4 ms·

I believe plea bargaining has its place in the Justice system, however abuse of plea bargains has to go.

tremon 10y ago
Maybe simple suggestion: plea bargains shouldn't be put on a criminal record. If the prosecution doesn't care enough about your crime to lead you before a judge, you shouldn't have to carry that burden around either.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  A judge accepts the plea.
  - kwhitefoot 10y ago
    But he doesn't hear all the arguments.
enjo 10y ago
Could you elaborate please?
ergothus 10y ago
I agree with both your statements, but what does keeping plea bargains but stopping abuse look like? I mean, you'd have to come up with some sort of reliable test for what abusing the system is. That means you'd essentially have to have rules for prosecutors' discretion, which sort of defeats the idea of discretion. I understand the ideal of plea bargains, but I can't think of how to make them work without inviting bad situations, particularly for those that suffer more from drawn out litigation or have reason to suspect the system wouldn't find them correctly innocent. It's easy to find terribly egregious scenarios, but plenty of others become quite subjective, and yet still very manipulative. Honest question, do you have a proposed solution that doesn't remove plea bargains entirely?
- akiselev 10y ago
  > That means you'd essentially have to have rules for prosecutors' discretion, which sort of defeats the idea of discretion. No it doesn't. Their discretion for who and what to prosecute are already limited by the criminal code created by the relevant legislature. Judges have a lot more discretion than prosecutors but they too are limited by a variety of factors including minimum sentencing laws and public pressure (since many are elected). Besides, prosecutors already have too much discretion if they can use false positive tests and the threat of a jury sentencing to bully innocent people into becoming felons. > Honest question, do you have a proposed solution that doesn't remove plea bargains entirely? There are a number of solutions, just look at the Wikipedia page on plea bargaining [1]. Plea bargains are illegal in countries like Denmark and severely restricted elsewhere like the UK and Estonia. This is trodden territory. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain
  - ergothus 10y ago
    >> Honest question, do you have a proposed solution that doesn't remove plea bargains entirely? > There are a number of solutions...Plea bargains are illegal in countries like Denmark and severely restricted elsewhere like the UK and Estonia. That sounds an awful lot like saying "No, you remove them entirely, or almost entirely" Since I was asking someone that said they wanted to keep plea bargains how they pictured that, I'm not sure what point you were trying to make. Can you elaborate?
    - akiselev 10y ago
      Did you read the page? In Estonia plea bargains are limited to cases that carry a maximum of four years of imprisonment and a max of 25% can be shaved off of the sentence. In France, plea bargains are limited to crimes that carry a maximum of one year. Poland has a maximum of ten years. Note that this does not preclude anyone from pleading guilty without a plea bargain. The whole point is to reduce court load and create leverage when trying to convince someone to become state's witness (which is controversial as well). How does placing concrete limits on plea bargains doing away with them "entirely or almost entirely?" Estonia's and France's systems, for example, allow largely unrestricted plea bargains in the vast majority of cases, thus freeing the court for more important cases that carry large penalties while preventing prosecutors from bullying innocent people for the sake of their career.
Retric 10y ago
IMO, the largest problem is how much of a 'discount' you get with plea bargains. If there was a cap where a plea bargain could only give you a 20% discount on every single charge then there is little incentive for innocent people to use it. Instead people are given the choice between say 6 months in prison or risk 15 years in prison. You end up sending innocent people to jail for long periods while obviously guilty people get vastly reduced penalties for not wasting the courts time. PS: Alternatively, if a prosecutor offers someone a plea with X charges, they can only charge someone with those same charges.
- cmdkeen 10y ago
  This is the UK system - generally a 1/3 discount is the maximum you can get for an early guilty plea which reduces the further through the process you get. There are plea agreements though much rarer and the judiciary are not fans and will happily ignore them when sentencing. Plus of course the lack of elected prosecutors and the existence of the independent bar (barristers) who often prosecute and defend reduces the madness of prosecutors bragging about almost perfect conviction rates. The system over here isn't perfect but I'd rather face it than any other as an innocent accused.
- mikeash 10y ago
  I think any "discount" is a problem. If you have one, then you are effectively punishing people who insist on their right to a trial. That may not be the intent, but it is the outcome. People should be allowed to plead guilty if they want to, but they shouldn't get any reduced punishment for it. No innocent person should ever be faced with the choice of accepting a certain lesser punishment or an uncertain greater punishment.
  - abecedarius 10y ago
    Arguably these 'bargains' violate the Fifth Amendment: "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". Yes, in a trivial enough case you could say there's no compulsion, but we're a long way from that state of things now. https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2013/01/15/plea-bargaining-and-torture-in-light-of-the-aaron-swartz-case/ https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2013/01/15/plea-bargaining-a...
btilly 10y ago
Originally, plea bargains were illegal in the USA. I wish it had remained that way. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargaining_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargaining_in_the_United_... says, plea bargaining was considered unconstitutional until 1970. It happened, and on a large scale, but such pleas would not stand up under appeal. (Typical lawyer trick, get people to agree to something they can't legally be held to, and as long as they don't realize that it isn't binding, you get your way.) The case https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/397/742/case.html https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/397/742/case.htm... established plea bargaining, but said, Of course, the agents of the State may not produce a plea by actual or threatened physical harm or by mental coercion overbearing the will of the defendant. I, and many others, would argue that giving the person a choice between years in jail if they fight versus weeks if they plea, is exactly such coercion. The USA keeps a larger portion of its population in prison than any other country in the world. By a lot. Our plea bargain system is part of how we do that.

Maybe simple suggestion: plea bargains shouldn't be put on a criminal record. If the prosecution doesn't care enough about your crime to lead you before a judge, you shouldn't have to carry that burden around either.

maxerickson 10y ago
A judge accepts the plea.
- kwhitefoot 10y ago
  But he doesn't hear all the arguments.

enjo 10y ago

Could you elaborate please?

ergothus 10y ago

I agree with both your statements, but what does keeping plea bargains but stopping abuse look like? I mean, you'd have to come up with some sort of reliable test for what abusing the system is. That means you'd essentially have to have rules for prosecutors' discretion, which sort of defeats the idea of discretion. I understand the ideal of plea bargains, but I can't think of how to make them work without inviting bad situations, particularly for those that suffer more from drawn out litigation or have reason to suspect the system wouldn't find them correctly innocent. It's easy to find terribly egregious scenarios, but plenty of others become quite subjective, and yet still very manipulative. Honest question, do you have a proposed solution that doesn't remove plea bargains entirely?

akiselev 10y ago
> That means you'd essentially have to have rules for prosecutors' discretion, which sort of defeats the idea of discretion. No it doesn't. Their discretion for who and what to prosecute are already limited by the criminal code created by the relevant legislature. Judges have a lot more discretion than prosecutors but they too are limited by a variety of factors including minimum sentencing laws and public pressure (since many are elected). Besides, prosecutors already have too much discretion if they can use false positive tests and the threat of a jury sentencing to bully innocent people into becoming felons. > Honest question, do you have a proposed solution that doesn't remove plea bargains entirely? There are a number of solutions, just look at the Wikipedia page on plea bargaining [1]. Plea bargains are illegal in countries like Denmark and severely restricted elsewhere like the UK and Estonia. This is trodden territory. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain
- ergothus 10y ago
  >> Honest question, do you have a proposed solution that doesn't remove plea bargains entirely? > There are a number of solutions...Plea bargains are illegal in countries like Denmark and severely restricted elsewhere like the UK and Estonia. That sounds an awful lot like saying "No, you remove them entirely, or almost entirely" Since I was asking someone that said they wanted to keep plea bargains how they pictured that, I'm not sure what point you were trying to make. Can you elaborate?
  - akiselev 10y ago
    Did you read the page? In Estonia plea bargains are limited to cases that carry a maximum of four years of imprisonment and a max of 25% can be shaved off of the sentence. In France, plea bargains are limited to crimes that carry a maximum of one year. Poland has a maximum of ten years. Note that this does not preclude anyone from pleading guilty without a plea bargain. The whole point is to reduce court load and create leverage when trying to convince someone to become state's witness (which is controversial as well). How does placing concrete limits on plea bargains doing away with them "entirely or almost entirely?" Estonia's and France's systems, for example, allow largely unrestricted plea bargains in the vast majority of cases, thus freeing the court for more important cases that carry large penalties while preventing prosecutors from bullying innocent people for the sake of their career.

Retric 10y ago

IMO, the largest problem is how much of a 'discount' you get with plea bargains. If there was a cap where a plea bargain could only give you a 20% discount on every single charge then there is little incentive for innocent people to use it. Instead people are given the choice between say 6 months in prison or risk 15 years in prison. You end up sending innocent people to jail for long periods while obviously guilty people get vastly reduced penalties for not wasting the courts time. PS: Alternatively, if a prosecutor offers someone a plea with X charges, they can only charge someone with those same charges.

cmdkeen 10y ago
This is the UK system - generally a 1/3 discount is the maximum you can get for an early guilty plea which reduces the further through the process you get. There are plea agreements though much rarer and the judiciary are not fans and will happily ignore them when sentencing. Plus of course the lack of elected prosecutors and the existence of the independent bar (barristers) who often prosecute and defend reduces the madness of prosecutors bragging about almost perfect conviction rates. The system over here isn't perfect but I'd rather face it than any other as an innocent accused.
mikeash 10y ago
I think any "discount" is a problem. If you have one, then you are effectively punishing people who insist on their right to a trial. That may not be the intent, but it is the outcome. People should be allowed to plead guilty if they want to, but they shouldn't get any reduced punishment for it. No innocent person should ever be faced with the choice of accepting a certain lesser punishment or an uncertain greater punishment.
- abecedarius 10y ago
  Arguably these 'bargains' violate the Fifth Amendment: "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". Yes, in a trivial enough case you could say there's no compulsion, but we're a long way from that state of things now. https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2013/01/15/plea-bargaining-and-torture-in-light-of-the-aaron-swartz-case/ https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2013/01/15/plea-bargaining-a...

btilly 10y ago

Originally, plea bargains were illegal in the USA. I wish it had remained that way. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargaining_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargaining_in_the_United_... says, plea bargaining was considered unconstitutional until 1970. It happened, and on a large scale, but such pleas would not stand up under appeal. (Typical lawyer trick, get people to agree to something they can't legally be held to, and as long as they don't realize that it isn't binding, you get your way.) The case https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/397/742/case.html https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/397/742/case.htm... established plea bargaining, but said, Of course, the agents of the State may not produce a plea by actual or threatened physical harm or by mental coercion overbearing the will of the defendant. I, and many others, would argue that giving the person a choice between years in jail if they fight versus weeks if they plea, is exactly such coercion. The USA keeps a larger portion of its population in prison than any other country in the world. By a lot. Our plea bargain system is part of how we do that.