Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Are sentences reduced for plea bargain cases?
The plea bargain (also plea agreement or plea deal) is any agreement in a criminal case between the prosecutor and defendant whereby the defendant agrees to plead guilty or nolo contendere to a particular charge in return for some concession from the prosecutor. This may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to a less serious charge, or to one of the several charges, in return for the dismissal of other charges; or it may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to the original criminal charge in return for a more lenient sentence.[1]
Plea bargaining[29] in Magistrates' Court trials is permitted only to the extent that the prosecutors and the defence can agree that the defendant will plead guilty to some charges and the prosecutor will drop the remainder. However, although this is not conducting a plea bargain, in cases before the Crown Court, the defence can request an indication from the judge of the likely maximum sentence that would be imposed should the defendant decide to plead guilty.[30][31]
According to Italian law, a bargain doesn't need a guilty plea (in Italy there is no plea declaration); for this reason, a bargaining sentence is only an acceptance of the penalty in exchange with the stop of investigation and trial and has no binding cogency in other trials, especially in civil trials in which parts argue of the same facts at the effects of civil liability and in other criminal trials in which are processed the accomplices of the defendant that had requested and got a bargaining sentence.[52]
Another situation in which an innocent defendant may plead guilty is in the case of a defendant who cannot raise bail, and who is being held in custody in a jail or detention facility. Because it may take months, or even years, for criminal cases to come to trial or even indictment in some jurisdictions, an innocent defendant who is offered a plea bargain that includes a sentence of less time than he would otherwise spend in jail awaiting an indictment or a trial may choose to accept the plea arrangement and plead guilty.[14]
Another argument against plea bargaining is that it may not actually reduce the costs of administering justice. For example, if a prosecutor has only a 25% chance of winning his case and sending the defendant away to prison for 10 years, he may make a plea agreement for a sentence of one year; but if plea bargaining is unavailable, a prosecutor may drop the case completely.[16]
For instance, Robert Badinter argued that plea bargaining would give too much power to the public prosecutor and would encourage defendants to accept a sentence only to avoid the risk of a bigger sentence in a trial, even if they did not really deserve it. Only a minority of criminal cases are settled by that method: in 2009, 77,500 out of the 673,700 or 11.5% of the decisions by the correctional courts.[47]
In 2010, a conviction of rape by deception drew international attention when it was first reported that a man deceived a woman into consensual sex within ten minutes of their first meeting by, according to the amended indictment, lying about being Jewish, unmarried, and interested in a long-term relationship. (In later interviews, the man later denied the allegations that he lied, but such denials were not mentioned in his plea bargain.) However, it was later reported that the charge had actually been the result of a plea bargain with the defendant in what had originally been a rape-by-force case where the records were sealed by the judge to protect the identity of the victim and avoid the cross-examination of her. (The sex was consensual according to one of the judges.) The man was represented by the public defender's office, and the woman by the prosecution. Sabbar Kashur, an Israeli Arab Muslim resident of Jerusalem who was married with two children, accepted a plea bargain and an 18-month sentence on the reduced charge of rape by deception in 2010 after a period of incarceration and house arrest. Details later declassified showed that the initial charge was of violent rape, but the prosecution agreed to the reduced charge of rape by deception because of the victim's confused account and concern at facing another court appearance. They also indicated that the woman was emotionally disturbed and had a history of sexual abuse. The court sent the victim to a mental hospital for treatment and convicted Kashur on the lesser charge. Prosecutors agreed to the plea bargain in order to spare the woman a long cross-examination that might undermine her evidence. The public defender appealed the sentence to the Supreme Court, which postponed the sentence pending the appeal and freed Kashur from house arrest. In 2012 the sentence was cut to 9 months by the Supreme Court.
Wilson received the 10-year sentence following a refusal to enter into a proposed plea bargain, stating his adamant belief that "It's all about doing what's right [...] And what's right is right, and what's wrong is wrong. And I'm just standing up for what I believe in." His decision to reject the plea agreement, as well as his continued fight to overturn his conviction, takes into account that sex offenders in Georgia must register themselves and are subject to penalty laws for life, and that the law was not intended to penalize teenage partners. As the law stands, Wilson would not even be able to return to his own family after an early release, as he has an 8-year-old sister Jiaya Bennett with whom he would be forbidden contact. The other young males involved (including one charged for the same oral sex acts as Wilson) accepted plea bargains with the possibility of parole; they are required to register as convicted sex offenders. Wilson had been offered a plea bargain for a five-year sentence with the possibility of parole before the trial but rejected the offer. After the jury had returned the guilty verdict, the prosecutor offered the same 5-year plea bargain again, and Wilson refused again. Another young man involved in the case had accepted a similar 5-year plea bargain and was paroled after two years.
Freed left the Los Angeles City Attorney's office in 1997 and is now a criminal defense lawyer in Redondo Beach, California. A notable case was Freed's defense of a young driver involved in a fatal accident. Freed contended that glare and not a dirty windshield was the cause of the accident. The case was settled with a plea bargain. In another case, Freed obtained a reduced federal court sentence for a man convicted of rhino horn trafficking. Freed represented one defendant in the 2015 Rowland Heights, California bullying incident, who received a 13-year sentence in a plea bargain.
A plea bargaining, also called a plea agreement or negotiated plea, is an alternative and consensual way of criminal case settlement. A plea agreement means settlement of case without main hearing when the defendant agrees to plead guilty in exchange for a lesser charge or for a more lenient sentence and/or for dismissal of certain related charges. (Article 209 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Georgia)
Italy has a form of bargaining, popularly known as "patteggiamento" but that has a technical name of penalty application under request of the parts. In fact, the bargaining is not about the charges, but about the penalty applied in sentence, reduced up to[51] one third.
Some cases can be disposed of without the need for a trial. In fact, the vast majority are. If the accused confesses his or her guilt, a shorter process may be employed and a judgment may be rendered more quickly. Some nations, such as America, allow plea bargaining in which the accused pleads guilty, nolo contendere or not guilty, and may accept a diversion program or reduced punishment, where the prosecution's case is weak or in exchange for the cooperation of the accused against other people. This reduced sentence is sometimes a reward for sparing the state the expense of a formal trial. Many nations do not permit the use of plea bargaining, believing that it coerces innocent people to plead guilty in an attempt to avoid a harsh punishment.
Plea bargaining is a significant part of the criminal justice system in the United States; the vast majority (roughly 90%)[17] of criminal cases in the United States are settled by plea bargain rather than by a jury trial.[18] Plea bargains are subject to the approval of the court, and different States and jurisdictions have different rules. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines are followed in federal cases and have been created to ensure a standard of uniformity in all cases decided in the federal courts. A two- or three-level offense level reduction is usually available for those who accept responsibility by not holding the prosecution to the burden of proving its case; this usually amounts to a complete sentence reduction had they gone to trial and lost.[19]
On the other hand, the prosecutor may wish to maintain a high conviction rate and avoid losing high-profile trials; thus, settling a case by plea bargain may further his interests, even if the resulting sentence would not effectively deter crime.[15] As many crimes have very narrow sentencing bands, a prosecutor often has scope to propose whatever degree of "discounted" charges, or substitution of misdemeanor rather than felony charges, to whatever extent they believe would incentivise a defendant to make a guilty plea and accept a speedy conviction, regardless of actual guilt.
Certain aspects of the American justice system serve to promote plea bargaining. 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. The prosecutor and defense may thus control the outcome of a case through plea bargaining. The court must approve a plea bargain as being within the interests of justice.[22]
As a result of judicial investigation and defendants being able to have judicial proceedings dismissed on procedural grounds during the examining phase, cases where the evidence is weak tend not to reach the trial stage. Conversely, the guilty plea and plea bargaining were until recently unknown to French law, and now it only applies to crimes for which the prosecution seeks a sentence not exceeding one year imprisonment. Therefore, most cases go to trial, including cases where the prosecution is almost sure to gain a conviction, whereas, in countries such as the United States, these would be settled by plea bargain.
On March 4, in a plea bargain he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of lying to U.S. federal agents, and said he was sorry. Afzali faced up to six months in prison, and as part of the plea arrangement the government agreed not to request any jail time. Brooklyn federal judge Frederic Block will sentence him on April 8. As part of his plea agreement, Afzali voluntarily left the U.S. in July 2010, within 90 days of his conviction. As a felon and under the terms of his plea bargain Afzali may not return to the U.S. unless given special permission.
Largely unique 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. This is because in Canada the Crown has (by common law standards) a very broad right to appeal acquittals, and also a right to appeal for harsher sentences except in cases where the sentence imposed was maximum allowed. Therefore, in Canada, after sentencing the defence sometimes has an incentive to try and persuade the Crown to not appeal a case, in exchange for the defence also declining to appeal. While, strictly speaking, this is not plea bargaining, it is done for largely the same reasons.
Plea bargaining is permitted in the legal system of England and Wales. The guidelines by the Sentencing Council require that the discount it gives to the sentence are determined by the timing of the plea and no other factors.[6] The guidelines state that the earlier the guilty plea is entered, the greater the discount to the sentence. The maximum discount permitted is one third, for a plea entered at the earliest stage. There is no minimum discount; a guilty plea entered on the first proper day of the trial would be expected provide a discount of one tenth. The discount can sometimes involve changing the type of punishment, such as substituting a prison sentence for community service.
In 2007, Sakharam Bandekar case became the first such case in India where the accused Sakharam Bandekar requested lesser punishment in return for confessing to his crime (using plea bargaining). However, the court rejected his plea and accepted CBI's argument that the accused was facing serious charges of corruption.[34] Finally, the court convicted Bandekar and sentenced him to 3 years imprisonment.[35]
In 2009, in a case about whether witness testimony originating from a plea deal in the United States was admissible in a Danish criminal trial (297/2008 H), the Supreme Court of Denmark (Danish: Højesteret) unanimously ruled that plea bargains are prima facie not legal under Danish law,[43] but that the witnesses in the particular case would be allowed to testify regardless (with the caveat that the lower court consider the possibility that the testimony was untrue or at least influenced by the benefits of the plea bargain).[43] The Supreme Court did however point out that Danish law contains mechanisms similar to plea bargains, such as § 82, nr. 10 of the Danish Penal Code (Danish: Straffeloven) which states that a sentence may be reduced if the perpetrator of a crime provides information that helps solve a crime perpetrated by others,[44][43] or § 23 a of the Danish Competition Law (Danish: Konkurrenceloven) which states that someone can apply to avoid being fined or prosecuted for participating in a cartel if they provide information about the cartel that the authorities did not know at the time.[45][43]
Another argument against plea bargaining is that it may not actually reduce the costs of administering justice. For example, if a prosecutor has only a 25% chance of winning his case and sending the defendant away to prison for 10 years, he may make a plea agreement for a one-year sentence; but if plea bargaining is unavailable, he may drop the case completely.
Sometimes, the prosecutor agrees to reduce a charge or to drop some of multiple charges in exchange for the defendant's acceptance of the penalty. Defendant, in the request, could argue with the penalty and aggravating and extenuating circumstancing with the prosecutor, that can accept or refuse. The request could also be made by the prosecutor. The plea bargaining could be granted if the penalty that could be concretely applied is, after the reduction of one third, inferior to five-year imprisonment (so called "patteggiamento allargato", wide bargaining); When the penalty applied, after the reduction of one third, is inferior of two years imprisonment or is only a fine (so called "patteggiamento ristretto" limited bargaining), the defendant can have other advantages, like sentence suspended and the effacement of the crime if in five year of the sentence, the defendant doesn't commit a similar crime.
In the mid-1990's, Brooks read about the case of a 21-year-old Chicago women, Marilyn Mulero, who had been sentenced to death without a trial, based on a plea bargain. The situation made no sense to Brooks: virtually always, a defendant plea bargains for a lesser sentence, yet Mulero had received the harshest possible sentence.
In plea bargains, two of the defendants, senior exit guide Wye Hale-Rowe and case coordinator Roberta Massey, each pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of facilitation to commit manslaughter. Both women were elderly; the pleas ensured they would not run any risk of prison sentences. The trial of the other two began on April 4, 2011. After a two-week trial, Final Exit Network's medical director, Dr. Lawrence Egbert, was acquitted. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the case against exit guide Frank Langsner. Before his retrial, scheduled for August 4, 2011, Langsner accepted a plea bargain on one misdemeanor count of endangerment and was sentenced to one year probation, following which his record would be expunged.