My partner and I negate today’s resolution, “Resolved: In the United

States, plea bargaining undermines the criminal justice system.” for 3 main
reasons.

To adequately debate today’s resolution we must first understand it.

The goals of the Justice System include according to the United States
Department of Justice, “to prevent crime, enforce federal laws, represent the
rights and interests of the american people, and ensure the fair and efficient
administration of justice. Plea bargaining is defined as the process of a defendant
pleading guilty to a lesser offense or to only one or some of the counts of a multi-count
indictment in return for a lighter sentence.

Our first contention is that plea bargaining is just.

Defendants who agree to a plea bargain are not being coerced into
doing so. According to former Harvard professor Alan Wertheimer, “duress or
coercion requires as its vehicle a threat and not just an offer, whether a
proposal constitutes a threat or an offer depends on whether what is being
proposed would make the recipient of the proposal worse or better off than
he or she would be relative to the appropriate baseline situation. In the case
of plea bargaining this baseline is clear, after arresting the defendant the
state is completely entitled to prosecute the accused to the full extent of the
law - neither accepting nor declining the plea bargain offer changes that
baseline. The defendants are according to an article in the Yale Law Review
written by University of Virginia Law professors Robert Scott and William
Stuntz, rational and informed actors, choosing to accept an offer that
benefits both the state and defendants. Not only is the process of plea
bargaining procedurally just, it also increases the distributive justice of the
criminal justice system.
 Our second contention is that plea bargaining threatens defendants’
constitutional right to a speedy trial.

According to Professor John Langbein of Yale Law School, plea

bargaining originated because as our justice system incorporated more and
more protections for the accused, actually going to trial became impossibly
time and money consuming. Even today when according to the United States
Department of Justice 86% of federal cases don’t go to trial and 96% of
federal convictions come from guilty pleas, prosecutors, according to an
article in the Yale Law Review by Judge Frank Easterbrook, are unable to
prosecute some of the criminals who choose to go to trial. This, he notes, is
due to a shortage of staff in relation to the volume of crime. According to the
Alaska Judicial Council and LA times when plea bargaining was banned in
Alaska and Ventura county it bounced back in both places almost
immediately simply because the Justice System didn’t function without it.
The Bronx also attempted a partial plea bargaining ban. According to the
current Los Angeles bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, Gabriel Kahn in
the partial ban’s short period of enforcement, from 1993 to 1995, the ban
clogged courts and made for less speedy justice. While the rest of New York
saw the efficiency of their court systems increase with the average days in
custody for defendants decreasing to 120, in the Bronx this number rose to
160. These incarcerated defendants are innocent until proven guilty and
their constitutional right to a speedy trial is threatened by even a partial ban
of plea bargaining.

Our third contention is that plea bargaining punishes the guilty.

Sub point a. Plea bargaining decreases the number of criminals who’s

cases are dismissed.
In fact although the average days spent in custody by
defendants in the Bronx court systems rose significantly after the partial ban,
it would have risen much more had judges according to Gabriel Kahn not
been frequently forced to dismiss charges simply because there was no room
for all of the defendants.

Sub point b. Plea bargaining reduces trial error.

Not only do many criminal cases get dismissed when plea
bargaining is removed, those that are prosecuted are less likely to be
convicted or get large sentences. In the Bronx the acquittal rate rose from
the national average of slightly less than 23% according to the United States
Department of Justice to between 35 and 40%.This is because, according
Robert Scott and William Stuntz without plea bargaining trials increase but
resources such as prosecutors, money, and of course time do not. The
amount of resources that each trial is allocated goes down and prosecuting
becomes harder. The trials that occur without plea bargaining Scott and
Stuntz conclude must have an increased rate of error.

Not only do increased rates of acquittal and trial error fail to punish the
guilty, they send dangerous criminals back into the streets.

Our fourth contention is that plea bargaining increases the justice

system’s deterrent effect on crime.

Because a ban on plea bargaining leads to increased acquittal and

dismissal rates and shorter sentences it increases peoples incentives to
engage in criminal behavior leading to rises in crime. In the Bronx, although
crime rates went down between 1993 and 1994 they went down much more
slowly than they did in the rest of New York City demonstrating that even a
partial ban on plea bargaining had a negative impact on the crime rate..

We urge you to cast a con ballot, Thank you.