On TV every defendant gets a trial. But in real life, trials are rare.

For many, the jury trial represents the cornerstone of criminal justice itself: a truth-seeking mission that allows a person to be judged by a panel of peers. But trials have become rare. Around 97 percent of all criminal cases don't go to trial but instead end in guilty pleas, most of them the result of a bargaining process driven by prosecutors with the power to coerce defendants into giving up their right to a trial.

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