In the abstract, this is not crazy. The 6th Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel, for example, only creates a remedy for defendants who are not obviously guilty - it's not enough that your lawyer slept through your trial; he also needed to have failed to introduce or investigate exculpatory evidence. The exclusionary rule (that says evidence collected by the government in contravention of a defendant's 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures) is applied to parties who are factually guilty, but only because that's the only way to ensure that the innocent will be protected as well. I'd like for all of these protections to be more robust, but the fact of the matter is, under current Constitutional law, you really DO give up a lot of your rights by pleading guilty.
It's just...Alito is obviously wrong. Because of facts. That's the big problem.
And...I do have faith in humanity. When my mother grew up in Arkansas, she went to a segregated school. Our current legal system replaced the older legal system of trial by combat. People used to wear bell bottoms on purpose. We have come a long way. I'm not one of those silver lining guys, and I don't believe life is just getting inexorably better all the time. There are setbacks! (See: Trump, Donald.) But god damn. We are going in the right direction. I mean, within a year we're going to have HD virtual reality pornos. What more evidence do you need than that?
