I wish to express my warm thanks to Professors Stephanos Bibas, George Thomas, and Ron Wright for their thoughtful responses. I am pleased that my article generated such a stimulating exchange with scholars who have done such fine work in the field and from whom I have learned much, not only about substantive and procedural criminal law, but also about the importance of academic generosity and accessibility.

In Punishing the Innocent, I challenge the conventional perception that there is an innocence problem in plea bargaining. For the typical innocent defendant in the typical case (a recidivist facing petty charges), the best resolution is generally a quick plea in exchange for a light bargained-for sentence—an offer that is frequently available because prosecutors do not maximize sentence length in low-stakes cases. Accordingly, once an innocent defendant is arrested and charged wrongfully, the costs of proceeding to an imperfect trial often swamp the costs of pleading to lenient bargains. If there are innocence problems in our criminal justice system, they are problems traceable not to plea bargaining, but to biases that infect arrest, charge, and trial decisions. Because plea bargaining may be in the innocent defendant's manifest best interests, the justice system should ensure that the innocent accused has equal access to bargaining and guilty pleas. Accordingly, I propose systemic reconception of false pleas as ethically accepted legal fictions.