> The reality is that most people who become subject to criminal prosecution are guilty. The reason can often be attributed to overbroad laws, but that still means you are guilty and will likely lose your criminal case.
Let's unpack this.
The first assertion is that most people who get prosecuted are guilty. This is assuming the conclusion -- the whole question is whether the system is getting it wrong. The presence of convictions can't be used to prove the absence of false convictions. The presence of more convictions increases the probability of more false convictions. And if we had a reliable way to know the real truth then none of this would be a problem to begin with.
The second is the implication that they're all guilty because there are so many overbroad laws that actually everybody is guilty. But that's just a description of a mechanism by which the system convicts "innocent people", i.e. ordinary people who never had any intention of committing a crime. Making so many things illegal that following every law is beyond human ability and anyone can be convicted at the government's discretion is the thing people are objecting to.
I'm agreeing with the comment you originally responded to about the statistic being misleading because it is an almost self-evident truth that prosecutors ultimately expend their limited resources on the cases they are most sure of the defendant's culpability based on the evidence.
You countered about plea deals being coercive because the plea deal is generally much lower than the maximum or even average sentence of people who go on to be found guilty and ultimately sentenced after a trial on the merits.
I then countered that people who ultimately "become subject" are generally guilty and therefore the coerciveness, if you accept it as such, doesn't really matter.
I'll concede two things: 1. "become subject" is doing a lot of work there. What I meant is people who the state ultimately chooses to prosecute. There are plenty of people who are arrested and ultimately not charged for various reasons. So my assertion is really that if the state ultimately chooses to proceed with prosecuting someone, they have some evidence that a crime has happened and that you are connected to it in some way that implies some degree of culpability. 2. My definition of "the system" is just the adversarial trial of evidence in front of an adjudicator. I would not include the laws or legislative system in that, although it is obviously related and we both hate that.
So my whole point is really to say that because of overbroad laws, it really is more likely than not that a prosecutor can find a law for which there is evidence that you are guilty of breaking it. Hence, plea deals existing or not, you would have been found guilty in court, and therefore my assertion from personal experience is that most people who the state ultimately chooses to prosecute are guilty and plea deals are not the terrible coercive force on innocent people you claim it is.