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Plea Bargaining: Ascendancy and Improper Prosecutorial Leverage and Deceit

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Police, Prosecutors, Courts, and the Constitution

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Abstract

Legislatures and courts have both played a role in magnifying prosecutor power to unfairly leverage guilty pleas from criminal defendants—some of them factually innocent. Legislatures changed the power balance in criminal cases by enacting three-strikes laws, Draconian drug sentencing, mandatory minimum sentencing, long sentences for property and violent crimes, and mandatory and advisory sentencing guidelines schemes that give inordinate static value to criminal histories that disfavor defendants of color. Appellate courts cemented that legislated power shift by deferring to sentencing judges and legislated statutory and sentencing approaches under the guise of states’ rights. Today, that prosecutorial leverage has yielded a criminal justice system that is fueled by guilty pleas and not by the Sixth Amendment’s trial guarantee: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence” (U.S. Const. amend. VI).

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  1. School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University, Brooklyn Park, MN, USA

    Charles E. MacLean & James A. Densley

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MacLean, C.E., Densley, J.A. (2023). Plea Bargaining: Ascendancy and Improper Prosecutorial Leverage and Deceit. In: Police, Prosecutors, Courts, and the Constitution. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39082-1_9

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