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Plea bargaining
Plea Bargaining Literature Review
Assignment on plea bargaining
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served. Moreover, an accused person who accepts a guilty plea in the early stage of the case saves the justice system a lot of money. Many of the additional punishment that is imputed onto an accused person derived from contradictory claims that lead to lengthy trials. Therefore, to punish a defendant for wasting the courts’ resources, the justice system causes that defendant to spend an excessive amount of time behind bars at the expense of American tax dollars. This is a ludicrous paradoxical situation which is softened with a plea deal. When the plea bargain is adduced, the justice system is telling the defendant that he is in the wrong and his chances of defending himself are quite slim, therefore he needs to accept his guilt, hencing facing a lighter sentence whereupon we all benefit. …show more content…
The plea bargain system introduces the court system as the weak link in the criminal justice system (Miller, Hess, & Orthmann, 2015). Police officers often risk their lives, struggle with a potentially problematic person, make an arrest, and present that defendant to be punished.The justice system This would be expected from the justice system to have a harsher stance because such a defendant might be deserving of some really severe punishment. In spite of this, a defendant can be offered an extremely attractive plea deal that would cause the due process and equal protection elements of the American Constitution to be laughable. This is because plea bargains create unobstructed passage for very merciful punishments to be apportioned instead of severe and discordant punishments for inappropriate conduct and deter
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.
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
...instead of 25 years if they pleaded guilty. (Wan 37) In addition, money can become a reason for defense attorney to encourage pleading guilty. Private defense attorney may want to spend more effort in cases where they have more possibility of winning and thus getting more money, and public defenders find pleading guilty an effective way to move through cases quicker. (Mohr 6) For prosecutors, “guilty pleas avoided ‘onerous and protracted’ trials whose outcomes – ‘losing’ or ‘having to oppose an appeal to the higher courts’ – were both undesirable.” (Smith 134) Finally for judges, plea bargain reduces their caseload, and elevates their reputation indirectly because accepting a plea bargaining also includes waiver of appeal to higher courts. (Mohr 6)
In the graphic novel Race to Incarcerate the mass incarceration of black men is refereed to as a new form of slavery. The system is set up to drag minority men into imprisonment. Once blacks are arrested they are more likely than white counterparts to be charged, convicted and serve harsher prison sentences. Sentences that go on their permanent record, that is if they are released. In numerous cases black defendants are unable to higher a lawyer, and given a Public defender, who tend to push plea deals onto clients. Plea deals can be pushed even if the person is truly innocent, as a way to end the case. And the very few cases that make it to trial with jury’s have a disproportionate number of all white jury’s and black defendants. Ultimately, these factors increase the likelihood of imprisonment for African Americans. But perhaps the most significant factor in the astonishing rates of blacks behind bars is the ongoing and longest war in American
The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals set a limit that each criminal defense attorney can take 150 felony cases per year, but “caseloads of 500, 600, 800, or more are common” (“Five Problems”). With that, criminal defense attorneys are forced to triage or reject cases, leaving potential clients to go to court without representation. If the defendant does have a public attorney, their defense is unprepared and vulnerable to make mistakes when working out a reasonable sentence. In one of his cases, Jones and his client accepted a deal with the prosecution for a three year sentence for stealing locks. Upon further investigation, the prosecution discovered that they made a mistake in calculating the minimum sentence – Jones’s client should have only served “366 days,” but it was already too late (Eckholm).
One could wonder why plea bargains are even made. One reason would be that criminal courts are becoming clogged and overcrowded. Going through the proper procedure and processes that we are granted takes time. Trials can take anywhere from days to...
Sentencing is the process by which people who have been found guilty of offending against the criminal law have sanctions imposed upon them in accordance with that particular law. The sentence of the court is the most visible aspect of the criminal justice system’s response to a guilty offender. In Tasmania, the Sentencing Act 1997 was enacted to amend and consolidate the law relating to the sentencing of offenders. The crime rate in Tasmania is lower than it was 10 years ago but higher than it was 20 years ago. In the Australian context, Tasmania is below the national average of recorded crimes for the crimes of robbery, burglary and motor vehicle theft.
For decades, we have been made to believe that criminals are people who have done harm to our society, violating the laws of the land, and don 't deserve a second chance. They should be locked away, and the keys should throw away. Unfortunately, today, our world is full of crimes and our system is getting overcrowded with criminals. However, with recent laws like the plea bargain proofs that there is hope and a way out to every situation. A plea bargain can be defined as negotiations during a criminal trial between the prosecutor and the defendant which result in a more lenient sentence than would have been recommended with the original charge (Farlex). Some would say that the use, or abuse, of the plea bargain, allows criminals
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.
In conclusion, plea bargains are here to stay but they are diminishing our criminal justice system. Although there are many positive factors, the negative factors are over powering the positive. Our criminal justice system needs to realize that they are making more work by giving out plea bargains. With the only goals being incapacitation and rehabilitation, recidivism is going to continue to increase instead of decrease. With the increase of crimes comes more of the repeating circle of plea bargains.
The criminal justice system is composed of three parts – Police, Courts and Corrections – and all three work together to protect an individual’s rights and the rights of society to live without fear of being a victim of crime. According to merriam-webster.com, crime is defined as “an act that is forbidden or omission of a duty that is commanded by public law and that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law.” When all the three parts work together, it makes the criminal justice system function like a well tuned machine.
When it comes to the accuracy of emotions, Naz failed in controlling his emotions while making the plea deal decision. Even though his decision of rejecting the plea deal turned out to be the right choice, he did not follow the factors of making an effective decision. Furthermore, Naz’s accurate intuition was shown in his belief that he did not commit the murder, which turned out to be right. Before rejecting the plea deal, Naz agreed to all the crimes he committed including the murder by answering “yes” to all the D.A.’s questions. However, when he was asked to admit to the murder crime using his own words, he could not do it. He paused for a minute, then said that he did not kill her. Even though Naz did not remember parts of what happened that night, and he had no evidence at the decision time, he had an accurate intuition that he was incapable of committing manslaughter. Despite the fact the Naz was an honored student, he was not familiar with the court process. He showed in the earliest episode that he did not know his right of an attorney. This was a new horrible experience for Naz. In fact, Naz used his previous experience when his lawyer Crowe told him to take the deal, in dealing with his previous lawyer, Stone who came just before the hearing to advise Naz to take the deal. He quietly acknowledged that both lawyers are behaving in the same way. They both assumed