Yes, this kind of thing happens a lot. The incentives are misaligned with the goal to a degree where you almost wonder if it’s intentional.

This happens a lot because at the individual level, it’s sort of in everyone’s best interest to take the deal. The prosecutor wants $2,000 and 0 jail time and it all goes away. If you don’t take the deal, even assuming you win in the end, it will probably cost you way more than $2,000 and however long the probation check ins take. You will recover neither your time, nor the money you spent on lawyers/transportation/days off/etc.

At the macro level it happens because prosecutors get judged on their conviction/case closure rate, because we implicitly assume they found the right person. Browbeating people into accepting token punishments that technically close out the case counts for the metrics voters actually watch.

If I might lean a little conspiratorial for a moment, it also behooves the prosecutors office to flood the defense attorneys with cases. People will vote to raise the prosecutors funding to deal with criminals, no one will vote to raise defense attorney funding. Last I saw the average prosecutors office gets something around double the funding the defense gets.

It got so bad in some city in Oregon there was (is, really), a near constitutional crisis because the city got trapped between the provisions of the 6th amendment. Defense attorneys were so flooded they said they couldn’t take any new cases. The 6th amendment says the accused has a right to counsel, which is an issue. It also says they have a right to a speedy trial. The city was going to have to allocate money to the defense and get them lawyers quick, or drop a bunch of cases.

That never happened, the judge basically just said “Nuh uh” and I believe threatened the defense office with sanctions if they didn’t just assign the cases to lawyers who were already saying they had more cases than they could imagine.

I’m a little shocked we haven’t seen a huge wave of successful “ineffective assistance of counsel” appeals. Pointing to a signed, public statement your lawyer was overworked before you even talked to them seems like a decent starting point.