Post on 26-Nov-2014
PLEA BARGAINS
Plea-bargaining can mean many things to many people, in and out of the courtroom. Let
us first start by defining plea bargain. Plea bargain is defined an agreement in which the
defendant enters a guilty plea in exchange for a reduced sentence. This is the technical meaning,
but as I stated before, the word plea bargain can mean very different things to very different
people.
To the accused, the word plea bargain means a freedom of choice. To the prosecutor, it
means a lesser workload. To the Judge, it means saving his time and the courts time, and to the
state, a plea bargain means saving money. In my perception, the word plea bargain means a
failure of the American trial system. The Constitution grants us, the citizens of this country, a
right to speedy trial by jury of our peers. Where exactly do you see that right, which is rightfully
ours, in plea bargains? How can our trial and court system not bestow the punishment that fits
the crime? When we give the accused freedom of choice, isn’t that an oxymoron? The only
effectiveness I can see in the court system plea bargains is that solely the courts are benefitting
from them. The courts save time, money and the prosecutors save themselves from a huge
workload. Plea bargains have no effectiveness on the justice. How are the victims given justice if
the accused gets a far lesser sentence and punishment than is fairly just? How can the accused
learn their lesson when they have the freedom to choose a lesser punishment? How does the
public perceive our trial system as fair and just when plea bargains are being over used to save
time and money?
Mehrin Reid Expository Writing Composition
Plea bargaining is not a useful tool. The court systems, in order to save themselves from a
trial, “…forces the party into a situation where they have to take a guess about what the evidence
is, about how strong the case might be, and they have to make that guess against the background
of enormously severe penalties if you guess wrong.” (Schulhofer, 2004)
Even though defendants are innocent, they do not know if they will be proved innocent or
guilty without a reasonable doubt when in front of a jury. They are pressured into taking a guilty
plea because they cannot afford the risk of going to trial. The court systems are unable to sort
out the guilty people from the innocent and that is the main reason this system of plea bargaining
is not a useful tool to the courts, the public, the defendants and the victims.
The word plea bargain may mean many different things to many different people but
what we must understand is that plea bargain has many more cons than pros for both the faith of
the people in the criminal justice system as well as the victims. Our justice system should be fair
and just for all but all it seems to do is save time and money for the state and put many innocent
people in jail and give the freedom of choice. It is time to change our trial and court systems to
reflect what our founding fathers initially desired from it, the right to a speedy trial from our jury
of peers, because the only people plea bargains benefit are the GUILTY!
Mehrin Reid Expository Writing Composition
Works CitedSchulhofer, S. (2004, June 17). Frontline. Retrieved October 22, 2010 from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plea/faqs/
Seiter, R. P. (2008). The Role of Plea Bargaining and Sentencing. In R. P. Seiter, Corrections An Introduction 2nd Edition (pp. 47-48). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Mehrin Reid Expository Writing Composition