I didn’t say that they had no evidence, in fact I listed precisely what evidence they had absent the DNA evidence, but like I said I’m not claiming that you guys arguing against the existence of plea bargains are definitely wrong, just that based on what I’ve read in this thread I’m very far from being convinced they are this great injustice and that we need to fundamentally change the way our justice system works. You are the one arguing for this change, so it’s on you to convince society that this is something that needs to happen. I did say that this game of hypothetical scenarios is unlikely to lead us anywhere productive. So here we are.
You may well be right about this, but so far the arguments I’ve seen here seem insufficient to justify this wholesale change in how we’ve done things up to now. I’m not an adversary here, I’m participating in this thread to try to learn why some of you feel so strongly about this. I’m asking questions to try to understand more where you are coming from, not to argue or to prove anything myself.
this reminds me of the life skills class in high school where we had the juvenile law enforcement officer come by and explain things “we needed to know”
the scenario was this: you have a shifty friend and he comes by in a car you’ve never seen before and convinces you to go for a ride you do and get pulled over in a stolen car
he explains what happens when you get arrested what to do & not to do ect
the interesting thing is he then goes "0k at the police station your friend says you helped and you get charged …when your public defender meets with the DA tell him to take the deal because if you have a good PD he could convince the da that yes you were in the car but didn’t take it and probably get 6 months probation which could be removed off your record
He said DONT ASK FOR A HEARING/TRIAL the reason being is “it will just piss everyone off because of dragging it out and costing time of money and youll likely get the max sentence…”
going by that could you imagine what there gonna give everyone busted with a dime bag ?
If those are the sorts of conundrums that come up, then our justice system is even worse off.
If the prosecutor, judge, or whoever else feels that this kid deserves a second chance, and is better in a short term rehabilitation program, rather than life in jail, then why should a greater punishment be offered if he wants to exercise the rights guaranteed to him under the constitution, err, I mean, he’s a jerk and wants to fight it?
Right. Circumstantial and unreliable witnesses. So, no evidence that can be presented to a jury.
I see it as a problem because prosecutors can use it as a form of leverage to prevent people from exercising their rights guaranteed by the constitution. It can make innocent people plead guilty, out of fear of larger sentences if they don’t. It also means that those who know that they are guilty can get shorter prison sentences than those who know that they are innocent and try to prove it in court.
I don’t see it as “taking responsibility.” I don’t see exercising your rights under the constitution as abrogating responsibility.
The lesson that is learned is that if you take a plea, you can be out committing crimes again in 2 years. Sending a teenager to jail for 20 years doesn’t teach anyone anything.
Such things should certainly come up in parole and probation hearings. Determining whether someone is fit to rejoin society. Not as a part of getting people to forgo their rights.
In my criminal conviction, the crown had an extremely weak case. No physical evidence, no witnesses. All they had on me was the fact that my victim had plead out to assaulting me six months earlier,a witness who could state that I planned on returning the favor, and obviously I had no alibi. My lawyer gave me 70-30 odds that we would win at trial, but pointed out that if my victim died before the trial, I would be facing murder charges and possibly life in prison instead, so a deal was probably wise. (My lawyer was right, he died about two weeks after I was sentenced.)
My deal was for two years plus a day (the minimum) for Aggravated Assault. The max sentence was 14 years, and the lawyer believed that the most likely result was 6-8 years. So from one point of view, I got a 85.7% reduction in my sentence, assuming that I was sentenced to the max. However, more realistically it was a 66%-75% reduction in my sentence. My lawyer informed me that this was an unusually good deal, one of the best he had seen in a long career.
There is no statutory minimum for aggravated assault in Canada. However, many appellate courts have established what they call “starting points” for calculation of particular offenses, which is probably what your lawyer was referring to.
Thanks, that’s good to know. To be fair, this was about three decades ago, and my memories of it aren’t quite as sharp as they used to be. It’s very likely that I misunderstood what my lawyer was referring to, so thanks for the cite.
Grand juries are nothing like “normal” juries. Only the prosecutor provides evidence to the grand jury so they can decide whether there is enough to merit a trial. As it stands the system is nearly worthless. In 2010 162,000 federal cases went before a grand jury of which 11 did not result in an indictment. In short, the grand jury almost always does whatever the prosecutor wants (occasionally the prosecutor “throws” the case to lose before the grand jury…usually for a case they do not want to prosecute but the public is demanding one).
So getting the defense in there might help. Also, this is not the main trial. It’s just meant to be a “let’s see what you got…if it looks good you can proceed” kinda thing.
Presumably a grand jury could make some sort of assessment that the evidence is overwhelming so no plea bargain or the evidence is tenuous at best and force the DA to take it to trial and prove the case.
What presumption of innocence? The grand jury merely assesses if the prosecutor has enough evidence to move forward with a trial. If we add on some assessment of how good that evidence is I do not see how that impinges on presumption of innocence.
To clarify - once the grand jury begins to consider the question “how much should he plead to, if he is guilty” ISTM that the presumption of innocence is gone.
I don’t think changing the grand jury process as you describe is going to reduce the load on the courts at all. We would be, more or less, substituting a preliminary trial by grand jury before the regular trial.
If managing the load on the court system is a factor to be considered, as I think it must be.
I disagree. I am as conservative and as Republican as a person can be. However, if anyone is accused of a crime, the justice system should have enough judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys as needed. There shouldn’t be a “pretend” justice system so that it is efficient for the taxpayers.
We are talking about taking away liberties. That is the sine qua non of what we should not do in a free society without the full protection of rights.
Can one of the board’s legal types weigh in here? ISTM that the plea admitting the attack can be used in a subsequent trual for murder or manslaughter since the victim died from injuries incurred in the atrack.
In my state, a person convicted of a third felony is sentenced to life imprisonment (with parole eligibility after 15 years) when the prosecution files an information naming the two prior felonies. The judge has no discretion to impose a lesser sentence.
So if I have a client who is accused of delivery of marijuana (a 1 to 5 year sentence) and he has two prior felonies, the state will always offer not to file the recidivist information if he pleads guilty. Even if I have a very winnable case, the client would be taking a foolish risk. He is literally gambling with his life that the jury sees it the same way that we do.
Justice should not be like playing roulette at the State’s casino.
Since no real lawyers have answered, I’ll give my answer, for what it’s worth. As proven by Northern Piper, I am definitely not a lawyer.
My understanding is that aggravated assault is a lesser included offense to manslaughter. Thus, in general, the legal principle of double jeopardy is what prevented the government from prosecuting me for the manslaughter of person X at time Y and place Z after convicting me for the aggravated assault of person X at time Y and place Z. Double jeopary in Canada is prohibited by section 11(h) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Personally speaking, not prosecuting me for manslaughter if the victim died was very specifically included in black and white as part of the plea deal that I made with the crown.
Well, if there are no plea bargains, there will be a lot fewer convictions.
Who would be willing to testify against an accomplice or a higher-up-the-food-chain without a bargain? Nobody talks without a deal. And a lot cases don’t get made without 'em.
Reasons to bargain (for the prosecutor)
Getting a criminal to flip on fellow criminals. What? Are we gonna appeal to their sense of civic duty? The chance for lesser sentence is the only incentive for ratting. Otherwise, they are far better off keeping their mouths shut.
Case is nowhere near a slam dunk. You just don’t get a mountain of evidence in every case. Jury decision could go either way, even when the case is pretty good. Why risk the time and money of a trial only to see someone walk. We are already losing criminals to juries who have seen too many CSI episodes.
Going to trial on petty offenses in non-violent cases is just not worth the time and money. And without plea bargaining, it will take sooooo much of both. Getting them to plead out is better for everyone.
We could, I suppose, build a lot more courthouses, jails and prisons, hire a lot more cops and guards and attorneys and create a bunch of new Judge positions. That’s a lot of new tax money that will have to be collected. I, for one, am not interested in paying more for what I see as very little in return. I think that money could be better spent elsewhere.
It also means that you can get people to give false testimony against others in exchange for a lessor punishment for themselves.
If you can’t prove your case, you can’t prove your case.
If it’s not worth the time and money to punish people for petty crimes while respecting the rights granted to them by the constitution, then maybe it isn’t worth punishing people for petty crimes.
Why would, in your scenario, we need more prisons, if there are fewer people being convicted? Seems to me that we would need fewer prisons. That’s quite a bit of tax money that could be saved. For myself, I have no problem having fewer of my tax dollars going to extract a punishment that has as a return only the satisfaction of those who want to see people receive punishment.
I’m not a criminal defense attorney or prosecutor, but it seems to me that the problem is not the theory, but the execution. Regardless of whether plea agreement-based criminal justice systems are inherently unfair, the criminal justice system will always be inherently unfair if it does not have adequate resources. That means enough funding for prosecutors to properly review cases, enough funding for public defenders to adequately review them, and enough funding for judges to ensure there is no huge backlog forcing suspects to remain indefinitely incarcerated pending trial.
No. At least in the US, a plea agreement is generally inadmissible to show guilt in a subsequent prosecution. A plea itself is admissible of proof of the crime charged - that’s why you don’t need a trial if you have pled guilty.
Many innocent defendants are coerced into pleading guilty. If they plead not-guilty, prosecutors may cheat. Michael Morton served nearly Twenty-Five Years of a life sentence for a murder of which he was innocent (disprovable both by eye-witness and DNA evidence which Texas tenaciously fought against). After his release, Texas prosecutor Ken Anderson was found guilty of suppressing (and possibly tampering with) exculpatory evidence.
Anderson’s sentence for cheating Morton out of 25 years? I guess the “justice” system takes care of its own: he got Ten days of jail and a $500 fine. (He only served five days in jail — time off for good behavior?)
.
Over here, guilty pleas have only existed for less than ten years, and only for minor crimes (those calling for a max sentence of one year). So, all criminal cases go to full trial, whether or not the defendant admits guilt (and in fact him amiting guilt doesn’t technically prevent the court from finding him not guilty).
Obviously, the absence of plea bargains would substantially raise the number of trials and as a result the cost of the court system. But it’s not like it’s impossible, since it’s done here and in many other countries.