95% of all criminal cases are resolved by plea bargains, the new face of America's criminal justice system. Plea bargains are only beneficial for the government and the justice system, not the people. Plea bargains are not effective in the judicial due process because they result in lenient deals on sentencing, violate the people's constitutional rights and punish the innocent.
Plea bargains undermine the criminal justice system because they result in lenient deals on sentencing. Criminals charged with felonies sometimes take the plea bargain to receive a lesser sentence. This is not right because criminals should be serving their full sentence and pay the consequences for the crime they committed. Plea bargains should not be used because they are an easy way out for criminals. For example, a case in Wisconsin involving a mother, Ruby Klukow, who was charged with second degree murder for killing her infant daughter 50 years earlier, received a sentence of 45 days in jail from the plea bargain (Hanson). Although the judge rejected the plea bargain and gave Klukow 10 years, it still shows how murderers get lenient sentences from plea bargains (Hanson). Lenient deals on sentencing exhibit how plea bargains are not effective and should not be used in the judicial due process.
Using plea bargains in the criminal justice system violates the people's constitutional rights. The Constitution clearly states, "the Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment; shall be by Jury," emphasizing the importance that jury trials are suppose to play in the judicial due process. Furthermore in the Bill of Rights, the 6th amendment states, "...the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and...
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...g rent ("The Plea"). All of the horrible effects of what happened to Erma Stewart resulted from that plea bargain. The punishment of the innocent also occurs from the use of plea bargains because plea bargains cover up police or prosecutorial misconduct. For example, in Charlie Gampero's case that police investigation was sloppy and witnesses were inconsistent and because of the plea that was covered up. These cases illustrate the effects of plea bargaining on innocent people and how they are ineffective in the justice system.
Lenient deals on sentencing, violation of people's constitutional rights and punishment of the innocent all result from the ineffective use of plea bargains. The benefits of plea bargains do not outweigh the drawbacks of them. Plea bargains clearly pose issues involving the principles upon which America's criminal justice system was founded.
Plea bargaining precludes justice from being achieved, where the consent to less severe sentences are given in favour of time and money. The case of R v Rogerson and McNamara, demonstrates the advantages of hiring highly trained legal personnel, which inevitably contributed to their lesser sentence. Thus, making it more difficult for offenders to be convicted.
Criminals can come in many different shapes and sizes. For example, a criminal can be classified as being a murderer or a criminal could just simply have committed fraud in a business setting. There is a large diversity of criminals and it is the judge’s job to determine what is a fair punishment for a guilty verdict. Judge Ron Swanson, a federal judge for the Florida District Court of Appeal, deals with using cost-benefit analysis daily to determine what is fair for everyone involved. Before becoming a judge, Judge Swanson was a prosecutor coming out of law school in the University of Florida. As a prosecutor and a judge, Judge Swanson has always worked to bring justice for the victims, the defendant if he or she is innocent, and for the citizens
A plea bargain is compliance between a prosecutor and defendant in which the accused offender agrees to plead guilty in return for some compromise from the prosecutor. The New Jim Crow, explains how most Americans have no clue on how common it is for people to be prosecuted without proper legal representation and are sentenced to jail when innocent out of fear. Tens of thousands of poor people go to jail every year without ever talking to a lawyer that could possibly help them. Over four decades ago, the American Supreme Court ruled that low-income people who are accused of serious crimes are entitled to council, but thousands of people are processed through America’s courts annually with a low resource lawyer, or no lawyer at all. Sometimes
The assumption that all three-time offenders are incorrigible criminals is an oversimplification of a more complex problem. Three-strikes is based on this assumption that a few extreme cases are representative of all criminals. Mimi Silbert points...
Convicting the Innocent: A Critique of the Theories of Wrongful Convictions. Criminal Law Forum, 20(2/3), 173-192. Crime in the United States. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.fbi.gov/ Friedman, S. (2014, March 10).
Steve Bogira, a prizewinning writer, spent a year observing Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courthouse. The author focuses on two main issues, the death penalty and innocent defendants who are getting convicted by the pressure of plea bargains, which will be the focus of this review. The book tells many different stories that are told by defendants, prosecutors, a judge, clerks, and jurors; all the people who are being affected and contributing to the miscarriage of justice in today’s courtrooms.
The principle of bail is basic to our system of justice and its practice as old as English law itself. When the administration of criminal justice was in its infancy, arrest for serious crime meant imprisonment without preliminary hearing and long periods of time could occur between apprehension and the arrival of the King's Justices to hold court. It was therefore a matter of utmost importance to a person under arrest to be able to obtain a provisional release from custody until his case was called. This was also the desideratum of the medieval sheriff, the representative of the Crown in criminal matters,
To begin, Mandatory minimum sentences result in prison overcrowding, and based on several studies, it does not alleviate crime, for example crimes such as shoplifting or solicitation. These sentencing guidelines do not allow a judge to take into consideration the first time offender, differentiate the deviance level of the offender, and it does not allow for the judge to alter a punishment or judgment to each individual case. When mandatory sentencing came into effect, the drug lords they were trying to stop are not the ones being affected by the sentences. It is the nonviolent, low-level drug users who are overcrowding the prisons as a result of these sentences. Both the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the Department of Justice have determined that mandatory sentencing is not an effective way to deter crime. Studies show that mandatory minimums have gone downhill due to racial a...
Punishment, when speaking on serious terms, is socially valuable because it deters criminals from repeating their crimes and may keep others from repeating the same acts. If in fact the deterring effect misses its point, it is the fault of the justice system the all the red tape found behind it. At its current standing, the system is viewed as a joke because no authority is taken, no one believes, let alone fears, the system. Both the lengthy time and the high expense result from innumerable appeals, including many technicalities which have little nothing to do with the question of guilt or innocence. If these wasteless amount of appeals were eliminated or at least controlled, then the procedure would be much shorter, less expensive and more
Garrett, Brandon. Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2011. 86. Print.
Evolved from English common law, the United States judiciary system is an intricate series of complex judgments, decisions, and procedures. A corner-stone of this systematic practice, is the belief that a crime against an individual is a crime against society at large, therefore must be punished by that same society. The intent of incarceration is to rehabilitate the offender, so that they might return to society and become productive members of it.
If most cases went to trial, the likelihood of the accused posting bail or the judge releasing the accused on their own recognizance is seldom therefore, jails would be crowded with individuals awaiting court dates. According to an article "Why Innocent People Plead Guilty" by Jed S. Rakoff "In 2013, while 8 percent of all federal criminal charges were dismissed (either because of a mistake in fact or law or because the defendant had decided to cooperate), more than 97 percent of the remainder were resolved through plea bargains, and fewer than 3 percent went to trial." This is infringing people 's right based on the sixth
United States locks up more people, per capita, than any other nation. Bail system has failed to keep people arrested out jail and the increasing rate of people in jail is alarming. Many District Attorney forment defendant to take a plea deal, instead of waiting for a trial (Buettner). Bail reform has help put fewer people in jail, but has lead to many lost jobs for people who works at the jail. Bail system is a profit motive for the bail industry.
The system has gone as deep as to making it so that even if a person has not committed a crime, but is being charged for it they can agree to a plea bargain, which makes it so even though the person did not do it the system is going to have them convicted of it anyway (Quigley 1). “As one young man told me ‘who wouldn’t rather do three years for a crime they didn’t commit than risk twenty-five years for a crime they didn’t do?” (Quigley 2). The criminal justice system has scared the majority of the population into believing that even though they did not commit a crime, they are convicted of it.
The process of the court in America values efficiency and tough punishments. Since there are a lot of arrests, the court is overburdened and pressed for time. The prisoners are processed through like animals for the slaughter, quickly and with no mercy. The inequality in the terms of power and money influences the court. People with deep pockets are able to bail out or negotiate for a lesser term than a person assigned to a free lawyer by the state. Those consequences Americans believe will serve as deterrence or warning to people to obey the law...