The Plea Bargaining Blog

The Georgia State University Law Review will host me to present my article, The Surprising Lessons From Plea Bargaining in the Shadow of Terror , which appeared in the Winter 2010 volume. I will be discussing plea bargaining in the terrorism context. The presentation will occur from noon to 1pm at the Georgia State University College of Law. Please register by Wednesday, February 9 by emailing cweatherford2@gsu.edu.

According to reports from CNN , Colleen LaRose, the suspect authorities say labeled herself "Jihad Jane" on YouTube, will enter a plea of guilty related to charges she was plotting to wage violent Jihad overseas. According to her attorney, LaRose will plead guilty in federal court in Philadelphia next week to charges she conspired to support terrorists and kill someone overseas. The alleged plot involved plans to kill a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog in 2007. She is also accused of lying to federal agents and identity theft. She faces up to life in prison. In 2009, LaRose had been sharing a home with a boyfriend and taking care of his elderly father near Philadelphia before suddenly disappearing. At the time, her boyfriend told CNN that she spent a lot of time on his computer. That computer and others were seized after LaRose's arrest. She was taken into custody in Ireland, according to federal authorities. Court papers stated ...

According to reports from CNN , Guantanamo Bay's youngest detainee, Omar Khadr, pleaded guilty to the charges against him on Monday. The Sentencing Law and Policy Blog also has a post regarding the plea deal. Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr pleaded guilty to charges against him Monday, the Pentagon said, in the first military commission trial there since Barack Obama became president. Khadr, 24, was accused of throwing a grenade during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, a Special Forces medic. He also admitted that he "converted landmines to Improvised Explosive Devices and assisted in the planting of 10 IEDs with the intent of killing American forces" in the months before killing Speer, the Pentagon said. Khadr, the youngest detainee at Guantanamo Bay, was 15 at the time. He faced a maximum sentence of life in prison. He pleaded guilty to murder in violation of the laws of war, attempted murder in vio...

Stephanos Bibas (University of Pennsylvania) has a new article posted on SSRN. Download the article here . Padilla v. Kentucky was a watershed in the Court’s turn to regulating plea bargaining. For decades, the Supreme Court has focused on jury trials as the central subject of criminal procedure, with only modest and ineffective procedural regulation of guilty pleas. This older view treated trials as the norm, was indifferent to sentencing, trusted judges and juries to protect innocence, and drew clean lines excluding civil proceedings and collateral consequences from its purview. In United States v. Ruiz in 2002, the Court began to focus on the realities of the plea process itself, but did so only half-way. Not until Padilla this past year did the Court regulate plea bargaining’s substantive calculus, its attendant sentencing decisions, the lawyers who run it, and related civil and collateral consequences. Padilla marks the eclipse of Justice Scalia’s formalist originalism, the partin...

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog is reporting that JetBlue Flight Attendant Steven Slater has pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted criminal mischief and will not serve any jail time. According to NBC News New York : Former JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater, who made an abrupt emergency chute exit from a plane at JFK - - and from his career -- has pleaded guilty to one count of felony attempted criminal mischief and one count of misdemeanor criminal mischief. Slater will not go to prison. A one-to three-year sentence was delayed by Supreme Court Judge Marcia Hirsch. His deal requires that he enter a year-long mental health program and also receive substance and alcohol abuse counseling. Slater also agreed to reimburse JetBlue $10,000 -- the cost for repairing the chute. Slater's August 9 outburst became a global sensation as some considered him a hero of the working man after he initially said he had been hit in the head with luggage by a rude passenger. Nobody was hurt a...

USA Today has an interesting article that is receiving attention around the blogosphere, including here and here . According to the article, USA Today has documented 201 criminal cases since 1997 in which federal prosecutors violated laws and ethical rules. According to sources interviewed for the article, this is just "the tip of the iceberg." Federal prosecutors are supposed to seek justice, not merely score convictions. But a USA TODAY investigation found that prosecutors repeatedly have violated that duty in courtrooms across the nation. The abuses have put innocent people in prison, set guilty people free and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and sanctions. Judges have warned for decades that misconduct by prosecutors threatens the Constitution's promise of a fair trial. Congress in 1997 enacted a law aimed at ending such abuses. Yet USA TODAY documented 201 criminal cases in the years that followed in which judges determined that Justice Department ...

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has an interesting article today entitled "Why Not Just Let Abdulmutallab Plead Guilty?" On Monday, the accused Christmas Day bomber, Umar Faroukh Abdulmutallab, told Detroit federal judge Nancy G. Edmunds that he wanted to represent himself. He also asked Judge Edmunds whom he should talk to if he wanted “to plead guilty to some counts.” But Judge Edmunds didn’t just accept Abdulmutallab’s request. She peppered Abdulmutallab with questions about his understanding of U.S. law and criminal procedure. She told him it was unwise to move forward without a lawyer, though she said she’s ultimately let him do that. She also said she wouldn’t accept a guilty plea now. So why not? Why would a judge put a defendant like Abdulmutallab through the wringer before granting what appear to be reasonable requests? We did a little reporting in pursuit of this answer yesterday — click here for the sidebar that ran in the WSJ. The federal court system makes it h...