An agreement made in a criminal case between a prosecutor and its defendant, before reaching a trial is a plea bargain. The prosecutor offers an opportunity to the defendant to plead guilty. By agreeing to plead guilty to a crime the defendant would in exchange get a prosecutor’s promise to convince the judge to reduce the sentence. It is really impossible to predict what a jury is going to decide in a trial. I personally think that plea bargaining is being used as an easy way out; instead of having the person who committed the crime pay for what they did by serving the whole time. By managing a plea bargain the terms can sometimes be used to include pondering on how it works and who it can help.
For a judge a primary encouragement for even accepting a plea bargain is so that the trials can be moved along a lot quicker. Plea bargains are much quicker by the requirement of the less work in trails being made (Maynard 17). Most judges do not really have the time to have every case on trial, it is very time consuming. If every case in the justice system did manage to go to trial, courts would definitely be overloaded that they would eventually get shut down (Larson). Judges often reason using plea bargains to “process out” offenders that are more likely not going to do that much jail time (Nolo qtd. in Larson). So that gives the judge and prosecutor the ability to want to push the defendant to take the plea bargain. Otherwise, the defendant goes to trail to plead without a plea bargain to mostly receive a guilty plea.
By using plea bargain may be an agreeing to many things. It is very common in a plea bargain with first time offenders that are being accused with a less serious crime to use plead deals, so they can only be sentenced...
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...violent offender should not be allowed the luxury of a reduce sentence. At this point it is very doubtful that plea bargaining will be eliminated any time soon because of the benefits that plea bargain does offer.
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Maynard, Douglas W. Inside Plea Bargaining: the Language of Negotiation. New York: Plenum, 1984.
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Pagan writes a captivating story mingled with the challenges of the Eastern Shore legal system. This book gives a complete explanation backed up by research and similar cases as evidence of the ever-changing legal system. It should be a required reading for a history or law student.
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
pleas may be choose for the punishment likely to be associated with them rather than for their accuracy in describing the criminal offense in which the defendant was involved. For instance, a charge of indecent liberties, for example, in which the defendant is accused of sexual
On June 13, 1994, Nicole Brown, ex-wife of O.J. Simpson, was found murdered alongside Ronald Goldman (Dershowitz 19). Chapter one of Reasonable Doubts describes how many people jumped to the conclusion that O.J. carried out the murders. Incriminating evidence emerged that more than pointed to Simpson’s guilt (Dershowitz 21). Soon enough, media reports claimed that Simpson would be charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Simpson’s reluctance to be peacefully taken into custody was illustrated by his famous Los Angeles free-way chase that ended in his eventual surrender (Dershowitz 23). Dershowitz chose to join the defense team when offered the opportunity, claiming that the case could greatly educate people, especially his Harvard law students, on...
Plea bargains are one of the most controversial debates that are discussed over the criminal justice court system. A plea bargain is when a defendant agrees to plead guilty to a crime and in exchange for something, for example a lesser sentence. There are three types of plea bargains. Charge bargaining is when a defendant pleads guilty to a less serious charge than the original charge. Count bargaining is when the defendant pleads guilty for some of the charge, but not all. Sentence bargaining is when the defendants get a lesser sentence than the maximum penalty. Through the course of this semester it has been brought to our attention, multiple times, about the problems plea bargaining has caused. Many defendants are pressured by those who surround them in
After all, we are all human, and no one deserves to be tricked into plea bargain due to the prosecutor’s pushing their own agendas, or because of mental issues derived from solitary confinement. Most of all, how is someone supposed to support himself or herself if they don’t have a backbone support from reentry programs. The criminal justice system needs to undergo reformation and address the real reasons to high crime rates and inmate failures to sustain a successful life after the time they served. So who are we to deny a person the right to happiness if they serve their time and want to live a crime free life?
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For police officers who want to solve more violent, severed cases, it is practically impossible for them to make as much as the officers making arrests for petty, nonviolent drug crimes. More often than not, law enforcement officers are paid based on the amount of arrests they pay. Why would an officer pursue more rape, murder, and burglary cases when they could simple make a few easy drug arrests and get paid the same amount or more with half the work? “The financial incentive built into the system virtually guarantee that the overwhelming majority of drug arrest in the United States will be for nonviolent, low-level drug offenses,” as stated by Michelle Alexander, a civil right advocate and writer. As the amount of petty, drug arrests for nonviolent offenses increases, the respect for police officers and the laws they’re trying to enforce is lost. Although it is not the officer’s fault to blame, the current judicial system pins them up as the bad guy. Making it so that the current system not only hurts those being convicted, but also all the law enforcement involved. With the way the system is set up now, it police officers unable to solve difficult crimes. Drug crimes are easy arrests, and the frequency of them makes causes a police officer’s ability to solve real, hard-hitting cases virtually nonexistent. As for the judges involved, the minimum sentencing requirements basically make it impossible for the judges to actually do their job. With the mandatory minimum sentencing for nonviolent drug crimes, it takes the judge’s ability to serve justice out of the equation. No matter what the individual case may be, there’s no way for an offender to get anything less than that of the mandatory minimum. It’s practically ridding these citizens of the right to a fair trial; seeing that no matter what the judge rules as fair,
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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.
...ct that in less serious crimes the defendant will plead guilty in order to receive a better deal.
...nts that they feel they often have no choice but to plea guilty and accept the bargain. Prosecutors can exploit the consequences produced by adversarial legalism in a way that allows them to process a high volume of cases and obtain a large number of guilty pleas. The systematic changes to civil and criminal law in an attempt to avoid the negative outcomes of adversarial legalism only makes the system less useful for citizens.