Plea Bargains: The Courts and the Critics

Al Capone, Galileo, and Spiro Agnew all have at least one thing in common: each plea bargained his way out of trial and into a lesser sentence. [1] Even though plea bargaining has helped countless people over the years in resolving their charges, the practice itself is still coming under intense scrutiny by some modern legal critics. And the main issue at hand by the courts and critics is this: whether the process of plea bargaining affects society in a just or unjust way?

II. DEFINITION

Plea bargaining is the "process whereby the accused and the prosecutor negotiate a mutually satisfactory disposition of the case."[2] The fact is most criminal prosecutions are settled without a trial[3] and the parties enter into a plea bargain, where the defendant gives up his right to trial and the prosecution surrenders his pursuit of the highest sentence or heaviest charge. Many people have chosen to plea bargain rather than go to trial: Michael Kopper, the Enron book-cooker and James Earl Ray, Martin Luther King's assassin, are both examples of defendants who decided to plea out, although they ultimately did so for different reasons.[4] Kopper is an example of a white collar criminal who gave up some information so the DA could acquire testimony against other bigger fish, while granting Mr. Kopper a lighter sentence and bypassing the attention and costs of trial. Mr. Ray, on the other hand, in fear of capital punishment, relinquished his right to trial.

III. HISTORY

Now, if history illustrates anything about the plea bargain it is this: The plea bargain is an essential and beneficial tool for resolving criminal dispositions. The process of plea bargaining has withstood the test of time and has deep roots in history. Some of the most famous trials that were pled out were:

"1633: Galileo gets house arrest from the Inquisition in exchange for his reciting penitential psalms weekly and recanting Copernican heresies.

1931: Al Capone brags about his light sentence for pleading guilty to tax evasion and Prohibition violations. The judge then declares that he isn't bound by the bargain, and Capone does seven and a half years in Alcatraz.

1969: To avoid execution, James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. and gets 99 years.

1990: Facing serious federal charges of insider trading, Michael Milken pleads to lesser charges of securities fraud; soon after, his 10-year sentence is reduced to 2 years." [5]

Now, of course, just because something has been practiced throughout history does not make it a perfect practice; but then again that has never been the contention of this paper, only that the process itself brings about justice for society in a reasonable way.

IV. BENEFITS AND DETRIMENTS OF THE PLEA BARGAIN

Should the aforementioned criminals have received higher sentences or harsher punishments? Was justice done when they received lighter penalties for their quick admissions of guilt, thereby saving the State or Federal Government extra funds? Assuming arguendo, a framed defendant, who is facing the death penalty for first-degree-murder, plea bargains solely out of pure fear of death and not by reason of guilt, then justice cannot be said to have been dispensed. Is it justice to deprive the defendant of his meaningful free choice by placing him under duress by fear of death? Doubtless, it is unjust to allow an innocent person plea bargain out of fear of getting convicted merely because the evidence is stacked high against him and the punishment high. But it is the checks and balances of the judicial system are meant to prevent people from being in such unfair positions.

Other notable issues to consider are money, time and whether the prosecution has a good case. Money, more often than not, tends to be a main issue to come into play.

Most, if not all adults, have to think about money, which means they will inevitably think about taxes since they like to know where their resources are going and how they are being utilized. Therefore, the need for judicial economy is critical since the prosecution's consumption of the citizens' money creates a relationship where the prosecution owes some form accountability for their usage; and it is the process of plea bargaining that effectively keeps the wheels of justice spinning smoothly, preventing the system from clogging up with costly trials. It affords the prosecution the opportunity to iron out a deal with the defense that fits both sides; it saves time which in turn enables the prosecution the ability to better allocate their finite funds into directions where they are most needed, thereby dispensing justice that is more all-embracing. Included within the concept of money is time. Without plea bargaining, the criminal system would become overloaded and very little justice at all would be dispensed. Plea bargain opponents aver that if the system is overcrowded then the state should hire more judges and prosecutors. They insist that bargaining away crimes is never the answer to such an economic issue; moreover, the critics maintain that not going to trial and plea bargaining allows many important issues to be glazed over since discovery is cut short, NEED GOOD ARGUMENT HERE. Therefore, it is this overall efficiency and perhaps efficacy that outweighs any of the evils that come about by plea bargains.

Another issue of note is to consider from the defendant's point of view. It would seem reasonable (at least to the defendant) that the defendant should have a right to resolve the situations as quickly and quietly as he wishes and not be exposed to the attention that a trial attracts if should not wish it so. On the other hand, it is arguably unjust to allow a defendant a means of escape from out of the public eye since the victim or the victim's family possibly never had a chance to hide from the public and therefore, the defendant should have no such privilege.

Furthermore, another benefit to plea bargaining is that it ensures the conviction of a crime. If the evidence is perhaps merely circumstantial and the prosecution thinks it an uphill battle to convict, then the assurance of a plea bargain prevents the possibility of a criminal from going back on the street.

Per contra, opponents of the plea bargain insist that it allows the criminals to escape mandated punishment for all the crimes with which they are charged. Although, this may be true, the law is not black and white and therefore, it is not necessarily allowing injustice if

There have been recent studies that have attempted to limn the shortcomings of the plea bargain system, but in Stephen Schulhofer Law review article "Is Plea Bargaining Inevitable?" he rebuts them with statistics and concludes that "the repeated pronouncements of the Supreme Court and a near-unanimity of scholarly opinion, the fact that most felony cases are devoid of triable issues of fact or law; that a contested trial in such cases is therefore a needless waste of resources; that affording most defendants a contested trial is in any event wholly beyond the capacity of any American urban jurisdiction; and finally that even if we could somehow, heroically, make genuine trials available, opposing attorneys would nonetheless find ways to cooperate and would settle cases by negotiation anyway." [6] So, even though the Bill of Rights doesn't expressly refer to the process of plea bargaining in the impartial trial principle of the Sixth Amendment, for the aforementioned reasons and the fact that the Supreme Court has consistently upheld the constitutionality of its' practice. In Santobello v. New York, the Supreme Court declared that plea bargaining "is not only an essential part of the process but a highly desirable one."

V. CONCLUSION

Although critics have decried the inherent unfairness of determining a defendants' guilt without a full investigation, evidence and impartial fact-finding, these elements are not always required to have a fair disposition. Ultimately, if plea bargaining is more efficient, more beneficial for the judicial economy of the court, more helpful for the prosecution in charging more criminals, then the justice and benefit of plea bargaining seems to outweigh any deficits the practice may contain and verifies its necessity and integral position in our judiciary. If justice is blind and has scales in her hands, then she is objective in her judgments. And if the Supreme Court stands for justice and has sanctioned the plea bargain as a 'desirable' tool that has strong roots in our tradition then it is a tool for justice. As it has been jokingly said, "while in the halls of justice, its' only in the halls that justice is to be found." And although the plea bargain has been found imperfect as all things in this world, it certainly has not been found wanting.

[1] Robert E. Scott and William J. Stuntz's ''Plea Bargaining as Contract'' and Frank Easterbrook's ''Plea Bargaining as Compromise,'' Yale Law Journal, vol. 101 (1992).

[2] Barron's Law Dictionary. Fifth Edition

[3] Scott, et.al at 102.

[4] New York Times, September 29, 2002 Plea Bargain Dirk Olin

[5] Id.

[6] Stephen Schulhofer ''Is Plea Bargaining Inevitable?'' Harvard Law Review, vol. 97 (1984).