Plea Bargaining

Plea Bargaining

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CJA/224

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Plea Bargaining

Various thriving criminal prosecutions in the United States do not at all times end with jury or judge trials, but with plea bargains. Approximately 90% of criminal cases in American criminal justice system are handled by plea bargains. Plea bargains are contracts among defendants and prosecutors where defendants decide to plead guilty to some or all the charges against them trade for reductions from the prosecutors. These contracts let prosecutors give their time and means on other cases, and limit the amount of trials that judges need to manage. With plea bargains, prosecutors are more than likely to agree to lessen the defendant’s penalty. Prosecutors are able to achieve this by lessening the amount or the harshness of the charges against defendants. Some may agree to propose that defendants be given reduced sentences.

There are three types of plea bargains that are generally used by prosecutors; charge bargaining, sentence bargaining and fact bargaining (Plea Bargains: In Depth, 2014). Charge bargaining, the majority frequent type of plea bargaining, where defendants decides to plead guilty to a reduced charge given the original charge will be dismissed. A common type of charge bargaining would be agreeing to plead guilty to manslaughter rather than murder (Plea Bargains: In Depth, 2014). Sentence bargaining is less ordinary and have a better control than charge bargaining. Sentence bargaining is offered to a defendant who agrees to plead guilty to the given or original charge in return for a lighter sentence. This type of bargaining has to be reviewed by a judge and most jurisdictions do not award sentence bargains. The third and least common form of plea bargaining, is fact bargaining. Fact bargaining happens when a defendant agrees to specify to sure facts in order to avoid other facts from being presented into evidence. A lot of courts do not...