Pleading Heart

Another week is done.  As usual, this means I received a new batch of clients to help and work with.  However, I also managed to finish work with a few clients in very short order.  How did I do this?  Through the magic of plea bargaining!

What is plea bargaining, you ask?  It’s a very major part of my job!  When a prosecutor charges someone with a crime, there’s usually some time before anyone talks about getting a trial ready.  In that meantime, the prosecutor will usually make an offer to the defense attorney and client: in exchange for pleading guilty to 1 charge (or just a few charges, if there are a lot of alleged crimes), the prosecutor will drop the remaining charges and/or make a low sentence recommendation to the judge (the judge doesn’t have to listen, but they almost always do to facilitate deals).  If they choose to accept, the attorney and client fill out a specialized form (known as a “plea petition”), which the judge goes through with the client in court before accepting the plea and imposing sentence.  It is an extremely common procedure in the criminal justice system and is the reason why less than 10% of all criminal cases ever go to trial.  As such, it’s something that I dealt with all the time. I get plea offers in my court mailbox almost as often as I get evidence reports from the DA’s office, and I was involved in the process almost every day this week—from talking to prosecutors about offers to filling out plea petitions, from going over them with clients to presenting petitions in court.

Love them or hate them, plea bargaining pervades just about everything I do—and trust me, there are indeed plenty folks who love or hate plea bargaining.  Some claim that it lets criminals get away with multiple crimes without punishment.  Some claim that it violates the right to trial by jury and lets the state punish people without proper proof.  Still others claim that it pressures the innocent into pleading guilty to crimes they didn’t commit.  My own feelings on the process are a bit complicated.  On one hand, it definitely helps some of my clients; they get fairly low sentences and can get their cases over with.  On the other hand, I have seen detained clients insisting on their innocence accepting plea offers because it’s the fastest way out of jail.  In truth, I think that’s a testament to the unfairness of pretrial detention, but that’s an angry rant for another time (and probably a different forum than this blog—this kind of thing is best discussed in person).  Plea bargaining can get disheartening, but it’s unfortunately necessary; courts are already plenty clogged, with trials taking weeks or months to schedule.  As such, I’ll keep on informing clients about plea offers, explaining all the consequences, and letting them decide.  That’s pretty much all I can do, morally and ethically.

Because I don’t want to end on such a heavy note, I’ll leave you with a humorous moment from one such plea hearing from this week:

GREAT MOMENTS IN TILLAMOOK JURISPRUDENCE

*insert sophisticated music*

Episode II: Business as Usual

Judge: Sir, you have had a chance to discuss the charges and state’s plea offer with your attorney?

Client: Yes.

J: Has Mr. Fischberg answered all of your questions?

C: Yes.

J: Do you have any problems with Mr. Fischberg’s representation so far?

C: Yes.

[awkward beat]

J: So, you have a problem with Mr. Fischberg’s legal advice…?

C: No, I mean no!  I was expecting to say yes to most of these.  He’s done OK.

[Hearing goes on as planned.  Hopefully, client will remain satisfied with representation.]