The Benefits of Plea Bargaining
by Michelle Calderon, Staff writer for AnaiRhoads.org
21 March 2006
AnaiRhoads.org - When laws were first drafted, legislators had in mind the worst offenders. As a result, sentencing provisions in many states tend to be severe. In reality, court room officials rarely encounter such stereotypical bad guys. Most defendants are less threatening and less dangerous than the law had originally envisioned. Profoundly, there are more crimes and there are more petty offenses which now are criminalized (offenses such as failing to pay a bus fare, being an unlicensed vendor, petty burglary, shoplifting, and so forth): crimes hardly worth a stiff sentencing. Additionally, going to trial is more costly and time-consuming. This reality and current legislations are at constant odds in determining punishment for the guilty.
Plea bargaining provides that flexibility necessary to make adjustments and produce substantive justice (Neubauer, 2002, p. 325). Yet despite or due to their prevalence, plea bargains remain one of the most controversial practices in the criminal justice system. The fear that innocent defendants would plead guilty animates the often heated debate over plea bargains.
A plea bargain is an agreement between the prosecutor and the accused in which the accused pleads guilty in exchange for a lesser sentence or a reduced charge. “About 95 percent of all felony convictions in the United States are the result of plea bargains” (Schulhofer, 2004). Typically, plea agreements take one of three forms: charge bargaining, count bargaining, and/or sentence bargaining.
While no one can predict what ultimately will happen in a trial, one of the benefits of taking a plea of guilty for the defendant instead of going to trial is that “copping a plea” reduces the uncertainty to the outcome of the trial. Plea bargains are also perceived as offering the accused a freedom of choice.
From the state's point of view, the main benefit of the plea bargain is that it saves time and money and of course, getting a guilty conviction. “Almost everyone acknowledges that the system would collapse if every case that was filed were to be set for trial; there is not enough money to try every case” (Schulhofer, 2004).
Other benefits included are that plea bargaining in some ways is fairer to witnesses and prospective jurors. Imagine if in all these cases, the victims and witnesses had to come to court to testify. People have to leave their jobs in order to serve on juries which would be very onerous for the public.
Other experts note that pleas can get the accused out from under some harsh mandatory minimum sentences and rigid federal sentencing guidelines. A plea bargain certainly is a good thing for someone who is guilty, someone who has factually done that which he or she is charged with doing, who is confronted with overwhelming evidence, and where the state is inclined to make some kind of offer because they would not want to put the victim, or families of the victim, or put the state, to the cost of proving the case at trial.
The downside for the defense is that the accused is giving up the right to have 12 people hear all the evidence and test the prosecution's evidence against the defendant. The downside for the community is that it does not get to have a process which attempts to get at the truth of what actually happened in the case.
The plea bargaining system can be abused. It can extract guilty pleas from absolutely innocent people who plead guilty to charges they did not commit because they can not afford the risk of going to trial.
"The major problem with plea bargaining is that it forces the party into a situation where they have to take a guess about what the evidence is, about how strong the case might be, and they have to make that guess against the background of enormously severe penalties if you guess wrong. So defendants, even if they have strong defenses, and even if they are innocent, in fact face enormous pressure to play the odds and to accept a plea. And the more likely they are to be innocent, and the stronger their defenses are, the bigger discount and the bigger benefits the prosecutor will offer them” (Schulhofer, 2004). Eventually at some point it becomes so tempting that it might be irresistible, especially when the consequences of guessing wrong are disastrous.
For a judge, the primary incentive for accepting a plea bargain is to move along a crowded calendar. Most judges simply do not have time to try every case that comes through the door. Additionally, because jails are overcrowded, judges may face the prospect of having to release convicted people before they complete their sentences. Judges often reason that using plea bargains to "process out" offenders who are not likely to do much jail time leads to fewer problems with overcrowding (Nolo, 2005).
Some legal experts maintain that the growth of plea bargaining is directly connected to the failures of the trial system. Experts say that today's jury trial has been captured by the lawyers and has become an "adversary jury trial" with an elaborate body of law: law of evidence and certain other rules which is designed to control the legal combat. The ability of the lawyers in the O.J. case to spin out the case forever and ever, their ability to dominate the jury selection in ways that was unheard of two centuries ago, is the background to plea bargaining. As the jury trial becomes more and more time-consuming, more and more complex under the weight of the lawyers' capture of the trial, it becomes ever more costly to give people that which the constitution says they must have.
America's criminal justice system has come to rely on the plea bargaining process to survive the possible log of criminal procedures as well as other factor that would occur if it was not implemented. While some even have proposed the abolishment of plea bargaining, the criminal justice system simply cannot keep up with the growing rate of crimes. But the integrity of searching for the truth should not be compromised. So rather than completely abolishing the concept, why not restrict it (a, 2005).
By restricting the use of the plea bargaining process to certain crimes with overwhelming evidence, perhaps the process itself would seem fairer to the defendant. Costs and time will still be a problem but the priority of the criminal justice system should be in convicting those who are guilty rather than intimidating those who "may" be guilty into admitting guilt. After all the prosecution will only convict beyond reasonable doubt. Why not apply this concept into the plea bargaining process? Still there are other issues such as jail or prison overcrowding that forces the system to rely on not tying up the system. The severity of the crime should play a part in the decision-making. While laws were originally put in place for those extreme convicts, the system should apply this knowledge to the sentencing process.
At present, there seems to be no one solution to the problem of crime rates. Perhaps, there may never be a solution. As long as the probability of conviction is positively correlated with the probability of guilt, the selection-of-cases involved in plea bargaining could result in a reduced number of innocent defendants "copping a plea". While it is hard to ignore all the other factors involved, the overwhelming evidence as well as the totality of the circumstance should be the motivation for using the plea bargaining chip.
References:
a. (2005). Plea Bargains Only for the Guilty. Retrieved February 18, 2006.
Neubauer, D. (2002). America’s Court’s and the Criminal Justice System. (332-333).
Nolo. (2005). Plea Bargaining. Retrieved February 17, 2006.
Schulhofer, S. (2004). PBS: Benefits and Problems with Plea Bargains.
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