About The Plea
The Plea is a film that tries to inform society of the issues with plea bargains and the overall criminal justice system. In the film, a couple of people who were all innocent where charged for a crime that they didn’t commit. The reason for the charges where, mostly, because they took plea deals due to the pressure that they received either by the lawyers, judges, or/and family members. According to Lynch (2003), “More than 90 percent of the criminal cases in America are never tried, much less proven, to juries” (p. 24).
Our System Encourage Innocent Defendants to Plead
Unfortunately, due to the amount of crime activity that is going on, the court has to many cases to handle and plea bargains are pushed on people to avoid the long process of a trail. The system does encourage those who are innocent to admit to crimes that they didn’t commit and the reason for this is due to the plea bargain. Like Bibas (2004) explained, most prosecutors just want to reduce their workload and the quicker they get through a case the quicker they get home (p. 2471). In the film (The Plea) the defendant Charles Gampero Jr. was pressured into a plea bargain by the judge and even though he wasn’t guilty, he took the deal because he would rather spend a couple of years in prison then the rest of his life.
Right to a Speedy and Public Trial
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The reason for our system is to punish those who are guilty and there shouldn’t be a loop hole for those who decide to tell the truth after they’ve committed a crime. Plea bargaining is an easy way out to make a case end and I personally don’t consider the questioning of someone’s freedom to be an easy process. Like Lynch (2003) said, “As with so many other areas of constitutional law, the Court must stop tinkering around the edges of the issue and return to first principles”