In criminal law, "trial penalty" refers to the potential harsh implications of exercising one's right to trial of the charges, as opposed to taking a deal (a so-called plea bargain).
Mandatory sentencing, parole and a growing number of collateral consequences (job loss, can't own a firearm, restricted travel, can't vote, registering with local authorities, etc. etc.) make a conviction too risky. And then there is the financial cost of proceeding through increasingly high stakes trial, with expensive expert witnesses, multiple investigators, numerous documents, the need for trial technology like computers and video, and of course hard working lawyers to pay.
As a result, according to experienced attorneys (backed with statistics compiled by the influential National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers) "the criminal justice system has been turned into a guilty plea factory. So powerful is this penalty that even innocent persons will succumb to the threat of a worse outcome if they dare to risk the fundamental Sixth Amendment right to a trial."
Many trial judges are aware of this phenomenon and go out of their way to not impose additional sentence terms or length if possible (even matching the typical plea bargain sentences for similar cases). Of course with mandatory sentencing - and political pressures - trial judges can only do so much. The result is that prosecutors increasingly function as judge and jury too, which threatens faith and fairness in the criminal "justice" system.
