Plea-bargaining means pleading guilty to a lesser charge: the practice of arranging with the prosecution, and sometimes a judge, for a defendant to plead guilty to a less serious charge rather than be tried for a more serious one.
Don't criminal defendants have the right to plea bargain every case?
Absolutely not. A defendant has the right either to plead guilty to the entire indictment or to demand a trial. Plea bargaining requires the court's permission and the district attorney's consent.
The Pros of plea bargaining are :
1) plea bargaining saves taxpayers an enormous amount of money.
2) It often provides the evidence for a conviction and allows public defenders and other court officials to concentrate their limited resources on more important or difficult cases.
3) without plea bargaining many criminals would never be punished for their crimes at all.
4) Without plea bargaining the court's could not function unless there were drastic increases in budget allowance.
Letter Y, drop initial from p. 3 Plea by the defen...
English: Defense lawyers and prosecution at the Nu...
Inge Viermetz at the trial for RuSHA, January 28, ...The courts are at present full and running over and if all the cases were to be tried the courts budgets would have to be increased
5) For a judge, the primary incentive for accepting a plea bargain is to move along a crowded calendar. Most judges simply don't have time to try every case that comes through the door. Judges often reason that using plea bargains to "process out" offenders who are not likely to do much jail time leads to fewer problems with overcrowding.
6) Plea bargains tend to lighten everyone's caseload. Because plea bargains are much quicker and require less work than trials, they are also easier on the prosecutor's budget.
7) an assured conviction. No matter how strong the evidence, no case is ever a "slam dunk." The prosecution may wage a long, expensive and valiant battle, and...