Defendants who can afford expensive private defense lawyers have a lower conviction rate than those who rely on court-appointed public defenders. This explains why criminals who commit lucrative crimes like embezzlement or avoiding conviction than are street criminals.
What this question is testing
Argument
The author observes that privately-defended defendants are convicted less often than publicly-defended ones, and uses this to explain why lucrative-crime criminals (who can afford private lawyers) avoid conviction more often than street criminals (who cannot).
Evaluate
The story being told is "expensive lawyers help you beat the rap." But there is an alternative explanation we need to rule out: maybe the privately-defended defendants are less often actually guilty. If wealthy defendants are more likely to be innocent — or more likely to be charged in cases the prosecution will lose anyway — then the lower conviction rate has nothing to do with lawyer skill and everything to do with the underlying facts.
Imagine: hospital A has a higher patient-survival rate than hospital B. If you want to argue "hospital A's doctors are better," you have to first rule out that hospital A simply admits less-sick patients. Otherwise the survival gap reflects who walked in the door, not who treated them.
Goal
Find an answer that ensures the privately-defended group and the publicly-defended group have similar rates of actual guilt — locking in lawyer quality as the real explanation.
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