David Leavitt has spent more than three decades inside the criminal justice system—as a defense attorney, elected prosecutor, Utah County Attorney and international rule-of-law advocate.

His conclusion after seeing the system from both sides is provocative:

America has become dangerously dependent on plea bargains.

In this episode of Legends in the Law, attorney and host Randy Spencer sits down with one of Utah’s most recognizable and controversial legal figures for a remarkably candid discussion about prosecutors, police, jury trials, the Tom Green prosecution, Ukraine, political controversy and Leavitt’s continuing crusade to change the criminal justice system.

Leavitt entered BYU Law School expecting to join his family’s insurance business. A criminal defense course changed his life and sent him instead to rural Millard County, Utah, where he began defending criminal cases and challenging a local system accustomed to resolving cases through plea agreements.

He later became Juab County Attorney and experienced the immense power of prosecution firsthand—including one case that forced him to confront the consequences of allowing personal anger to influence prosecutorial decisions.

Then came Tom Green.

Leavitt takes Randy inside the prosecution of one of America’s most notorious polygamists, including the encounter with one of Green’s wives that convinced him he could no longer simply walk away from the case. The experience gave Leavitt a principle that would define much of his later career: “Do your job—not do your job to keep your job.”

After losing reelection by only 16 votes, Leavitt returned to criminal defense. Growing disillusionment with the justice system eventually took him and his family to Ukraine, where they arrived days before the 2004 Orange Revolution.

Leavitt says the experience transformed his understanding of freedom. He eventually founded the Leavitt Institute for International Development and worked with Ukrainian law students on advocacy and rule-of-law principles.

But Ukraine also caused him to look differently at America.

Leavitt came to believe that plea bargaining had transferred extraordinary power from ordinary citizens and juries to prosecutors and other government institutions.

Years later, he returned to public office as Utah County Attorney with an ambitious reform agenda. His efforts to change charging practices, reduce reliance on plea bargains, create alternatives for nonviolent offenders and impose greater checks on police power produced fierce controversy and opposition.

Leavitt discusses those battles, the sensational allegations made against him, his eventual landslide election loss and the lesson he took from the experience: your reputation can be taken from you, but your understanding of who you are cannot.

Today, Leavitt goes further still. He argues that the criminal justice system cannot be gradually fixed from within and that restoring meaningful power to juries may require lawyers and defendants willing to disrupt the system itself.

It is a provocative, emotional and deeply personal conversation about the enormous power of prosecutors, the disappearance of jury trials, the price of challenging institutions and the question Leavitt now asks himself:

“What’s my duty to freedom?”