Another Opinion Piece Regarding Plea Bargaining

-
Tim Lynch of the CATO Institute has authored a thought-provoking piece about plea bargaining for The Washington Post.  The article, entitled Americans Are Bargaining Away Their Innocence, explores the presumption of innocence and the manner in which this tenet is impacted by the plea bargaining machine.
The presumption of innocence helps to combat prejudice and prejudging in the U.S. criminal justice system. But because plea bargains have supplanted trials in our criminal justice system, that presumption does not apply to most cases in the United States.
Read the entire opinion piece here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Korea Considering Adopting Plea Bargaining System

-
According to the Korea Times , South Korea is considering implementation of a plea bargaining system, and the lead prosecutor has stated that the system would initially be utilized for corruption cases. If these plans move forward, this will offer a unique opportunity to observe a criminal justice system's implementation of plea bargaining from the beginning. The prosecution is seeking to adopt plea-bargaining for corruption cases. Prosecutor General Lim Chae-jin stressed the importance of criminal law reform, including the introduction of a plea bargaining system, at the prosecution's 60th anniversary ceremony held in southern Seoul, Friday. "It is time for Korea's judiciary to adopt plea-bargaining to a limited extent, such as in bribery cases, in order to effectively punish corruption, which is getting more complex,'' Lim said. Plea-bargaining is an agreement whereby the prosecution offers a lighter punishment to a criminal suspect in exchange for admitting
Read more

Last Week Tonight Discusses Plea Bargaining

-
Image
Below is a link to an excellent piece that appeared last night on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver .  The show has been focusing a lot on criminal justice issues lately.  This particular piece on public defenders includes discussion of plea bargaining and innocence, including the story of Erma Faye Stewart . Hopefully, the show will soon have a piece devoted exclusively to the plea bargaining issue.
Read more

The Pursuit Podcast - Pressured to Plead Guilty

-
Readers of this blog will be interested to listen to the recently released podcast from The Pursuit  entitled "Pressured to Plead Guilty." In the podcast, I offer thoughts on the role of plea bargaining in the modern American criminal justice system. The podcast also features  Clark Neily (Vice President for Criminal Justice at the Cato Institute), Kevin Ring (President of Families Against Mandatory Minimums), and Molly Gill (Vice President of Policy at Families Against Mandatory Minimums).  The podcast does a wonderful job of weaving together  policy considerations and the history of plea bargaining with the story of  Kevin Ring's difficult decision whether to take a plea deal in return for a significant offer of leniency.  Thank you to Landry Ayres and the Cato Institute for putting together such an informative and engaging discussion of plea bargaining. It was an honor to appear on the program. As I said in my closing thoughts during the podcast, "[W]e think
Read more