The concept of considering Plea Bargaining to be a favor of the courts is totally wrong from the recent past. The American Judiciary has adopted it from the 19thcentury onwards. There is no mention of the practice in the Bill of Rights while setting up the fair trial principle in the sixth amendment but the authorization of Plea Bargaining has been upheld the entire time. In the year 1969, inorder to avoid the execution sentence James Earl Ray pleaded guilty on the assassination of Martin Luther King. James Earl Ray managed to get an imprisonment for 99 years instead of a death sentence. In America almost 90 percent of the criminal cases have never been tried. A major part of the individuals give away their rights and plead guilty for the crimes …show more content…
The United State Supreme Court in a landmark judgement Bordenkirc V Hayes mentioned that, "in accordance with a constitution the reasons for a Plea Bargaining is such that there should be no element of punishment or retribution as long as the accused is entitled to accept or reject the offers of the prosecution. However the Apex Court confirmed the life imprisonment of accused as he had rejected the 5 years imprisonment offer on the basis of Plea Guilty. The Supreme Court had a differtent opinion on the same case where in they mentioned that ,it is the interest of the party who is forced to take a decision out of the two options which has been provided. Similar reasonings have been employed by the courts inorder to take action agaisnt disputes which arise between private parties. England and Wales, Victoria, Australia, are some of the countries where “Plea Bargaining” is considered to that extent where the prosecutors and defense will agree on the fact that the defendant will plead for lesser charges and therefore prosecutor will drop the …show more content…
In those days the criminal trial was a very lengthy process and included brisk challenges over long jury selection process, alot of significant objections, compound instructions of the jury, etc. Plea Bargaining was an effective way to avoid the complexity of a criminal trial process and therefore it gained alot of popularity in a short period. The Supreme Court of the United States approved Plea Bargaining mainly due to the assumption that the people who have been convicted on the basis of Plea Bargaining would be convicted ordinarly, once they had decided to take up the trial.
It was endorsed as “an essential component of the administration of Justice” after the Plea won the approval of the Supreme Court of United States in the case of Santobellov. Chief Justice Burger mentioned that Plea Bargaining has to be exercised because;
If all criminal charges are supposed to undergo a full trial process,the number of judges the Court facilities should be multiplied many times by the State and Federal