In the thread describing the difference between Guilty pleas and No Contest, Bricker decribed the benefits of pleading No Contest and the times when you can’t plead guilty but, to my reading, doesn’t say why one would ever choose “guilty” over “no contest”. It seems that it would always be in your best interest to plead “no contest” rather than “guilty”.
On a related and slightly more personal note, how do “no contest” pleas figure into your criminal record? If a position excludes anyone found guilty of a felony, for example, does that include anyone who plead “no contest”? A friend of mine had some stuff stolen from her before and the thief was recently caught and is going to trial. She was a little dismayed to hear that the thief was likely to plea “no contest” but the officer on the case told ther that there was really no difference and the crime would follow him through life same as it would if he was found guilty. Basicly that the plea would serve solely to make the thief feel better. Is this the case?
At the very worst, a guilty plea is equal to a no contest plea, from the defendant’s perspective. At best, it offers the defendant some advantages. Normally, then, a no contest plea is offered as an inducement to take a plea bargain. Few defendants would choose no contest over guilty, although the advantages might not be of much use to many defendants. Here are the basic advantages:
Yes. And most positions exclude those convicted of felonies, just to circumlocute the issue.
Your friend should talk to an attorney licensed in her jurisdiction about her own rights. That said, in a case of theft, the thief might gain a slight advantage if the thief were expecting a civil suit. If the thief pleads no contest, then the conviction and plea cannot be used to establish elements of the civil case. Plus, if the defendant pleads guilty instead, a transcript of the allocution would be quite damaging in a civil case.
Say I’ve been arrested for stealing candy from babies. I go to trial and, for whatever reason, I don’t plan to plead my innocence. So my options seems to be to:
(A) Plead guilty and be sentanced and potentially have my plea used as evidence in the civil case Angry Mothers v Jophiel
(B) Plead No Contest, be sentanced and not have my plea used as evidence.
In either event, I’m getting equal jail time or whatever the criminal penalty is and I have to register as a candy thief. Why would I choose (A)? You say that, at best, pleading guilty offers advantages over No Contest but what are they?
I was less than clear above. I intended to say that there are no advantages to pleading guilty instead of no contest. The hang up is, as **Bricker **points out, the judge does not have to accept a no contest plea. So the advantage (if you can call it one) of a guilty plea is that you might not be able to plead no contest, but can pretty much always plead guilty (except in the *Alford *plea) situation.
I’ll also throw in one factor, that I think was brought up in another thread on this general topic. A lot of the time, people plead guilty because they’ve been offered some sort of plea bargain by the prosecutor… plead guilty to this or otherwise we’ll charge you with a more serious crime/a related offense.
Prosecutors don’t have to offer you the same plea bargain if you plead no contest… they have many of the same practical reasons for doing so, but there are other considerations that enter. Most of the time, if they told someone that they have to plead guilty, not just no contest, to take the deal, the defendant would go along with that.