But some questions a woman I know posed during a phone conversation one recent evening gave me pause: "What would happen if we organized thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people charged with crimes to refuse to play the game, to refuse to plea out?
The late computer programmer Aaron Swartz fought prosecutorial pressure to plea out to a felony conviction for cybercrimes (for mass-downloading academic articles).
Syed's last-ditch appeal claimed that his now-deceased attorney didn't interview a schoolmate who might have given him an alibi, and that she didn't help him plea out to a lesser sentence for murder and kidnapping.
In the end, all the indicted were either released, or able to plea-out on far lesser charges.
Each of his guilty pleas, worked out with prosecutors in advance, was related to his maintenance of the two identities.
Documents filed by the Department of Justice, and accepted by Schlumberger through its guilty plea, set out how the US sanctions rules were repeatedly and deliberately breached.
From Con Edison's base of operations in Rye, a plea rang out: "I would like to request another 4kv generator to support this grid because it doesn't look like this section's coming back any time soon".
Though the mayor politely declined, the plea got out to the press, and was followed by letters from eligible and interested men (pictures included!), and irate women who felt the overseas lass was poaching in their territory.
In 2011 about half of these cases were plea-bargained out at the initial bail hearing — typically within 24 hours of arrest — but more than 200,000 of them took an average of seven months to resolve.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who was seated near him on the plane and who, before she knew he was copping a plea, put out the word that he'd been "polite" when asked to turn off his phone.
A desperate plea went out on Sunday from the Russian Red Cross, warning that more lives would be lost if donations of medical equipment, medicines, food and blankets were not immediately received by the regional hospitals.
