Plea bargaining serves as a mechanism to expedite the resolution of criminal cases, allowing both the prosecution and the defense to avoid the time, expense, and uncertainty of a trial.
It is a prevalent practice in the United States, where it resolves the vast majority[quantify] of criminal cases, and has been adopted in various forms in other legal systems worldwide.
Detractors argue that it may encourage defendants, including the innocent, to plead guilty out of fear of harsher penalties if convicted at trial.
The practice of plea bargaining has spread globally but varies significantly based on local legal traditions and regulations.
In some jurisdictions, the judiciary retains the final authority to approve or reject plea agreements, ensuring that any proposed sentence aligns with public interest and justice standards.
[1] Plea bargaining is criticized, particularly outside the United States, on the grounds that its close relationship with rewards, threats and coercion potentially endanger the correct legal outcome.
[4][5] Author Martin Yant discusses the use of coercion in plea bargaining: Even when the charges are more serious, prosecutors often can still bluff defense attorneys and their clients into pleading guilty to a lesser offense.
The main danger to be guarded against in these cases is that the prosecutor is persuaded to agree to a plea or a basis that is not in the public interest and interests of justice because it does not adequately reflect the seriousness of the offending ... Any plea agreement must reflect the seriousness and extent of the offending and give the court adequate sentencing powers.
"[10] The extent to which innocent people will accept a plea bargain and plead guilty is contentious and has been subjected to considerable research.
Much research has focused on the relatively few actual cases where innocence was subsequently proven, such as successful appeals for murder and rape based upon DNA evidence, which tend to be atypical of trials as a whole (being by their nature only the most serious kinds of crime).
It also found that around 56% of subjects who were actually innocent (and privately knew it) also take up the plea-bargain and plead guilty, for reasons including avoiding formal quasi-legal processes, uncertainty, possibility of greater harm to personal future plans, or deprivation of home environment due to remedial courses.
Our research, however, demonstrates that when study participants are placed in real, rather than hypothetical, bargaining situations and are presented with accurate information regarding their statistical probability of success, just as they might be so informed by their attorney or the government during a criminal plea negotiation, innocent defendants are highly risk-averse.More pressure to plea bargain may be applied in weak cases (where there is less certainty of both guilt and jury conviction) than strong cases.
For example, prosecutors and defense attorneys may seek to maintain good relations with one another, creating a potential conflict with the parties they represent.
Nevertheless, plea bargaining has become an accepted part of the criminal justice system although judges and Crown attorneys are often reluctant to refer to it as such.
Largely particular to the Canadian justice system is that further negotiations concerning the final disposition of a criminal case may also arise even after a sentence has been passed.
[28] Plea bargaining as a formal legal provision was introduced in Pakistan by the National Accountability Ordinance 1999, an anti-corruption law.
A special feature of this plea bargain is that the accused applies for it, accepting guilt, and offers to return the proceeds of corruption as determined by investigators and prosecutors.
[32] Plea bargains are so common in the Superior Courts of California (the general trial courts) that the Judicial Council of California has published an optional seven-page form (containing all mandatory advisements required by federal and state law) to help prosecutors and defense attorneys reduce such bargains into written plea agreements.
For example, the adversarial nature of the U.S. criminal justice system puts judges in a passive role, in which they have no independent access to information with which to assess the strength of the case against the defendant.
Also, unlike common law systems, prosecutors in civil law countries may have limited or no power to drop or reduce charges after a case has been filed, and in some countries their power to drop or reduce charges before a case has been filed is limited, making plea bargaining impossible.
[39] In the Central African Republic, witchcraft carries heavy penalties but those accused of it typically confess in exchange for a modest sentence.
[a][46] The introduction of a limited form of plea bargaining (comparution sur reconnaissance préalable de culpabilité or CRPC, often summarized as plaider coupable) in 2004 was highly controversial in France.
(Article 210 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Georgia) To avoid abuse of powers, legislation foresees written consent of the supervisory prosecutor as necessary precondition to conclude plea agreement and to amend its provisions.
Under Article 217 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Georgia, the prosecutor is obliged to consult with the victim prior to concluding the plea agreement and inform him or her about this.
In addition, under the Guidelines of the Prosecution Service of Georgia, the prosecutor is obliged to take into consideration the interests of the victim and as a rule conclude the plea agreement after the damage is compensated.
[57] The second case was a November 2018 deal to obtain evidence of accounting and securities law violations against Nissan executives Carlos Ghosn and Greg Kelly.
The prosecutor, defendant, and defense counsel each sign a written agreement, which must then be admitted into evidence in a public court without delay.
[59] Poland also adopted a limited form of plea bargaining, which is applicable only to minor felonies (punishable by no more than 10 years of imprisonment).
The procedure is called "voluntary submission to a penalty" and allows the court to pass an agreed sentence without reviewing the evidence, which significantly shortens the trial.
If the defendant accepts these suggestions and changes his penalty proposition, the court approves it and passes the verdict according to the plea agreement.