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Guilty Plea: Plea Bargaining - Definition And Types Of Bargaining, The Development Of Plea Bargaining, A Comparative Perspective, Operation Of The Plea Bargaining System

"There is no glory in plea bargaining," writes Professor George Fisher. "In place of a noble clash for truth, plea bargaining gives us a skulking truce . . . . Plea bargaining may be . . . the invading barbarian. But it has won all the same" (p. 859). In the late 1990s, 94 percent of the convictions of state-court felony defendants in the seventy-five largest U.S. counties were by guilty plea rather than trial (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999, p. iv). Similarly, 94 percent of all federal-court felony convictions were by guilty plea (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000, p. 51). Professor John Langbein, a prominent plea bargaining critic, suggests that Americans replace the word all in the Constitutional declaration, "The Trial of all Crimes . . . shall be by jury," with the words virtually none (Langbein, 1992). Plea bargaining has made our criminal justice system far more administrative than adjudicative in character.

ALBERT W. ALSCHULER

See also COUNSEL: RIGHT TO COUNSEL; COUNSEL: ROLE OF COUNSEL; CRIMINAL JUSTICE PROCESS; CRIMINAL PROCEDURE: COMPARATIVE ASPECTS; GUILTY PLEA: ACCEPTING THE PLEA; INFORMAL DISPOSITION; PROSECUTION: COMPARATIVE ASPECTS; PROSECUTION: PROSECUTORIAL DISCRETION.

CASES

Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357 (1978).

Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742 (1970).

McMann v. Richardson, 397 U.S. 759 (1970).

North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25 (1970).

Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257 (1971).

United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570 (1968).

Crime Causation: The Field - Bibliography [next] [back] Crime: Definition - Civil And Criminal Divide, The Positivistic Approach, Nonpositivist Approaches, Bibliography, Cases

User Comments Add a comment…

12 months ago

Bob your totally crazy and your extremely racist my girl friend knows jesus likes Plea Bargaining

about 1 year ago

plea bargaining is wrong and lets people make a fool of themselves.