This quote was pretty powerful, for me:

"In this hypothetical scenario, those 10 years in prison would, practically speaking, have consisted of six months for his original crime (the sentence Ortiz actually thought he deserved) plus a nine-and-a-half-year prison term for exercising his constitutional right to a trial."

Plea bargains are weird when used as a weapon to intimidate someone.

There's something vaguely similar with people (at least in the UK) wrongly convicted and sent to prison. To qualify for early release they have to atone for their crime, which means accepting guilt and feeling remorse. But you cannot feel guilt nor remorse for a crime which you did not commit, and so they don't get early release. "Say you did it; do the time; you'll be out soon enough."

See also Japanese police and courts - suspects are held for much longer than in the UK; they're bullied and intimidated; and once things go to trial there's a > 90% conviction rate.

Here's a 24 minute BBC radio documentary about forced confession in Japan:

(http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/docarchive/...)

Sometimes they have multiple confessors to a single crime.

Makes a very good point. And it is exactly the same reason why torture is illegal: a sufficiently scary threat will make anybody confess of anything.

The plea system is institutionalized torture.

Coincidentally, Aaron Swartz himself describes exactly his prosecutor's behavior:

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/semmelweis

This is a pretty good paper comparing United States plea bargaining to Germany.

http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

Has the plea bargaining system ever been challenged in court?