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

Sat Nov 8 19:50:29 PST 2003

go for it
--

--------- Original Message ---------

DATE: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 17:46:08 
From: "Gentry Lange" <g at art13.com>
To: <sheelanagig at juno.com>, <seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org>
Cc: 

>Approved.
>
>Gentry
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: seattle-editorial-bounces at lists.indymedia.org
>[mailto:seattle-editorial-bounces at lists.indymedia.org]On Behalf Of
>sheelanagig at juno.com
>Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 9:18 AM
>To: seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
>Subject: [Seattle-editorial] Life for Confession? The Ridgway Plea
>Bargain
>
>
>Proposed article -
>
>
>SUMMARY -
>
><P>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." 
>
>*******************************************************
><P>Life for Confessions? The Ridgway Plea Bargain 
><BR>by Kirsten Anderberg Copyright 2003
>
><P>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? 
>
><P>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?
>
><P>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. 
>
><P>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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