The consequences for those who choose to exercise their Sixth Amendment right to a trial in this system are significant. The average federal drug sentence is three times longer for those who go to trial than for those who plead guilty, at 5 years and 4 months for guilty pleas, and 16 years after trial, the report found:
Prosecutors who spoke anonymously to Human Rights Watch admitted that they effectively punish those who exercise their constitutional right to a trial. “It’s built into the DNA of prosecutors, even well-meaning prosecutors do it,” one Assistant U.S. Attorney said. “[We] penalize a defendant for the audacity of going to trial.”
“We weren’t trained to think about the lowest sentence that serves the goals of punishment,” said a former U.S. Attorney.
Another even said, “The public simply does not realize how many low-level guys are in [federal] prison.… We lock up the lowest fruit in drug conspiracies. I once asked another US Attorney with 30 years as a prosecutor how many times he’d put a major drug player in prison. He said he could count them on one hand.”