The Plea Bargaining Blog

The Sentencing Matters Substack has an interesting piece by Jonathan Wroblewski discussing and examining a particular plea bargain. The piece, entitled Fair Enough? Truth, Justice, and the Case of Chrystul Kizer , can be found here .  The focus of the article, Chrystul Kizer, was alleged to have shot and killed Randall Volar when she was seventeen years old. According to the piece, Kizer told authorities that Volar had been "sexually abusing and otherwise mistreating her, including by marketing her as a prostitute. She said she shot him as he tried to touch her." After a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision decided that Kizer could raise an affirmative defense of abuse at trial, the case was resolved through a plea bargain. The bargain resulted in Kizer pleading guilty to one felony count of second-degree reckless homicide. The article explores whether this was a "fair" result, given that the eventual plea did not reflect the facts in the case.  From the author: I

The Plea Bargaining Institute has posted a report regarding Supreme Court plea bargaining cases from 1970-2019. The report contains summaries of each case, which total 59. Before the summaries, the report contains a lengthy examination of the history of plea bargaining, the 1970 Brady decision, and the Supreme Court period following Brady . From the report's introduction: This report from the Plea Bargaining Institute contains summaries of plea bargaining cases from the U.S. Supreme Court from 1970 until 2019. Each summary contains the case title, date of decision, the court from which review occurred, whether the decision was unanimous, the authoring Justice, the members of the majority, concurrence, and dissent, a brief overview of the case, a more detailed case summary, and a key quotation from the opinion. Before the individual summaries are listed below, the report begins with a brief examination of the historical rise of plea bargaining. This introduction also contains brief

In a new article authored by Prof. Lucian Dervan, Dr. Vanessa Edkins, and Prof. Thea Johnson, the authors explore the forces that lead to false pleas of guilty through examination of two cases of serial offenders who remained undetected for significant periods of time in part because others were initially coerced into false pleas of guilty in the cases.  Access a free copy of the article here . From the introduction: The last decade has seen significant growth in academic research and literature related to the plea bargaining system. In particular, much research has explored the impact of plea bargaining on the accused, including the phenomena of false guilty pleas by the innocent and false testimony in return for bargains. Both false guilty pleas and false testimony often result from the coercive bargaining practices regularly found in the criminal system. Plea bargaining is coercive when it overbears the will of the defendant, to borrow a phrase from the Supreme Court’s decision in B

The recently created Plea Bargaining Institute announced the launching of its new website today. The news release from the institute is found below and you can access the new website here - www.pleabargaininginstitute.com .  The Plea Bargaining Institute is pleased to announce the launching of the institute's new website - www.pleabargaininginstitute.com. The website contains valuable information that will assist the institute in its mission to create a global intellectual home for academics, policymakers, advocacy organizations, and practitioners working in the plea bargaining space to share knowledge and collaborate. Lucian Dervan, Founding Director of the PBI said, "We are incredibly excited to launch the website today and begin the process of making research and caselaw regarding plea bargaining more accessible to those working in the field and to the public generally. One of the main missions of the PBI is to advance plea bargaining research and reform through the dissemi

As Chair of the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section from 2018-2019, I had the pleasure of creating three task forces. One of those task forces, which I went on to co-chair, was the Task Force on Plea Bargaining. The Task Force was comprised of representatives from the prosecution, defense, academy, advocacy organizations, and the state and federal systems. After over three years of work, we released our report and recommendations earlier this year (a blog post about the report is available  here ). Included in our report were 14 Principles that we developed to create a fairer, more transparent, and more just criminal system.  Last week in Denver, Colorado at the ABA Annual Meeting, I moved adoption of those 14 Principles in ABA Resolution 502. The Resolution received no opposition and was overwhelmingly adopted by the ABA House of Delegates. With the passage of Resolution 502, the 14 Principles now become the official policy of the ABA. It has been a long road and there i

Earlier today, the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section Plea Bargaining Task Force released its final report, which includes 14 recommendations for creating a more transparent, fairer and more just system. Formed in 2019 when I served as Chair of the Criminal Justice Section, the task force was created to assess the state of plea bargaining in America and was made up of prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, academics and members of various think tanks and advocacy organizations - including task force members affiliated with The Innocence Project, Southern Poverty Law Center, Council on Criminal Justice, Fair Trials, NACDL, and the Cato Institute.  More information about the task force and a copy of the report are available on the task force website . The 14 Principles from the Report: Principle 1 : A vibrant and active docket of criminal trials and pre- and post-trial litigation is essential to promote transparency, accountability, justice and legitim