Plea Bargaining Undermines the American Criminal Justice System.

[Darxmarth23]

In the United States Criminal Justice System, someone accused of a crime can plea guilty to it and suffer relatively lesser charges than that if he or she proceeded to the trial and lost.

Here is a definition for plea bargaining:

"The process whereby a criminal defendant and prosecutor reach a mutually satisfactory disposition of a criminal case, subject to court approval.

Plea bargaining can conclude a criminal case without a trial. When it is successful, plea bargaining results in a plea agreement between the prosecutor and defendant. In this agreement, the defendant agrees to plead guilty without a trial, and, in return, the prosecutor agrees to dismiss certain charges or make favorable sentence recommendations to the court. Plea bargaining is expressly authorized in statutes and in court rules." - thefreelegaldictionary
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Plea+Bargaining

So although the criminal still gets his gets his punishment, he gets a lesser sentence because he or she pleaded guilty. Someone who committed the same crime but did not plea guilty and lost the trial would get more. Is the justice system doing its job if its letting a criminal suffer less? Does plea bargaining defeat the purpose of the criminal justice system?

Forgive me for my grammar and flow, English is NOT my first language...

 

[rvkevin]

So although the criminal still gets his gets his punishment, he gets a lesser sentence because he or she pleaded guilty. Someone who committed the same crime but did not plea guilty and lost the trial would get more. Is the justice system doing its job if its letting a criminal suffer less? Does plea bargaining defeat the purpose of the criminal justice system?

Its not that a person the plea deals gets a more or less serious penalty than someone who goes to trial. It's only that they subject themselves to less risk than going to trial. Suppose someone is on trial for a crime with a 5 year sentence. There is a 80% chance that the person will be found guilty. This means that, on average, the penalty will be 4 years in prison. If they plead to a sentence of 4 years or go to trial, they get the same penalty on average, but one option has more risk. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on how risk adverse you are. I suspect the public would rather have some penalty (even one slightly diminished) administered rather than the possibility of no penalty. The only problem occurs when prosecutors don't accurately judge how good their case is and offer plea deals that are too lenient, but that would be an issue in practice, not in principle.

 

[El_LoVo]

So although the criminal still gets his gets his punishment, he gets a lesser sentence because he or she pleaded guilty. Someone who committed the same crime but did not plea guilty and lost the trial would get more. Is the justice system doing its job if its letting a criminal suffer less? Does plea bargaining defeat the purpose of the criminal justice system?

Forgive me for my grammar and flow, English is NOT my first language...

I believe the criminal "justice" system is not undermining itself, but rather is incredibly good at fulfilling its purpose.
The system is not out there to be fair and considerate of people.
The purpose is to
1. round up as many "criminals" as it can to churn through the judicial system.
2. Prosecute and create/hand out penalties, (jailtime, tickets, community service)
3. collect the money from,
a. tickets, from speeding and other ticket things
b. free labor, from community service/ prison duties.
c. taxpayers, whom have to pay to maintain prisoners.

The purpose of the justice system, like most "for your own good" organizations, is to survive on the misery the masses. It is one of the many leeches making society drowzy.

 

[ballin4life]

Plea deals kind of make sense in the abstract. Trials use up a lot of time and money, so plea bargains are a good way of reducing the number of actual trials.

I think that plea bargains are abused sometimes though. I've heard of cases where someone is on trial for a crime with a potentially high max penalty (say 1 year in prison), and even though they are innocent, they feel compelled to take a plea bargain of a fine/community service or something simply because they don't even want to take the chance of going to prison.

In this way, prosecutors can abuse plea bargains to get more convictions and more money in fines for the state.

 

[GwJ]

When I was a kid, my mom did the same thing. If I stole...say a cookie...from the cookie pan after they were made, she'd ask me, "Dave, did you eat a cookie?"

She already knew I did, but I thought I was clever and could deceive her. I said I didn't and I tried making up all sorts of excuses for why it could look like a cookie was missing. I was grounded. From then on, I always answered yes when I took a cookie and I don't get punished for it. Of course, I still get yelled at for eating the leftover icing, but you know...

 

[ballin4life]

When I was a kid, my mom did the same thing. If I stole...say a cookie...from the cookie pan after they were made, she'd ask me, "Dave, did you eat a cookie?"

She already knew I did, but I thought I was clever and could deceive her. I said I didn't and I tried making up all sorts of excuses for why it could look like a cookie was missing. I was grounded. From then on, I always answered yes when I took a cookie and I don't get punished for it. Of course, I still get yelled at for eating the leftover icing, but you know...

If this is a response to me, then I think you misunderstood.

A more accurate analogy would be if your cousin took the cookie, but then when your Mom asked if you took it, and you said yes because you knew you would be punished if you said no (even though that is the truth).

 

[1048576]

Plea deals kind of make sense in the abstract. Trials use up a lot of time and money, so plea bargains are a good way of reducing the number of actual trials.

I think that plea bargains are abused sometimes though. I've heard of cases where someone is on trial for a crime with a potentially high max penalty (say 1 year in prison), and even though they are innocent, they feel compelled to take a plea bargain of a fine/community service or something simply because they don't even want to take the chance of going to prison.

In this way, prosecutors can abuse plea bargains to get more convictions and more money in fines for the state.

If you are innocent, it should be highly unlikely you get sent to prison. If it isn't, then we have a much bigger problem than plea bargaining. Besides, a criminal record should be enough of a deterrent to not plead no contest to something you didn't do.

I don't see any fault with the plea bargaining system. It allows the most criminals to serve closest to the time they deserve as goverened by our justice system. Without it, there would not be as many reliable leads to arrest accomplices et. al., and there would be less flexibility in sentencing, sort of like if we removed everything smaller than a quarter from our currency. Then there's the benefit of not wasting court's time.

 

[ballin4life]

Humans are risk averse though. Also there are the legal fees that a defendant must pay.

 

[1048576]

So? It still benefits the criminal in that they took the bargain over the option of going to trial. Taking a 2 year jail sentence for a 10% conviction rate is still closer to ideal than a trial with outcome of 0 or 10 years. It's a nice way of handling the uncertainty of whether or not "reasonable doubt" has been established. Also, aren't the fees much less if the trial doesn't actually occur?

Personally, I think there are two main problems with the justice system. 1.) We have a jury of our peers, and our peers are ********. 2.) The courts don't consider time to be of monetary worth. Even if I play smash all day, my time is still valuable to me and I would be willing to pay some amount to spend it in such a fashion instead of sitting in a courtroom for 10 hours looking at old people. Similarly, I would be willing to exchange smash for old people if and only if I was paid to do so.

 

[ballin4life]

Well my problem is that someone who is innocent might feel compelled to take a plea bargain.

Legal fees from a trial are an incentive to take a plea bargain. Time spent in a trial is an incentive to take a plea bargain. The fact that humans are risk averse and don't even want to take a chance of going to jail gives an incentive to take a plea bargain.

I don't think that this is a huge problem but I think I have heard of some cases where an innocent person decided to take a plea bargain.

edit: Wikipedia has a brief discussion of this subject here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain#Controversy

 

[1048576]

Okay, but that's not a problem with plea bargaining. If you removed the plea bargaining those other issues would still be there, and criminals would not be getting a fair shake as a result (except for the risk aversion, in which plea bargaining still produces a "better" result than taking the chance [better as defined in my above post])

Also, having a criminal record regardless of time spent in jail or w/e is a pretty big incentive for someone who is innocent to not take a plea bargain.

 

[ballin4life]

There isn't a problem with innocent people taking plea bargains?

Also criminal record is often an incentive to take a plea bargain as well. Plea bargains often reduce felonies to misdemeanors. Having a misdemeanor on your record is not nearly as harmful as a felony.

 

[1048576]

The problem is the high chance of an innocent person being found guilty, not with them recognizing that chance. (If it's a low chance then they'll take a plea for a few hours of community service, which is way better than 5% of them being thrown in the slammer.)

Nothing >>> misdemeanor > felony, how I see it, as far as crimina records are concerned. Do you disagree?