great article....makes a fairly decent read too! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plea/etc/harva rd.html
some excerpts:
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The plea bargaining system operates by threat. The authorities who administer our non-jury and non-trial procedure tell the accused in effect: "So you want your constitutional right to jury trial? By all means, be our guest. But beware. If you claim this right and are convicted, we will punish you twice, once for the offense, and once again for having displayed the temerity to exercise your constitutional right to jury trial." Our authorities are, of course, more circumspect in their discourse. They do not need to convey this threat in the bald fashion that I have just expressed it. There is no doubt, however, that plea bargaining works precisely in this way. Whether plea bargaining takes the form of charge bargaining (a lesser offense in exchange for a guilty plea) or sentence bargaining (a reduced sanction in exchange for a guilty plea), the object is to coerce the accused to surrender his right to jury trial by threatening him with a materially greater sanction if he exercises that right."
"What is so bad about plea bargaining?
Plea bargaining suppresses both the jury and the trial. There are important virtues to each. The jury disperses power away from the officers of the state. Because the sanctions applied in the criminal justice system are so ominous, the danger of abuse of state power in criminal procedure is serious. Plea bargaining achieves just what the Framers expected the jury to prevent, the aggrandizement of state power. Plea bargaining transfers the power of condemnation to a low-visibility decision maker, the prosecutor. Because negotiation replaces trial, plea bargaining substitutes an essentially concealed procedure for the salutary openness of public jury trial. The prosecutor who operates the negotiated plea system exercises awesome powers, powers that were meant to be shared with judges and jurors. As a practical matter, plea bargaining concentrates both the power to adjudicate and the power to sentence in the hands of the prosecutor."
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Plea bargaining is also wrong because it is coercive. A legal system that comes to depend upon coercing people to waive their supposed rights is by definition a failed system. The system can no longer function by adhering to its own stated principles. Plea bargaining puts the accused under ferocious pressure to bear false witness against himself."
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In the end, however, the worst aspect of plea bargaining is simply the dishonesty. Charge bargaining has made our criminal statistics into hash. The person who committed murder is pretended to have committed manslaughter; the person whose real crime was child molesting is convicted of loitering around a schoolyard."
I would love to hear what Priya has to say on this topic!!! My views are simple...i hate short cuts in life..be it any aspect of life.
Edited by Gauri_3 - 18 years ago
