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Plea Bargaining and the Criminal Defendant
The criminal justice system depends on the guilty plea or "plea bargain," which accounts for the disposition of nearly 97% of all criminal cases. It doesn't matter whether or not you are guilty or innocent. Noone cares in the court of
law. Your guilty plea is a money saver for the courts because it usually takes less than an hour of work for the judge. A trial could take MONTHS.
Don't plead guilty and think that you can come back later to appeal the decision. A guilty plea closes off over ninety percent of your avenues of extraction.
Suzanne Schell has a wonderful article describing her observation of how the judges, the prosecution and your own attorney threaten you into taking a plea bargain. Read
the revealing expose' here.
THERE ARE TWO FINDINGS TO FIGHT: the
AGENCY'S and the COURT'S.
Promises are
meant to be broken.
Social Workers and
lawyers regularly LIE. From what once could be attributed to forgetting
case details or innocent misspeaks, it appears that lies and broken
promises are so widespread.
They lie because
they can. "For the sake of the children." The secrecy
about case proceedings makes it easy to lie with little risk of
being caught. Lies are productive, espcecially in an arena that
has little hard evidence and lots of verbal statements.
The best legal defense
is long and costly. So help your lawyer and stretch your legal
defense dollars by educating yourself.
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