The Importance of Plea Bargaining in Criminal TrialsScreeech! That is the sound of our court system coming to a grinding halt, if plea bargaining were no longer utilized. Not only does plea bargaining save taxpayers an enormous amount of money, 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. Some people may believe that plea bargaining with criminals is wrong. The entire basis of the argument against plea bargaining says that criminals should not testify or have anything to do with the prosecution because they were involved with the crime. We fail to realize t ...view middle of the document...
In the words of John Stewart Mill, the father of utilitarianism, 'The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals utility, or the greatest happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness'. This means that in a world of compromise, the most success is achieved by giving the greatest good to the greatest number of people.This belief applies directly to plea bargaining. In this case, the most justice must be given the greatest number of criminals. Currently in the state of New York, 79% of all first degree murder cases are plea bargained. Without plea bargaining, many of these criminals would never even see a jail cell. Barry Kinsey, a sociologist at The University of Tulsa, said 'Without plea bargaining the court's could not function unless there were drastic increases in budget allowance' . 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 by 900% (according to Tom Wallace, a public defender from Baltimore, Maryland).It is also important to consider the length of time that would be required to try every person indicted for a crime. With the courts as over burdened as they are, taking every case to trial could clog up the courts almost indefinitely. Since every person in this country is guaranteed a speedy trial (courtesy of the sixth amendment), banning plea bargaining without tremendous budget increases would violate the constitutional rights of those accused.The affirmative speaker believes that plea bargaining does not reveal thetruth. He has said that there is often lying and inaccurate accounts of thetruth as a result of plea bargaining. I believe that the opposition is wrong. There may be cases where there is lying but every part of the court system will have a little of that. The affirmative speaker has totally contradicted himself. He stated that plea bargaining is when a person admits to his crime and therefore is rewarded with a lighter sentence. Is the affirmative side saying that criminals admit to other crimes than what they have done. It appears to me that he is stating that a person who is charged for a crime is admitting to a totally different crime. Therefore he will be sentenced for that crime and still go through his original trial. Second of all he said that most of the time the actual truth is known, if it is how is this accused person going to lie. I am saying that plea bargaining definitely reaches the truth and that is one reason why it is used because the truth is know and the defendant is simply agreeing with it, therefore the affirmative speaker has no validation for this argument.The speaker also referred to how plea bargaining was inaccurate and unfair.It was stated that plea bargain...
