Chris Parker Hope all is well I need the first today and ...
1) Plea bargaining has been called an important part of the criminal justice system and has even been lauded by the United States Supreme Court. In your opinion, and based on the readings and research, what are some of the positive points of plea bargaining? What are some of the negatives? Relate you opinion from the prosecution, defense and judicial viewpoints. Then give your opinion as to its positive or detrimental value.
There are some crimes and petty offenses like shoplifting, petty burglary, not paying bus fare, operating as a vendor without a license and such that do not warrant a stiff sentencing. Going to trial can be financially draining and time-consuming as well. Given these factors, current legislations are often at odds in deciding appropriate punishment for those who are guilty. Plea bargaining brings in the flexibility factor and makes adjustments to produce substantiative justice. Plea bargains are agreements that take place between the accused and the prosecutor where the accused accepts to plead guilty in return for a reduced sentence or a smaller charge. It is estimated that in the US, nearly 95% felony convictions are a product of plea bargaining. Plea bargaining cuts out the uncertainty factor from a trial’s outcome, and in a way, it is fair to prospective jurors and witnesses as well. From the state’s perspective, plea bargaining saves time and money in producing guilty convictions. The defense aspect though suffers because the accused gives up his right to make 12 people hear out the case and evaluate the evidence of the prosecution. In the cases that involve plea bargaining, the community too does not get a process that brings the truth out of what really happened. The most worrying part of plea bargaining is that it can make innocent people plead guilty for crimes that they didn’t commit, due to their inability to afford the risk of a trial.
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2) In America today, the trend has been to go back to what the text calls the “golden age of the victim.” But we are, after all, a constitutional democracy with rights guaranteed to all accused to a fair trial. How do you feel about a constitutional amendment guaranteeing certain rights to a victim, as propounded in the text? What would you include? Leave out? How would you ensure that these rights for a victim would not impinge on the rights currently guaranteed to an accused? Or should victim’s rights supercede the latter? (And remember, we’re talking about a person merely accused of committing a crime, not one who has been convicted.)
In England, a few hundred years back, victims were given well-recognized rights that included a personal say in punishing the apprehended offenders. The onus during this time was to compensate victims. The criminal justice system today though focuses more on punishment that is designed to stop, deter, or reform criminal offenders. Today, should victims want to be compensated for their losses then they are required to sue in civil courts. I definitely agree that victims should be compensated and I think there should be a constitutional amendment that ‘guarantees’ compensation rights to them. I will make sure to leave out the part where a victim has a say in punishing the accused. I will see that the rights of victims don’t impinge on the rights of the accused by including the condition that compensation rights would only apply after the authenticity of victim’s case is established and the accused who is charged with committing the corresponding crime is proved guilty. I will stick with the notion that an accused is innocent until proved guilty, so until the time that the accused is proved guilty of the charged crime, the term ‘victim’ will not apply and no rights would be automatically bestowed on the accuser.
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