Plea Bargaining Institute Posts Supreme Court Report with Case Summaries

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 observations regarding the U.S. Supreme Court cases that follow in the summaries section. While the case summaries contained below are also available in the institute’s online searchable database (www.pleabargaininginstitute.com), this report offers readers a hard copy version for reference and retention. 

As noted above, the case summaries contained in the report are also available in the Institute's searchable summaries database. Importantly, the website summaries of cases include information regarding sentencing differential sizes. Sentencing differentials can also be sorted on the website by size and whether the differential included the possibility of the death penalty. 

Access the full report here.