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Plea bargaining is a significant part of the criminal justice system in the United States; the vast majority (roughly 90%) [29] of criminal cases in the United States are settled by plea bargain rather than by a jury trial. [30] Plea bargains are subject to the approval of the court, and different states and jurisdictions have different rules.
If fact bargaining is acceptable, then the entire moral and intellectual basis for the Sentencing Guidelines is rendered essentially meaningless." [2] Judges rarely overturn stipulations reached by fact bargaining. [3] In some cases, "creative" plea bargains are reached in which the defendant pleads guilty to a totally different lesser crime.
Plea bargaining in the United States is very common; the vast majority of criminal cases in the United States are settled by plea bargain rather than by a jury trial. [1] They have also been increasing in frequency—they rose from 84% of federal cases in 1984 to 94% by 2001. [ 2 ]
In short, plea bargains outside the law's shadow depend on prosecutors' ability to make credible threats of severe post-trial sentences. Sentencing guidelines make it easy to issue those threats." [24] The federal guilty plea rate has risen from 83% in 1983 to 96% in 2009, [25] a rise attributed largely to the Sentencing Guidelines.
In a plea bargain, a defendant makes a deal with the prosecution or court to plead guilty in exchange for a more lenient punishment, or for related charges against them to be dropped. A "blind plea" is a guilty plea entered with no plea agreement in place. [3] Plea bargains are particularly common in the United States. [4]
In United States law, an Alford plea, also called a Kennedy plea in West Virginia, [1] an Alford guilty plea, [2] [3] [4] and the Alford doctrine, [5] [6] [7] is a guilty plea in criminal court, [8] [9] [10] whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and asserts innocence, but accepts imposition of a sentence.
Today, Mnookin and Kornhauser's 1979 article is widely recognized as a landmark article "which legitimized the study of negotiation within the legal academy" by "tethering bargaining to jurisprudence". [4] A 2012 study determined that as of that year, it was the nineteenth most-cited law review article of all time. [5]
The U.S. Bill of Rights. Article Three, Section Two, Clause Three of the United States Constitution provides that: . Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have ...