This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, March 14th, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

What if everyone charged with a crime refused to take a plea deal. The results might effectively shut down the

justice system since 90% of criminal charges do not go to trial. Tim Lynch, the director

of the Cato Institute's project on Criminal Justice offers his thoughts.

The New York Times reported on this, I guess sort of an interesting idea for a protest, which is don't take the plea for people

accused of crimes to simply clog the court system because most criminal cases don't go to trial.

What do you think of that?

Right, it's Ohio law professor, Michelle Alexander,

makes the point that more than 90% of the criminal cases in the United States do not go to trial.

They're resolved through plea bargains.

So she came up with this thought experiment of what if people

refused to deal with the prosecutors and insisted on their right to go to trial? Wouldn't

this shake up the system and she uses the phrase

crash the system and there's no doubt about it it would there's a very good reason

why so many cases don't go to trial.

The system is overwhelmed right now, especially because of the drug war.

They do not have the resources to put on so many trials.

And that's why the government uses its power,

its power to charge people and to threaten people with jail time unless they surrender their right to a jury trial.

So there's a lot of that threatening going on

week to week in our criminal justice system.

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