Trial is a film produced by families against

mandatory minimums. I spoke with Kevin Ring of Fam about about the vanishing trial and what they hope to

accomplish by detailing what it means for defendants to never get their day in

court. Yeah the vanishing trials a documentary we made last year because we wanted to bring attention to the fact that

mandatory minimums are contributing to a system where less than 3% of people today, 3% of defendants,

exercise their constitutional right to trial.

So for people who aren't familiar with it, the trial penalty is the difference you get if you take a plea and cooperate with the government,

the sentence you can get, versus the sentence you'll get if you assert your constitutional

right to trial and lose at that trial.

Usually the difference is a matter of years and sometimes decades.

And the problem with that is if you're threatened with 20, 30 years in prison, you're going to be more likely to give up your constitutional right to trial.

And that's what we're seeing.

And the reason that happens is because mandatory sentences allow the prosecutor to not

only threaten you with a long sentence, but then to carry out that threat. Because if you get

convicted of a crime that carries a mandatory sentence, the judge has no discretion.

So this film, instead of just talking about it, we show you four instances where the trial penalty was applied and what that did to these people, their families, to justice,

what the result was.

And in those stories, you see how unfair it is.

So when criminal defense lawyers are facing this problem, obviously they sort of build all of

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