Yes, witnesses’ flipping does corrupt justice. But not because they’re "rats."

America’s criminal justice system routinely coerces defendants to cooperate and incentivizes them to lie to please prosecutors. But most victims aren’t presidential confidants accused of bank fraud. The vast majority of people who confront the choice between cooperation and a longer sentence are poor and uneducated. When it comes to jailing our fellow Americans, we have champagne tastes, but when it comes to defending them, a store-brand-soda budget. Public defenders and other indigent defense attorneys are notoriously, consistently and outrageously underfunded . Pleading guilty and implicating a co-defendant can be the only practical choice when your lawyer lacks the time and resources to mount an effective defense. In fact, flipping on your cohorts can be the only way to avoid the de facto punishment of pretrial detention: In many jurisdictions, defendants plead guilty and cooperate because they cannot afford bail , and they would otherwise languish in jail awaiting trial for many months or even years, whether or not they have a defense.

Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, isn’t atypical just because he’s privileged. He’s also unusual because he knows Trump well. Most defendants face cooperators who are not chummy fraternity brothers or corporate boardroom buddies, but jailhouse snitches notorious for fabricating overheard “confessions.” The American Civil Liberties Union recently sued the district attorney and sheriff in Orange County, Calif., saying they ran a network of professional jailhouse snitches, meticulously tracked by law enforcement but concealed from defense attorneys. Criminal defendants routinely find themselves accused by alleged co-conspirators they don’t even recognize.