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Plea bargains can take different forms, such as charge bargaining, where a defendant pleads guilty to a lesser offense, or sentence bargaining, where the expected sentence is agreed upon before a guilty plea. In addition, count bargaining involves pleading guilty to a subset of multiple charges.
Plea bargaining in the United States is very common; the vast majority of criminal cases in the United States are settled by plea bargain rather than by a jury trial. [1] They have also been increasing in frequency—they rose from 84% of federal cases in 1984 to 94% by 2001. [ 2 ]
In a plea bargain, a criminal defendant waives their right to trial and agrees to plead guilty to a lesser charge than would have been brought against them at trial or agrees to plead guilty to the original charge in exchange for a sentence that is less than the maximum possible.
In cases where the "sole advantage a defendant would have received under the plea is a lesser sentence", the Supreme Court ruled that courts should "exercise discretion in determining whether the defendant should receive the term of imprisonment the government offered in the plea, the sentence he received at trial, or something in between". [24]
If fact bargaining is acceptable, then the entire moral and intellectual basis for the Sentencing Guidelines is rendered essentially meaningless." [2] Judges rarely overturn stipulations reached by fact bargaining. [3] In some cases, "creative" plea bargains are reached in which the defendant pleads guilty to a totally different lesser crime.
In United States law, an Alford plea, also called a Kennedy plea in West Virginia, [1] an Alford guilty plea, [2] [3] [4] and the Alford doctrine, [5] [6] [7] is a guilty plea in criminal court, [8] [9] [10] whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and asserts innocence, but accepts imposition of a sentence.
In a plea bargain, a defendant makes a deal with the prosecution or court to plead guilty in exchange for a more lenient punishment, or for related charges against them to be dropped. A "blind plea" is a guilty plea entered with no plea agreement in place. [3] Plea bargains are particularly common in the United States. [4]
It has been argued that pretrial detention may increase a defendant's willingness to accept a plea bargain, since imprisonment, rather than freedom, will be their baseline, and pleading guilty will be viewed as an event that will cause their earlier release rather than as an event that will put them in prison. [9]