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b'The right to a trial by jury is enshrined into the constitution, yet increasingly over the last few decades, trials have become a vanishing feature of the criminal justice system.\\n\\nUniversity of North Carolina law professor Carissa Hessick recently wrote the book, Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining Is a Bad Deal.\\n\\nWhile there are positive aspects of the plea bargain \\u2013 efficiency in the system and reduced punishment, overall 97 to 98 percent of all cases end not with a jury verdict but with an agreement between prosecutor and defense \\u2013 an agreement that is often negotiated under unfavorable and unequal terms.\\n\\nAs Hessick points out, \\u201cInstead of protecting defendants\\u2019 right to have their guilt or innocence decided by their peers, judges routinely punish defendants for exercising that right.\\u201d\\n\\nSpecifically, \\u201cjudges regularly impose longer sentences on those defendants who insist on going to trial than on those defendants who plead guilty.\\u201d\\n\\n A 2018 report shows that, \\u201con average, defendants who insist on a trial receive sentences three times longer than those of defendants who plead guilty.\\u201d\\n\\nThis practice is so common that it even has a name: the \\u201ctrial penalty.\\u201d\\n\\nListen as Everyday Injustice talks with Professor Hessick about why this arrangement is detrimental to the system including the incentive for innocent people to plead guilty to crimes that they did not commit rather than risk the longer trial penalty.'