>3. The government needs to cover the expenses for the defense, limited to the amount spent on the prosecution. (this doesn't seem politically palatable, but it needs to be addressed somehow)

I like the idea of this, the thing to watch out for is going to be accounting shenanigans. For example, if you account for resources the prosecutor uses but not the police, they'll just arrange it so that all the expensive legwork is done under the auspices of law enforcement and on paper all the prosecutor's office does is type it up and file the paperwork.

1. Minimum plea bargain cannot be less than half of maximum? What about crimes where the sentencing guidelines are already spanning 2x? That would mean you could get a lighter sentence by going to trial than the minimum plea.

Of course you can get a lighter sentence by going to trial - by being acquitted.

And no, it would not work that way, because if you had an open and shut case with a plausible sentence of 20 years, prosecutors wouldn't or at least shouldn't be offering plea bargains of under 10 years.

I saw an argument recently, that most of the problem has been caused by the fact that sentencing has been pulled out of the hands of the judiciary (though mandatory minimums etc). Judicial discretion in sentencing was once a check on this sort of thing.

That's not how criminal procedure works.

Pursuant to constitutional law, you are required to start with the charges first, so the defendant knows what they are being accused of and can prepare a defense.

In some but not all jurisdictions, prosecutors may offer "plea bargains" that reduce the sentence, or reduce or drop some of the charges, in lieu of proceeding to trial. In some jurisdictions (i.e., large portions of Texas), there are no plea bargains; you always go to trial.

Maximum sentence is set by law, as a matter of constitutional rights. Thus, your solution would simply restrict plea bargains to not being any shorter than 1/2 of the maximum sentence (in Aaron's case, 16 years).

Making the counts non-severable is a legal and constitutional impossibility. Double jeopardy requires the prosecutor to charge you with all possible crimes arising from a single act (or intertwined set of acts) in the same criminal proceedings. Once those criminal proceedings have been adjudicated (i.e., a guilty plea, a conviction, a not-guilty verdict, or charges dismissed with prejudice), the prosecutor cannot ever charge you again for any other crimes arising from that act. Your solution would either require them to choose which charges to pursue and which charges to drop forever. That's fine in cases like Aaron's, but that's not something you want when you're dealing with a rapist or a murderer (i.e, cases far more common than Aaron's).

Finally, the last suggestion, is not simply politically unpalatable, it is economically impossible. Most criminals are actually guilty; making the prosecution pay for every defense would increase the costs of the criminal justice system 1000fold. A better solution: make the prosecution pay the defense costs where (a) a defendant that is found not guilty or actually innocent, (b) a hung jury trial, if the prosecution does not refile, or (c) the prosecution drops charges before trial. This would accomplish what you want in a realistic manner (and is actually already the law in some jurisdictions).

> your solution would simply restrict plea bargains to not being any shorter than 1/2 of the maximum sentence (in Aaron's case, 16 years)

No, I phrased it the way I did for a reason. A prosecutor who does not think that the crime is serious enough to warrant 16 years can still offer a lower plea bargain. In Aaron's case, they may have offered 1 year in jail, making it so that by asserting his right to trial, he would be doubling his sentence to 2 years in the worst case.

> Your solution would either require them to choose which charges to pursue and which charges to drop forever. That's fine in cases like Aaron's, but that's not something you want when you're dealing with a rapist or a murderer.

Of course I know about double jeopardy. They have to choose which charges to pursue and which to drop forever sometime. The problem as it stands is that charges are piled on in a shotgun approach, making it very hard for the defendant to concentrate on what they're actually fighting, and ballooning court costs. And shouldn't rapists and murders be getting charged with rape and murder, respectively? We certainly don't want punishment of rapists and murderers to rely on whether they also happened to be disturbing the peace at the time. And yeah, I'll give you that all-or-nothing is a bit harsh, which is why I said something else about being acquitted on the majority of counts would result in complete acquittal. Create a mechanism so that the prosecution wants to make pretty sure you're guilty of something before accusing you of it.

> Most criminals are actually guilty; making the prosecution pay for every defense would increase the costs of the criminal justice system 1000fold

So then in the name of economics, guilty criminals don't actually have a right to a trial? It would still be in an obviously-guilty defendants interest to take a half-sentence plea bargain and avoid trial. I do see it being more palatable if it only applies to non-guilty outcomes, but with the following caveats: limits increased to 2x what the prosecution spends, and the money is loaned out by the government as the case progresses and is then owed by the defendant in the event of a guilty verdict. Sorry, as you should know, justice costs money.

I don't think you've looked at what happens when rules like only 1/2 sentence plea bargains get implemented. Aaron definitely would have been looking at 17.5 or whatever as a plea. Look at the change to CA tax code. They didn't give refunds to the out of staters, they're going after in staters. When people demand arbitrary equality, the result is not turning the bad scenario into a good one. It's turning the good scenario into a bad one.

I see what you're saying, especially as a general ask-and-ye-shall-receive rule, but something determines what the statutory maximums are even if it takes a while for that feedback to occur (average sentences being too short due to prosecutor laziness, jail overcrowding, general outrage, etc). It would also have shattered the illusions of those who condemned Aaron's actions but thought he would end up with a slap on the wrist.