Deal or no deal
From Iowa Champion:
Where's my deal?
(I)f you haven't heard a defendant or someone from their family complain about a plea offer in one of your cases, you can count the days you've practiced law on your fingers... There are certain things about plea bargaining that everyone charged with a crime (or their family) should know:
1) There is no constitutional right to a plea offer...
2) Each person's situation is unique...The State is not required to offer people charged with the same crime the same or similar deals...
3) In general, plea agreements are only between the defendant, their attorney, and the prosecutor; judges are usually not bound to a particular outcome...
4) If you don't like the plea offer, you can go to trial...
2 Comments:
Indeed, you can always go to trial. But in jurisdictions with determinate sentences, such as Washington, prosecutors have so much power to increase that sentence by stacking charges (and judges can do little or nothing about it), defendants really are forced to plead guilty. Surely the number of pleas pursuant to North Carolina v. Alford have exploded in determinate sentence states.
Deal Or No deal is awsem i watchet ever time it is on! some of the people that come on are stupidd as hell!
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