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Opinion: The Corrupt Bargain - How Plea Deals Redefined American "Justice"

Updated: Mar 27

By Mia Korsunsky


The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees a criminal defendant, among other things, the right to a speedy trial; one with a defense attorney, an unbiased jury, and one that gives the defendant a chance to confront the charges and evidence against them. It is a right so fundamental that it has been guaranteed to Americans since 1791. Yet today, nearly a staggering 95% of our country's criminal cases never see a trial. If our justice system was founded on the importance of a trial to bring about a fair verdict, where have we gone wrong? And what happens to that 95%?


It is important to first understand the current state of the legal system: overwhelmed. With backlog, delays, and a limited number of incredibly overworked public defenders, our current system cannot keep up with the sheer volume of cases. This overload is nothing new, but the phenomenon has been exacerbated by the pandemic. In desperate attempts to curb the impacts of COVID-19, courts have closed their doors, postponing thousands of cases or lacking infrastructure as they lacklusterly move online. In my home state of Illinois, the backlog of cases that piled up during the pandemic has prevented more than 2,600 people from going to trial for over a year, leaving them in custody at the Cook County Jail or electronically monitored from home.


It is a devastating domino effect; as courts get backed up, more people are forced into already overcrowded jails as they await trial; overwhelmed jails and prisons constantly prove their inability to rehabilitate - an issue exacerbated by their immense lack of resources, - more inmates get released, recidivism rates rise, and more cases get introduced into the system; overworked public defenders see a rise in their already unmanageable caseloads, discouraging more lawyers to enter the public sector and decreasing the number of available defenders to work these cases--- a self-sustaining cycle.


But if that is the impact of trying just 5% of our criminal cases, the question still remains: what happens to the remaining 95% of criminal defendants that never see a trial? The convictions that do not go to court come from negotiated plea deals - agreements between a defendant and a prosecutor - in which the defendant agrees to plead guilty, or 'no contest,' in exchange for the prosecutor to drop one, or more charges, reduce a charge to a less serious offense, or recommend to the judge a specific sentence.


There are many different types of plea deals and many factors that are considered when coming to an agreement of this kind. The seriousness of the alleged crime, the strength of the evidence in the case, and the prospects of a guilty verdict at trial are just some of the factors that the courts and defendants are forced to consider when deciding on a plea deal. The most common form of plea bargaining is 'charge bargaining,' when the defendant agrees to plead guilty to a lesser charge provided that greater charges will be dismissed. Less common is 'sentence bargaining,' when a defendant agrees to plead guilty to the stated charge in return for a lighter sentence. The least common form of plea bargaining is 'fact bargaining,' in which a defendant agrees to stipulate certain facts in order to prevent other facts from being introduced into evidence.


At first glance, it would seem that there is something to be gained for all parties involved in plea agreements. Courts are crowded, so prosecutors and judges are pressured to quickly move cases through the system and a criminal trial can take months. It is the perfect combination of factors to push plea bargains to the foreground of the court system. An agreement would take just a few moments and allow the case to swiftly come off the docket without consuming any more resources of the courts.


But the consequences of plea deals prove that they are not a “one size fits all solution” to our system’s problems. A trial is expensive, stressful, and risky, pushing people to accept plea bargains to avoid some or all of these elements- regardless of whether or not they actually are guilty. The success of a trial relies on many factors, but a hugely important one is the quality of the trial attorney. Past estimates and more recent state-by-state studies suggest that about 80% of legal needs of those living in poverty go unmet, as well as 40-60% of the needs of middle-income Americans. The quality of your representation or the legal advice given can often be the factor that determines the outcome of your case. The sixth amendment may guarantee Americans the right to representation but, in practice, public defenders are stretched so thin that the quality and time that they can devote to each case is minimal at best. Public defender programs are also often targets for state government budget slashes. This lack of time and resources means they do not have the time to build proper defenses and this is detrimental.


Landon Quinn, for instance, is a man convicted for the robbery and murder of two men in New Orleans. Quinn was bring represented by two public defenders. After being tried twice, he was convicted on just one piece of evidence: cross-racial eyewitness accounts. The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals recommends that a public defender take on no more than 150 cases per year. One of Quinn's defenders was handling 711 other felony cases; the other took on 543. Throughout both trials, Quinn’s attorneys had the necessary evidence to impeach the eyewitness that was the entirety of the state’s case. They also had evidence supporting Quinn’s alibi. Both were sitting in case files the entire time. Neither attorney looked, one of the defenders blaming the oversight on his unmanageable caseload.


Mr. Quinn’s case is just a single example, but the consequences of the shortcomings in representation for less fortunate Americans are not a one-off situation. As a result, an important distinction forms: you are guaranteed a fair and just trial… only if you can afford it. If not, the accused are back to plea deals as a means of gaining some sense of control over the outcome of your trial, but that often means avoiding a trial as a mechanism for justice, it means losing faith in our system, and it means choosing fear and control over justice. Studies have shown that defendants have every incentive to agree to plea deals that do not reflect their guilt or innocence, either out of fear or to push the brunt of the blame to someone else. It is not that false convictions do not occur when a case goes to trial, but a trial is more unpredictable and the outcome potentially more devastating than a plea deal. Without utmost confidence in your attorney, your evidence, and what is being presented to the jury, defendants chose false guilt out of fear, without a fair trial and without laying out the facts. This represents a fundamental shift away from the systems that our country was intended to be founded on.


As for efficiency, counterintuitively, it has actually been found that plea bargaining is not an integral part of bringing back speed and practicality to our legal system. In 1975, the Alaskan Attorney General made the controversial decision to ban plea bargaining. Following this legislative shift, studies concluded that not being able to rely on plea bargaining reinforced responsibility in every level of the judicial process and did not actually make the courts any more overwhelmed than they were, to begin with. The precedent is there; judicial efficiency must be improved, but plea bargaining is not the way to do it.


Currently, the country is at a crucial tipping point. With the vaccine giving us hope for coming back to “normal life”, it is time to evaluate what changes and protocols must be adapted to fit our new normal. Virtual court sessions are likely around to stay, but in-person hearings are also making a comeback. Our court system’s need for reform, however, is nothing new. If plea deals are to become a thing of the past, funding the system needs to be the move of the future. Disappointingly but non-uniquely, big change, at least in the form of legislation, is nowhere in the near enough future, but that does not mean that evaluation of the current systems and cries for reforms have to be postponed either. It is time to break the cycle. It is time to look critically at the world we are living in and realize that the status quo is not the only way. It is time to reevaluate what it really means to deliver justice in the United States.



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1 Comment

Jesenia P
Jesenia P
Jun 22, 2021
•

Interesting,,,,

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