Domestic Violence 101: What good is a plea agreement

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2009-09-17 03:33

This article in the Tucson Abusive Relationships Examiner neglects the abuse of justice in pressuring for plea agreements based on verbal accusations alone. Excerpt:

'But the case is strong, you are going to testify, so why would they offer a plea agreement?

Because it's a guarantee. A trial depends on 8 to 12 people who listen to the facts and decide whether your attacker is guilty or not. In the eyes of the law. As a victim, you already know full well what he/she has done.

A plea agreement also saves money. I'm pretty sure, especially with the economy as is that that needs not be explained.

A defendant who knows he/she is guilty may feel free to continue lying about it, but still knows they will probably be convicted. The plea is generally for a lesser charge, with a lower sentence. If he/she is charged with 5 years, they may offer only one. This encourages the defendant to stop lying, admit what they did and pay for their crimes.'

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I'll tell you what -- the man gets screwed. It doesn't matter if she was the abuser and the police decided to arrest/charge the man. The man gets screwed.

What do you get when the rule of law is eroded to the point of destruction? Where the courts learn to favor certain groups? What do they expect to get from this?

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Submitted by canaryguy on Thu, 2009-09-17 19:11

ALL justice systems in the entirety of Western World are build from the ground up to rely on plea deals. Without plea deals there is no justice system as the system is not designed to handle the case load it receives. There are not enough lawyers, judges, police, court employees to resolve the volume of cases that are processed through.

If every case went to trial the system would be bankrupt and it would take 25 years for your trial date to come up.

There MUST be quick resolutions in order for the system to work at all. That's why public defenders are not well funded and prosecutors have all the resources. Pressure must be maintained on those being processed by the system to get themselves processed quickly. Public defenders are ONLY motivated to make a plea arrangement. They do not get the time, money or resources to mount a real defense against police forensic resources and the prosecutors access to money to pay for 'expert' witnesses.

But, the secret is, the court only has all the resources and money they have because only 10% of cases ever go to trial. If EVERY defendant refused plea deals the system would simply grind to a halt.

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Submitted by Paragon on Fri, 2009-09-18 17:44

Fine, let the system grind to a halt. I'm all for it! It's a POS anyway. Some things must be utterly destroyed before there can be meaningful change. It seems to me that plea bargains weren't always as popular as they are now...

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Submitted by the_captain on Fri, 2009-09-18 19:01

Plea bargains were the rule in the Roman Empire. Rome is primary place we inherited our system of government and allot of our legal system from - Rome Never really died just got diluted into medieval Europe where many of the former Roman Provinces kept Roman systems even after Rome lost central authority. It has been pretty much the same methods of justice we use today for millennea, with small pockets here and there that deviated for short times (think Crusades, Spanish Inquisition etc). Ancient Greeks invented the image we know today as Lady Justice with her blindfold and scales, and they got the idea from Egyptians 5000 years ago. Adapted from the Egyptian afterlife mythology of the God Osiris weighing the purity of a dead mans heart against a feather to determine if he would be granted life eternal of be fed to Amut.

The American system was founded on the idea of plea bargains. They have ALWAYS been the foundation of the system. EVERY person charged with anything is offered some kind incentive for a guilty plea. Even if it is just pressure to get to the Death chamber quickly and the promise that God may forgive you if you spare the dead mans family the pain of a trial. There has never been a time in North America (or anywhere else that I am aware of that inherited the Roman system of governance) where Plea deals did not make up the vast majority of the convictions.

And that's why I agree with you that the justice system is WAY past due for a complete overhaul. Time to due away with ancient traditions and start rethinking what the whole idea of justice should be in modern times. We cannot move ahead as a species without evolution and the justice system is a few thousand years past due

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Submitted by Paragon on Sat, 2009-09-19 03:04