I agree piling on charges just in hopes of extracting a plea deal is unethical.[1]<p>However you&#x27;re talking about a totally different sort of unethical prosecution. When the government steamrolls a drug dealer, they have a ton of physical evidence of an illegal act. You can debate whether those acts should be illegal, or the justice of the sentences, but a jury would definitely convict on the basis of the evidence.<p>What you&#x27;re talking about is charging people for crimes when you can&#x27;t even articulate what specific acts they did were illegal or present concrete evidence of illegal acts a jury could convict on.<p>[1] A lot of that practice was the result of DOJ policies that required prosecutors to bring charges to maximize the sentence. Obama recently eliminated that policy allowing prosecutors to use their discretion.