Reasons for plea bargaining
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A plea bargain is an agreement that is made between the persecutor and the defendant, and the defendant accepts to plead guilty. In such a case, the defendant pleads guilty, having signed a concession with the prosecutor. The defendant can agree to do this to receive more lenient sentencing or to cut short a long case in the court (Miceli, 2019). There are different types of plea bargain; Count, sentence, and charge bargaining. This paper seeks to explain more about plea bargaining.
Reasons for plea bargaining
A defendant can plead guilty voluntarily to avoid the lengthy case, cost of the case, or avoid the publicity that might happen to result in tarnishing his name, especially if he is a celebrity. Lea bargaining happens to be a very private issue that no one comes to know about it apart from the prosecutor and the defendant, as well as the judge (Rotaru, 2019). The prosecutors get to save the expenses and the cost as well as time that might be used handling a lengthy case. Both the defendant and the prosecutor avoid the trials that could have been on both of them. The trials can eventually make the case to be more complicated as more evidence, and other scenarios pop up during trials. This can make the case to be lengthy and a bit complex.
The court is saved from going through the process of conducting trials on the crime cases reported. I tend to doubt these are valid reasons for a defendant who might be innocent pleading guilty. The reasons are not convincing to the point of making one voluntarily agree to be jailed or to be punished over a case that has not been investigated or tried (Tsur, 2017). There must be some mother underlying criminal issues that the defendant might be cautious not to be revealed during the trials. To prevent the court from identifying other hidden criminal agendas or cases that either the prosecutor or the defendant has been involved in, the two parties can consider signing a bargaining plea.
Fairness of plea bargaining
At any chance, plea bargaining is not fair, and most countries forbid it because one party is oppressed over another. To some point, an innocent suspect ends up to go into jail, which might torture him emotionally (Miceli, 2019). In such a case, the prosecutor can take advantage of the defendant and manipulate him so that the case can be shortened and maybe reduce the cost. Some cases are weak cases, and the prosecutors are certain that they will win the case they might use that strong conviction to convince the defendant to accept the signing of a plea bargaining deal.
Plea bargaining differing from mandatory rulings
Plea bargaining shortens the time taken for sentencing to be done while mandatory sentencing lengthens the case. With mandatory sentences, there is an assurance that the party that is being sentenced is the one that is on the wrong and is proved guilty. Unlike in plea bargain, the party being sentenced has not been tried and proven guilty; thus, there is no certainty whether they are guilty or innocent. There is likelihood for the offenders who have been sentenced after signing a plea bargaining agreement with their prosecutors, to repeat an offense. This is because they did not go through the thorough cross proceedings and investigations, and the case did not cost them much (Rotaru, 2019). On the other hand, a party that has gone through the mandatory sentencing can find it difficult to repeat the offense again. This is because they have had a taste of how the court system both expensive and emotionally draining.
Problems concerning plea bargaining
Solving cases by using plea bargaining steals away the rights that the defendants have, which are the rights to go through the court systems and acquire justice. In some cases, the defendant can be pushed or manipulated to agree on signing the plea bargain, which can be against their will. It creates no room for appealing a case (Miceli, 2019). In plea bargaining, the sentenced party does not have the option of filing an appeal even after noticing maybe the prosecutors had lied about the case in some incidents. The case cannot be appealed, and the defendants have to take up the punishments.
In conclusion, therefore, plea bargaining is a practice that most countries do not accept. Many countries go for mandatory sentencing, which tends to serve justice for both parties without oppressing or manipulating anyone (Tsur, 2017). As stated in the above discussion, the reasons behind plea bargaining are not valid at all, not unless there are underlying reasons.
Answer preview to reasons for plea bargaining
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