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From the first paragraph:

> A 16-year-old male from Ottawa, Canada has been arrested for allegedly making at least 30 fraudulent calls to emergency services across North America over the past few months.

Emphasis mine.

I would agree with you were the "allegedly" missing, and if instead of "arrested for", it said "convicted of".



In the US allegedly or not, is besides the point. Everyone confesses and 'takes the deal', guilty or not.

"For 2011, the US Department of Justice reported a 93% conviction rate." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate


The high rate of convictions for US Attorneys vis a vis state and local prosecutors stems from the higher level of prosecutorial discretion they enjoy. Basically US Attorneys only prosecute slam dunks. From the same source, you'll not that Florida for instance only has a 59% conviction rate.


As others have pointed out, it's hard to make any conclusions from a high conviction rate.

Prosecutors are only supposed to prosecute people if they think the person really did it, and if they think they can convince a jury.

Prosecutors aren't supposed to prosecute "just to find out what happens."


Is that a sign of innocent people pleading guilty or a sign of an efficient judicial system? Got any stats to back up your inference that there are significant amounts of innocent people just pleading guilty? I'm not really sure what the point of your post was, but I don't have the ability to vote it down as irrelevant.


That doesn't have ANYTHING tto do with the grandparent's comment.




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