When the Government has a strong case, the Government may offer the defendant a plea deal to avoid trial and perhaps reduce his exposure to a more lengthy sentence. A defendant may only plead guilty if they actually committed the crime and admits to doing so in open court before the judge.
Plea noun C (REQUEST) an urgent and emotional request: He made a plea for help/mercy. They made a desperate plea for help. The president has made an emotional plea for the killing to stop.
When the Government has a strong case, the Government may offer the defendant a plea deal to avoid trial and perhaps reduce his exposure to a more lengthy sentence.
Possibly the first systematic use of plea negotiation, the Boston bargains were typically for victimless offenses, so the prosecutor did not have to consider victims' concerns. Even if they were typical before 1860, it was only during the Civil War that plea-bargained cases began to appear in the appellate courts.
Such Rule presents the basic requisites upon which plea bargaining may be made, i.e., that it should be with the consent of the offended party and the prosecutor, and that the plea of guilt should be to a lesser offense which is necessarily included in the offense charged.
The usage of plea bargaining first became widely used in the United States during the prohibition era. In order to cope with the new influx of liquor law violations, the criminal justice system had to turn towards plea bargaining in order to reduce congestion.
At first, plea bargaining was considered rare This method, first used en masse in the United States during the late 1960s, has now become routine in the modern criminal justice system (Meyer).
Prosecutors benefit from plea bargains because the deals allow them to improve their conviction rates. Some prosecutors also use plea bargains as a way to encourage defendants to testify against codefendants or other accused criminals.
The United States Supreme Court has recognized plea bargaining as both an essential and desirable part of the criminal justice system. The benefits of plea-bargaining are said to be obvious: the relief of court congestion, alleviation of the risks and uncertainties of trial, and its information gathering value.