Plea Bargaining Essay, Research Paper
The most common arguement offered on behalf of plea bargaining is that it
lifts theburden of heavy caseloads from the shoulders of the courts. By ensuring that
most criminaldefendants enter a plea of guilty, plea bargaining eliminates the need for
time-consuming trialprocedures. Harold J. Rothwax, a Manhattan judge said, "We go to plea
bargaining out ofnecessity, not out of desire. It is inescapable." Criminal defendants
charged with felonies couldcompletely overcome the court system if they coordinated their efforts.
"If even half of the 90%of the defendants who now plead guilty should request trial, the judicial
system would breakdown from overload", said B.J. George Jr. Although society would
certainly respond to asubstantially overburdened court system by allotting more resources to it,
such s responce wouldlikely be slow.Proponents of plea bargaining argue that it allows the accused to have a
greater degree ofautonomy over the results of their cases. Unlike a system without a plea
bargaining, in which adefendant either pleads guilty without meeting with the prosecutor or pleads
innocent and thengoes through the trial process, plea bargaining allows the defendant the
intermediate option ofpleading guilty to avoid a harsh penalty. This arguement sees plea bargaining
as an extra checkin the criminal justice system to ensure that the autonomy and liberty of the
accused is respectedby the state. Plea bargaining also protects innocent defendants from the
possibility of harshsanctions. Unfortunate innocent defendants who realize that the case them
against them is toooverwhelming to gain leniency from the judge or to win acquittal from a jury
may view pleabargaining as an attractive alternative to trial. Without plea bargaining,
many of these innocentdefendants would be found guilty and sentenced. Of course, plea bargaining
does not violateone’s right to trial, as defendants always have the option to plead not
guilty and be tried by ajury. Proponents of plea bargaining point out that prosecutors do not force
anyone to pleabargain.Although plea bargaining is not perfect, the pressures placed on the court
system make itthe best way to promote justice. Critics of the practice tend to focus only
on the relativelyinsignificant number of cases where plea bargaining results in injustice.
When evaluating theeffectiveness of plea bargaining in promoting justice, it is important to
focus equally on itsstrengths. In most cases, plea bargaining is a fair and efficient way to deal
with cases. Mostguilty defendants will be convicted with or without plea bargaining, and most
innocentdefendants will be acquitted. Therefore, plea bargaining is usually an
acceptable and moreefficient alternative to trial. One important positive effect that plea
bargaining has on thecriminal justice system is that it preserves the seriousness of the innocent
plea. With pleabargaining, innocent pleas are few and far between, making the judge and
attorneys moreattentive during trials. Without plea bargaining, guilty defendants have less
of an incentive toplead guilty and more of an incentive to go to trial. With more trials to
attend to, and with mostdefendants being ultimately found guilty, the cases of the few innocent
defendants who needtrials the most might not recieve the proper amount of attention from judges
or attorneys.The efficiency excuse can only be used by the most overburdened courts.
Prosecutorsworking in rural areas with relatively low caseloads use plea bargaining just
as prosecutors whowork in major cities. Additionally, plea bargaining was used decades ago,
when courts in generalwere not as overburdened as they are today. These observations, according to
opponents of pleabargaining, suggest that necessity is not the only explanation for the
widespread use of thepractice. An alternative explanation not cited by plea bargaining proponents
is that the practicelifts burdens not only from the courts, but from the shoulders of the judges
and attorneys whowork within them. Attorneys and judges realize that the trials require
significantly more personaleffort and time than plea bargaining. When the court has heard all of the
cases on the docket, thejudge and public attorneys are free to spend their time outside of the
courtroom. Thus, theincentives for public attorneys and judges to use plea bargaining are often
personal. In light ofthis observation, the often cited efficiency excuse does not seem valid. As
one scholar wiselyobserved, "regardless of the caseload, there will always be too many
cases for many of theparticipants in the system, since most of them have a strong interest in
being some place otherthan court.Plea bargaining presents a substantial threat to the liberties of the
accused, especiallythose who are innocent. Prosecutors bargain with the harshest sentence that
they think thedefendant will accept in exchange for a guilty plea. Indeed, because judges
tend to sentenceconvicted defendants who plead innocent with much harsher penalties than
defendants whoplead guilty. Defendants who are clearly guilty would probably be better off
pleading guiltyeven without a plea bargain. On the other hand, a prosecutor will offer more
substantialconcessions to innocent defendants who would have relatively high chances of
acquittal if theircases were to go to trial. Thus, plea bargaining allows the prosecutor to
ensure that innocentdefendants will be just as likely as guilty defendants to plead guilty to
some charge.Plea bargaining violates many basic principles upon which our criminal
justice systemrests. One of these principles is that it is better to let ten guilty persons
go free than it is toconvict one innocent person. Plea bargaining attempts to ensure that everyone
is convicted,albeit with a lighter sentence than if he or she had been found guilty in
trial. For the innocent,conviction is clearly an injustice, but the injustice of convicting the
criminal through pleabargaining is often overlooked. By ensuring that criminals recieve lighter
sanctions, pleabargaining represents an injustice to society. If the criminal justice system
is viewed as a systemwith the end of protecting citizens, plea bargaining and its leniency toward
guilty defendantsthreatens to undermine the system by depriving it of the ability to deter
crime and reform theoffenders. While the doctrine of letting ten innocent defendants go free is
not written in theConstitution, the doctrine that no person "shall be compelled in any
criminal case to be a witnessagainst himself" is This Fifth Amendment right is violated by plea
bargaining, in which theguilty plea, in light of the possibility of more lenient sanctions, is
compelling. If oneincriminates oneself by pleading guilty, the plea bargain violates the Fifth
Amendment.Unfortunately, the Supreme Court made an exception for plea bargaining in
North Carolina v.Alford, in which it held that Alford, who would have pled innocent to murder
had in not been forplea bargaining, was bound to his plea bargain. Alford’s testimony reveals
that he was indeedcompelled to plead guilty, thus incriminating himself: "I pleaded guilty
on second degree murderbecause they said there is too much evidence, but I ain’t shot no man, but I
take the fault for theother man. We never had an arguement in our life and I just pleaded guilty
because they said if Ididn’t they would gas me for it, and that is all." Finally, plea
bargaining violates the principlethat guilt or innocence should only be determined by those deemed fit to do
so. In our society,only judges and fairly selected juries enjoy that status.Plea bargaining
takes already difficultdecisions out of the hands of qualified and socially sanctioned individuals
and places them in thehands of attorneys, who are then subjected to "serious financial and
other temptations todisregard their clients interests", said A.W. Alschuler. Moreover, by
making attorneys viewthemselves as "judges and administrators rather than as advocates",
plea bargaining transformsreal judges into ineffective figureheads who cannot fulfill the role expected
of them by thosewho appointed them.