Racial, economic disparities a reason criminal suspects don’t go to trial, KY attorney says

Jury trials in criminal cases are rare in Kentucky: fewer than 10% of criminal cases across the state are resolved in a trial.

Defendants often plead guilty instead, agreeing to be convicted in exchange for possibly reducing prison time and softening the financial blow of paying a lawyer and spending weeks, months or years in a county jail while waiting to face a jury of their peers.

There are many reasons for defendants to see a guilty plea as a good way to resolve a criminal case against them, but for one Lexington criminal defense attorney, racial and economic disparities are among the most significant.

Daniel Whitley, a defense attorney in Lexington, said suspects are more likely to accept plea bargains because of factors stacked against them, like what the makeup of the jury in their case may look like, or financial impacts that keep them from being able to pay their bond. This largely impacts indigent and minority defendants, Whitley said.

When advising a minority client, Whitley often tells them they’re unlikely to get a jury of their peers.

“Your jury pool is going to be all kinds of people with different views that look at you like a threat,” Whitley said. “The commonwealth is going to use their kind of language to make you out to be a threat. Now you have people who are afraid of the jury system pleading guilty to avoid potentially that fear of the unknown. The system should never be based on that.”

The Fayette Commonwealth Attorney’s Office has contended that its prosecutors do not try to just push cases through the system; Commonwealth’s Attorney Kimberly Baird told the Herald-Leader “we don’t pressure anyone into a guilty plea.”

Still, concerns of how a trial would play out and financial limitations can motivate guilty pleas, defense attorneys said.

Defendants with particularly high bond amounts may be more likely to plead guilty to avoid staying in jail an indefinite amount of time while their case moves through the courts, Whitley said. It’s an issue that’s especially prevalent in Kentucky, where about 16.5% of residents reported living under the poverty line in the 2020 U.S. Census. The national average of residents under the poverty line is 11.6%, according to the Department of Public Advocacy.

Those facing criminal charges are often less wealthy: a 2015 study by the Prison Policy Initiative found that people who get locked up have an average income 41% lower than people who don’t.

For people who can afford to pay bail, even for especially violent crimes, bond is often not an issue. Damon Preston, Kentucky’s public advocate, says financial limitations leave people facing minor offenses in jail while others facing more serious crimes get to go home.

“That has nothing to do with the threat of what they did or whose offense was worse,” Preston said. “A thousand-dollar bail for one equals release and a thousand-dollar bail for another means you stay in jail. I think that should never be the case.”

Preston’s predecessor, Ed Monahan, served as the state’s public advocate for nine years. He said in a podcast interview with Public Defenseless that Kentucky needed better education of the value of public defense. He noted that the court system needs to work towards addressing the overlap with the criminal legal system and social issues that contribute to defendants’ lives.

“There are a lot of public defenders who say it is my job in the courtroom for the client, and all of this collateral stuff is not my job. But the value of public defense is changing in this nation, more to a model of, we are here to help the client,” Monahan said. “And the client in the criminal justice system that we represent has legal issues, but also has social issues.

“We have an opportunity to be of higher value to the criminal justice system, to the community that finances it by representing the whole client.”

This story was originally published November 16, 2023 at 10:00 AM.