[Seattle-editorial] Life for Confession? The Ridgway Plea Bargain

Sat Nov 8 17:46:08 PST 2003

Approved.

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Subject: [Seattle-editorial] Life for Confession? The Ridgway Plea
Bargain

Proposed article -

SUMMARY -

The judge in the Ridgway case asked Ridgway if he was entering into
this plea bargain of free will. Ridgway said "yes." 
The judge then asked if anyone had coerced or threatened Ridgway to make
him accept the plea bargain, and Ridgway answered "no." Yet he was
threatened with loss of his life, with the death penalty. HIS LIFE WAS
THREATENED by prosecutors, and if he agreed to the plea bargain, his life
was not threatened any longer. Additionally, the Green River Task Force
admits to interrogating him up to 14 hours a day for months. The Task
Force also said that "getting him to confess was hardest of all."

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Life for Confessions? The Ridgway Plea Bargain 
 by Kirsten Anderberg Copyright 2003

I am no legal analyst. I am just a person examining the local news.
But I have a problem with the American criminal justice system's tactics.
As I watched the television coverage of the courtroom which held Gary L.
Ridgway during his confession and plea bargain this week, I had troubles
with the implications of some of the court's questioning of Ridgway. To
accept a plea bargain, the court does a little song and dance where it
has the defendant say out loud that s/he agrees to waive all rights to an
appeal or any revisiting of the issue, that the defendant enters into the
plea bargain of free will, and that the defendant understands what s/he
just agreed to. I call it a song and dance because many people who fall
victim to an underfunded public defender system, and are bullied by
threats of inflated criminal charges from the prosecutor, plead guilty to
crimes, crimes they never committed, strictly out of fear of getting lost
in the justice system, not out of truth and justice. The disproportionate
rate of black males incarcerated is a good place to start looking for
these "free will" plea bargains gone awry. I also find it interesting
that low-income defendants, people who have to accept court-appointed
attorneys or public defenders, agree to plea bargains at overwhelming
rates, compared to defendants who hire private attorneys. I think it is
shameful that prosecutors rely on the plea bargain system in the way they
do. I still think all plea bargained guilty pleas are suspect, since none
of them are truly made of free will. Virtually all of them are made under
duress, under threats by the prosecutor against their freedom and
sometimes their lives, how is that free will? No contract that involved
money would be allowed to stand under those conditions. Contracts require
an arm's length bargaining. Plea bargains are lacking an arm's length
bargaining. Aren't human lives as important as business and money in
contracts?

The judge in the Ridgway case asked Ridgway if he was entering into
this plea bargain of free will. Ridgway said "yes." 
The judge then asked if anyone had coerced or threatened Ridgway to make
him accept the plea bargain, and Ridgway answered "no." Yet I can see
that is not completely true. First of all, he was threatened with loss of
his life, with the death penalty. HIS LIFE WAS THREATENED by prosecutors,
and if he agreed to the plea bargain, his life was not threatened any
longer. Additionally, the Green River Task Force admits to interrogating
him up to 14 hours a day for months. The Task Force also said that
"getting him to confess was hardest of all." And they said it was "a game
of psychology and control." So, let me review this. The Green River Task
Force is on television saying it interrogated Ridgway up to 14 hours a
day, had a really hard time getting him to confess, and played
psychological control games on him, and then a judge ACCEPTS him saying
he was not coerced into the plea bargained confession? I would say LOGIC
argues that he was actually coerced by the Green River Task Force and
prosecutors, he was told he would be sentenced to death, most probably,
or he could agree to a confession and a plea bargain to save his life.
How on earth is that not coersion and threats?

I am not saying that Ridgway is innocent, and I am not saying I have
all the remedies for the rotting American criminal justice system. It is
sad that one of the most popular tactics prosecutors use to get a guilty
plea, a tactic used on a mass scale, is plea bargaining. Plea bargains
are inherently borne of coersion and threats. Threats of puffed-up
criminal charges, threats of public defenders that are too busy to even
speak with frightened defendants before the day of hearings, a scary
system that swallows a defendant when s/he is criminally charged, a "game
of psychology and control," to use the words of the Green River Task
Force, is used whether you committed the crime or not, as a suspect! I
doubt Ridgway would have confessed to those crimes if he was not offered
a "bargain" where he plead what the prosecutors asked for, and in return,
they spared his life. The Green River Murderer was doomed. Getting off
with life in prison, not death, was worth any confession, definitely.
But, his case is a good example of how meaningless the words recited in
courtrooms across the nation are when it comes to free will and plea
bargains.

The police themselves said they interrogated Gary Ridgway for up to 14
hours a day for months. What would you do under those conditions? They
bragged that it was really hard to wrangle a confession out of him, and
that they played games of mind control with him. So how does that mesh
with Ridgway's "free will" guilty plea? I understand it is a neat and
tidy way to end this, but it is not really an honest, uncohersed
confession by any stretch. It is a BARGAINED guilty plea, and I still
think this system is flawed, even if it ends up with the desired result.
Maybe no one cares about this, since Ridgway killed enough women to
warrant no sympathy regarding a fair criminal processing. Maybe what I
would consider light torture, 14 hours a day of questioning by cops, does
not matter, since it was used on Ridgway, and he deserves anything he
gets. So we throw out all the rules in consensus on really bad people?
Could you or I be jailed as a suspect, and then be legally questioned for
14 hours a day, for months, in Tacoma, Wa., with cop mind games, getting
a confession out of you that was "hard" to get? Did Ridgway have the
option of refusing the 14 hours of questioning a day? What precedence
does that set? The end result is he is in jail for life, so it is fine.
But the process that put him there is flawed, in my opinion, even if it
was on a case as heinous as the Green River Murder case.

*************************************************************************
*********************
For near-daily political ramblings from Kirsten, visit her blog at
www.kanderberg.blogspot.com 
or go to her writing website at www.kirstenanderberg.com

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