Plea Bargaining Analysis
Determine Appropriate Uses for Plea-bargaining A plea bargain (“offer”) is an acquiescent in a criminal case whereby the prosecution may offer the defendant the opportunity to plead guilty, conventionally to a lesser charge or to the pristine criminal charge with a proposal of a lighter than the maximum sentence. This opportunity sanctions defendants to avoid the risk of a conviction by trial on a more serious charge. This allows a court’s caseloads to be lighter without exhausting resources of a court, potential public advocators, and prosecutors who are all salaried at the expense of tax payers.
Plea-bargains are used in many situations depending on the district. However, courts do use plea-bargains when the courts are overcrowded or if there is a high profile case that needs more time and attention. A pled deal affords the defendant to save time, money and often times minimizing the sentence term (Thomson, 2013).
Plea-Bargaining Violate Due Process …show more content…
Plea-bargaining does not violate due process of law. In the United States a person is entitled to an attorney whether they can afford it or not, therefore the defendant has legal representation. Furthermore, a defendant may have several charges pending against them where they may face an extended amount of time incarcerated, so the prosecutor may offer a deal. Now if the defendant pleads guilty to one charge the other(s) may possibly be dropped. This is the time when the defendant and their legal representative discuss whether to accept, refuse, or further negotiate.
Occasionally the defendant's attorney may approach the prosecutor to ask if there's a deal offer or states that the defendant wants to make a deal. There's nothing wrong with plea bargaining, the judge often expects one, and must approve it for it to go through.
From time to time the prosecution may offer a plea-deal or immunity to the defendant in exchange for an agreement to provide testimony against someone else, the prosecutor need further testimony to get a conviction against another whom may be responsible for the crime. Many crimes are orchestrated by what some may call the mastermind and carried out by their flunkies so more times than not the best way to get the masterminds convicted is to plea deal with the flunkies in order to convict the masterminds. A majority of criminal, civil cases do not make it to trial because; they are pleaded or settled out of court. The court system would be very inundated if every case went to a jury trial not to mention the extra fees for jury duty (Colvin, 2015).
Plea-Bargaining Reduces Society’s Interest in Appropriate Punishment Meanwhile, certain members of society may not view plea deals as the right punishment for some defendants.
An example of the reduced interest could be when someone has lost a life and the prosecution gives a deal to reduce murder to manslaughter thereby, affording the defendant to serve less time in prison. Unfortunately, the research article “Opening Pandora’s Box: How Does Defendant Race Influence Plea Bargaining?” by Luka, Kutateladze & Johnson, black defendants rarely receive lesser deal offers, and both black and Latino defendants were more likely to receive prison sentence offers. However, these differences were largely explained by legal factors, evidence, arrest conditions, and court actor characteristics, though black defendants are still more likely to receive prison sentence bargains after including these things. No differences were found between white and Asian defendants (Luka, 2014).
Should the Supreme Court set rules for
plea-bargaining? The Supreme Court should not have a need to set rules unless a defendant’s constitutional right has been violated during the course of the charges. An example of this would be Gabe Watson “The Honeymoon Killer,” while on their honeymoon Gabe and Tina Thomas Watson went diving in Queensland Australia. Though Gabe was a more experienced diver than Tina they went down together. Less than eight minutes after descending Gabe returned without Tina calling for help. After Tina pronounced dead, and from Gabe’s eyewitness account of what happened, the officer formed his own opinion and alleged that Gabe had in fact murdered his bride Tina he was indicted to stand trial for murder. However, Gabe pled guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter to serve a prison sentence of four and a half years in prison, to be suspended after 12 months. But the Attorney-General appealed, and his sentence was modified to be suspended after 18 months. After serving his sentence Gabe Watson returned to the United States, upon arrival he was arrested and charged with the capital murder of Tina Thomas Watson in Alabama. At trial the judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence. This is a case were the Supreme Courts should have intervene because Gabe had already did his time and this would have been double jeopardy to say the least (Colvin, 2015).
Plea-Bargaining is it Disproportionate Some would say that plea-bargaining is disproportion simply because a defendant with limited to no finances might take a plea offer even when they are innocent. Thereby, pleading guilty to a crime in which they did not commit. But a defendant that has financial resources could hire an attorney that might ask the prosecutor to reduce the charges and the defendant walks away with a slap on the wrist on a serious crime (Luka, 2014). A personal family example of this is an unpublicized case in 1990 in the state of Kansas. Norman L. met a female drug addict, the young woman whom had just ran out of drugs needing her next fix she calls on him to take her money to go score her some more drugs. He took her money went to the next state over for eight days; after four days she contacts local police and stated that he had raped her. Since police could not locate Norman L. they put out an arrest warrant and placed him in the top 10 most wanted in Kansas City, family saw his name and face on television and convinced him to turn himself in. Norman did so, but not knowing much about the law he went down and answered questions without an attorney, with no way to contact his family no one knew he was locked up. He had a court appointed attorney and refused to plead guilty, however, when his attorney told him to take the plea offer because he was not going home anytime soon the deal would allow him to see his sons grow up. So Norman agreed, but not knowing that the courts would use his juvenile arrest records against him; what Norman thought would be no more than five years turned into a 25 to life. Had this public defender informed him of this he would have went to trial with the hope of seeing his boys become men and to say goodbye to his parents (Johnson, 2014).
Plea-Bargaining Equal Opportunity of the Law In most officials prospective plea-bargaining is an equal opportunity of law for all. However, a majority of minorities and the less fortunate will use it as a means to minimize their punishment or to be there for their families. From a judge’s perspective, the key incentive for accepting a plea bargain is to alleviate the necessity to schedule and hold a trial on an overcrowded docket. Judges are aware of prison overcrowding and may be sympathetic to the "processing out" of offenders who are not able to serve much jail time anyhow. Generally speaking, plea bargains help make a more sensible budget and management of confined resources.
The problem with this bait, nonetheless, is the proclivity for lower income defendants is those who believe they are faultless to accept a plea deal because they lack the funds for a vigorous defense (Luka, 2014).
Since the prosecutor generally offers pleas when they are not sure of the outcome if the case goes to trial, by offering the deal the prosecution is therefore certain of a win. The prosecutor has limited resources because they are working on the budget of the county in addition to they must have ample time to prepare a case for trial. So if there is no guarantee of definite win pleas are the best way to go (Gilchrist, 2016).
Conclusion
Lastly, Plea-bargaining is a tool used by the court system and prosecutors to keep cost down and conviction rates high and steady. By offering a plea deal it is a guarantee for conviction and for jurisdictions to show on their annual statistics report that convictions are pretty close to the cases filed. In Jackson, county Missouri 16th District courts in the year 2013 there were 3,513 felony filings with 2,491 closed by plea-bargaining, 34 jury trials, 9 chose to have their cases tired before a judge and 1,077 were dismissed (Hartman, 2016).
Plea-bargains are used in many situations depending on the district. However, courts do use plea-bargains when the courts are overcrowded or if there is a high profile case that needs more time and attention. A pled deal affords the defendant to save time, money and often times minimizing the sentence term (Thomson, 2013).
Plea-Bargaining Violate Due Process …show more content…
Plea-bargaining does not violate due process of law. In the United States a person is entitled to an attorney whether they can afford it or not, therefore the defendant has legal representation. Furthermore, a defendant may have several charges pending against them where they may face an extended amount of time incarcerated, so the prosecutor may offer a deal. Now if the defendant pleads guilty to one charge the other(s) may possibly be dropped. This is the time when the defendant and their legal representative discuss whether to accept, refuse, or further negotiate.
Occasionally the defendant's attorney may approach the prosecutor to ask if there's a deal offer or states that the defendant wants to make a deal. There's nothing wrong with plea bargaining, the judge often expects one, and must approve it for it to go through.
From time to time the prosecution may offer a plea-deal or immunity to the defendant in exchange for an agreement to provide testimony against someone else, the prosecutor need further testimony to get a conviction against another whom may be responsible for the crime. Many crimes are orchestrated by what some may call the mastermind and carried out by their flunkies so more times than not the best way to get the masterminds convicted is to plea deal with the flunkies in order to convict the masterminds. A majority of criminal, civil cases do not make it to trial because; they are pleaded or settled out of court. The court system would be very inundated if every case went to a jury trial not to mention the extra fees for jury duty (Colvin, 2015).
Plea-Bargaining Reduces Society’s Interest in Appropriate Punishment Meanwhile, certain members of society may not view plea deals as the right punishment for some defendants.
An example of the reduced interest could be when someone has lost a life and the prosecution gives a deal to reduce murder to manslaughter thereby, affording the defendant to serve less time in prison. Unfortunately, the research article “Opening Pandora’s Box: How Does Defendant Race Influence Plea Bargaining?” by Luka, Kutateladze & Johnson, black defendants rarely receive lesser deal offers, and both black and Latino defendants were more likely to receive prison sentence offers. However, these differences were largely explained by legal factors, evidence, arrest conditions, and court actor characteristics, though black defendants are still more likely to receive prison sentence bargains after including these things. No differences were found between white and Asian defendants (Luka, 2014).
Should the Supreme Court set rules for
plea-bargaining? The Supreme Court should not have a need to set rules unless a defendant’s constitutional right has been violated during the course of the charges. An example of this would be Gabe Watson “The Honeymoon Killer,” while on their honeymoon Gabe and Tina Thomas Watson went diving in Queensland Australia. Though Gabe was a more experienced diver than Tina they went down together. Less than eight minutes after descending Gabe returned without Tina calling for help. After Tina pronounced dead, and from Gabe’s eyewitness account of what happened, the officer formed his own opinion and alleged that Gabe had in fact murdered his bride Tina he was indicted to stand trial for murder. However, Gabe pled guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter to serve a prison sentence of four and a half years in prison, to be suspended after 12 months. But the Attorney-General appealed, and his sentence was modified to be suspended after 18 months. After serving his sentence Gabe Watson returned to the United States, upon arrival he was arrested and charged with the capital murder of Tina Thomas Watson in Alabama. At trial the judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence. This is a case were the Supreme Courts should have intervene because Gabe had already did his time and this would have been double jeopardy to say the least (Colvin, 2015).
Plea-Bargaining is it Disproportionate Some would say that plea-bargaining is disproportion simply because a defendant with limited to no finances might take a plea offer even when they are innocent. Thereby, pleading guilty to a crime in which they did not commit. But a defendant that has financial resources could hire an attorney that might ask the prosecutor to reduce the charges and the defendant walks away with a slap on the wrist on a serious crime (Luka, 2014). A personal family example of this is an unpublicized case in 1990 in the state of Kansas. Norman L. met a female drug addict, the young woman whom had just ran out of drugs needing her next fix she calls on him to take her money to go score her some more drugs. He took her money went to the next state over for eight days; after four days she contacts local police and stated that he had raped her. Since police could not locate Norman L. they put out an arrest warrant and placed him in the top 10 most wanted in Kansas City, family saw his name and face on television and convinced him to turn himself in. Norman did so, but not knowing much about the law he went down and answered questions without an attorney, with no way to contact his family no one knew he was locked up. He had a court appointed attorney and refused to plead guilty, however, when his attorney told him to take the plea offer because he was not going home anytime soon the deal would allow him to see his sons grow up. So Norman agreed, but not knowing that the courts would use his juvenile arrest records against him; what Norman thought would be no more than five years turned into a 25 to life. Had this public defender informed him of this he would have went to trial with the hope of seeing his boys become men and to say goodbye to his parents (Johnson, 2014).
Plea-Bargaining Equal Opportunity of the Law In most officials prospective plea-bargaining is an equal opportunity of law for all. However, a majority of minorities and the less fortunate will use it as a means to minimize their punishment or to be there for their families. From a judge’s perspective, the key incentive for accepting a plea bargain is to alleviate the necessity to schedule and hold a trial on an overcrowded docket. Judges are aware of prison overcrowding and may be sympathetic to the "processing out" of offenders who are not able to serve much jail time anyhow. Generally speaking, plea bargains help make a more sensible budget and management of confined resources.
The problem with this bait, nonetheless, is the proclivity for lower income defendants is those who believe they are faultless to accept a plea deal because they lack the funds for a vigorous defense (Luka, 2014).
Since the prosecutor generally offers pleas when they are not sure of the outcome if the case goes to trial, by offering the deal the prosecution is therefore certain of a win. The prosecutor has limited resources because they are working on the budget of the county in addition to they must have ample time to prepare a case for trial. So if there is no guarantee of definite win pleas are the best way to go (Gilchrist, 2016).
Conclusion
Lastly, Plea-bargaining is a tool used by the court system and prosecutors to keep cost down and conviction rates high and steady. By offering a plea deal it is a guarantee for conviction and for jurisdictions to show on their annual statistics report that convictions are pretty close to the cases filed. In Jackson, county Missouri 16th District courts in the year 2013 there were 3,513 felony filings with 2,491 closed by plea-bargaining, 34 jury trials, 9 chose to have their cases tired before a judge and 1,077 were dismissed (Hartman, 2016).