Sunday, July 1, 2012

Plea Bargaining


Many of my students, who tended to be idealistic, told me they would never plead guilty to a crime they had not committed.  Would I?  Of course.
Today’s issue of the Morning Call had a long article about the pressure judges put on defendants to plead guilty as part of plea bargaining agreement. 
Let’s say you are charged with a crime that carries a five-year sentence.  The judge tells you that if you plead guilty, you’ll get 100 hours of community service with no jail time.  If you plead not guilty, you go to trial and can get the full five years.  How would you plead?
Plea bargaining benefits quite a few people.  It benefits the D.A., who gets a conviction without having to go to trial.  It benefits the judge, who clears his or her calendar.  It often benefits the defense attorney, who will be paid for the defense.
Two groups do not benefit.  First are the people who are innocent, but plead guilty because they don’t want to go to jail.  The second group is society, because criminals who have committed terrible crimes are given a light sentence in return for the guilty plea.  Even worse, people who actually committed the crimes go scot free when innocent people plead guilty to avoid jail time.
I understand the rationale for plea bargaining.  I still think it is a lousy system.  No wonder people are cynical about the judiciary.

2 comments:

  1. One needs only to look at some of the Supreme Court decisions. Citizens United comes to mind. They set the tone.

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  2. Even the best systems have their drawbacks. Sometimes I look around and think, is this the best society humans can build? I mean can't we do better? Again in order to have a better society, there would be winners and losers inherently with the change it would bring.

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