The Importance of Plea Bargaining in Criminal Trials
Screech! That is the sound of our court system coming to a grinding halt, if plea-bargaining were no longer utilized. Not only does plea-bargaining save taxpayers an enormous amount of money, it often provides the evidence for a Conviction and allows public defenders and other court officials to concentrate their limited resources on more important or difficult cases. Some people may believe that plea-bargaining with criminals is wrong. The entire basis of the argument against plea-bargaining says that criminals should not testify or have anything to do with the prosecution because they were involved with the crime. We fail to realize that without plea bargaining many criminals would never be punished for their crimes at all. ... Granted, a plea bargain is, by definition, a compromise. ... In a majority of cases plea bargains is utilized to ensure that the truly guilty criminal is punished. In our less than perfect world, plea-bargaining is easily the lesser of the evils. ... Why do we place such importance on efficiency? ... This belief applies directly to plea-bargaining. ... Currently in the state of New York, 79% of all first-degree murder cases are plea-bargained. Without plea-bargaining, many of these criminals would never even see a jail cell. Barry Kinsey, a sociologist at The University of Tulsa, said, “Without plea bargaining the court’s could not function unless there were drastic increases in budget allowance”. ... Since every person in this country is guaranteed a speedy trial (courtesy of the sixth amendment), banning plea-bargaining without tremendous budget increases would violate the constitutional rights of those accused.
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