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In law, a plea is a defendant's response to a criminal charge. [1] A defendant may plead guilty or not guilty. Depending on jurisdiction, additional pleas may be available, including nolo contendere (no contest), no case to answer (in the United Kingdom), or an Alford plea (in the United States).
Trial penalties, they point out, impose such harsh sanctions on choosing to go to trial—with prosecutors sometimes threatening multi-decade prison sentences if a plea deal of only a few years is not accepted—that trial penalties amount to coercing defendants to plead guilty. This coercion, they argue, renders plea bargains unconstitutional.
If a defendant is found guilty of a crime or pleads guilty, the judge or other sentencing authority imposes a sentence. A sentence can take a number of forms, such as loss of privileges (e.g. driving), house arrest, community service, probation, fines and imprisonment.
If the defendant pleads not guilty, a date is set for a preliminary hearing or a trial. In the past, a defendant who refused to plead (or "stood mute") was subject to peine forte et dure (Law French for "strong and hard punishment"). Today, in common law jurisdictions, the court enters a plea of not guilty for a defendant who refuses to enter a ...
The president of the United States is authorized by the U.S. Constitution to grant "reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States". [1] The pardon power extends to all federal criminal offenses, except in cases of impeachment, [1] [2] and entails various forms of clemency, including commuting or postponing a sentence, remitting a fine or restitution, delaying the imposition of a ...
But two weeks before the trial was scheduled to begin, the 19-year-old agreed to a plea deal. He pleaded guilty Thursday to a single felony count of making criminal threats and walked out of the ...
This list of U.S. states by Alford plea usage documents usage of the form of guilty plea known as the Alford plea in each of the U.S. states in the United States. An Alford plea (also referred to as Alford guilty plea [1] [2] [3] and Alford doctrine [4] [5] [6]) in the law of the United States is a guilty plea in criminal court, [7] [8] [9] where the defendant does not admit the act and ...
Standard 14-1.6. Determining factual basis of plea (a) In accepting a plea of guilty or nolo contendere, the court should make such inquiry as may be necessary to satisfy itself that there is a factual basis for the plea. As part of its inquiry, the defendant may be asked to state on the record whether he or she agrees with, or in the case of a ...