> The majority of cases don’t go to trial because the majority of cases are hopeless for the defendants.
...but are the lion's share of these hopeless on the basis of the evidence, combined with a fair process and a just, civically-informed legal framework?
A person who is searched pursuant to a prompted canine indication, and found to be in possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine has a "hopeless" case, but they have committed no offense to society that I can recognize, and their inclination to plea to a lesser charge means that the particulars of the search will never be heard by a jurist.
> Law-abiding citizens wouldn’t have a 50% recidivism rate.
This seems like a testable hypothesis, albeit only after a successful completion of the abolitionist movement. I'll bet that, in a society focused on restorative justice and no dependence on a slave economy dressed up as incarceration, that nobody will have a 50% recidivism rate.
> While it’s admirable to push back against the state, not all defendants earn our sympathy in their plight.
Agreed, of course. But there's no justice in taking even the worst in society forcing them to be laborers to make Starbucks packaging. Let's remove the incentive structure first, and decide how to distribute our sympathies second.