It’s my understanding that criminal trials pretty much grind to a halt if, right up front, the defendant pleads guilty. I’m not a lawyer and nor do I play one on TV so I may be wrong but that’s how I understand it.
So a thought occurs: what if the defendants at the Nuremburg and Tokyo war crimes trials had all pleaded guilty right up front? Would the trials have just kept trucking along, or would they have more or less ended, going straight to sentencing? Given the historic nature of the trials and how important they were in setting legal precedent, having the trials short circuited could have played merry hell with future international relations. One might even consider that future war crimes trials might have been torpedoed, since if the WWI-trials had all gone differently it could be argued that the whole process was not valid.