Title: Enhancing the Judicial Role in Criminal Plea and Sentence Bargaining
Abstract: Conventional wisdom in criminal procedure scholarship offered two competing models of American criminal justice system, famously labeled by Professor Herbert Packer as and models.1 The Crime Control model posited the efficient, expeditious, and reliable screening and dispositions of persons suspected of crime as central value to be served by criminal process.2 The Due Process model asserted that truth-seeking function is limited by and subordinate to maintenance of dignity and autonomy of individual.3 Most criminal law casebooks began with a description of these models and asked student to consider which direction Court should head. These descriptions are now disappearing from literature. The first reason is normative: we realize that neither model can be adopted without undesirable changes in constitutional precedent and executive functions, and neither would optimally serve consensus goals of accuracy and equality. The second is practical: we realize that American criminal justice system, like civil system, would collapse if even a small percentage of suspects took advantage of these procedures and demanded trials. The Due Process model ascended during civil rights movement with Warren Court revolution, due in large measure to shameful treatment of African Americans in southern states.4 This model has been eroded by various judicial and societal trends. First, as Professor Carol Steiker has written, Burger and Rehnquist Courts steadily chipped away at contours and enforcement of constitutional criminal procedural guarantees, denying promise of procedures that would protect liberty and equality while ensuring safety of community through conviction of guilty and dangerous criminals.5 Second, erroneous public perception, fueled by politicians and media, that violent crime has increased since 1970s,6 has led to such a broadening of scope of substantive criminal law that procedural protections have little force.7 With thousands of federal offenses to choose from,8 a determined prosecutor can generally locate some charge that will stick.9 Finally, drug war has transformed a large percentage of our population, especially young African American males, into criminals, even though these perpetrators are primarily non-violent offenders who can be captured only through most invasive investigative processes or interpretations of Fourth Amendment doctrine.10 However, neither did law enforcement model of criminal procedure triumph. Serious flaws with those criminal procedures that concern accuracy11-especially doctrines surrounding eyewitness identification,12 adequacy of counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, provision of exculpatory information, and scientific and forensic testing13-have led to recently discovered wide-spread wrongful convictions of innocent persons.14 Erroneous convictions cannot be squared with Crime Control model, as each wrongful conviction allows guilty party to escape punishment and further endanger society. The coercive power of plea bargaining leaves us little data to determine what percentage of defendants pleading guilty actually are.15 Unequal treatment of criminal defendants based on wealth, race, ethnicity, geography, and gender plainly prevails,16 giving rise to social unrest (or at least misgivings), even among middle class. Draconian mandatory minimum penalties, especially for drug offenses,17 challenge community notions of fairness, leading to a lack of respect for system and arguably to a decrease in deterrent and expressive force of law.18 It is perhaps for these reasons that current conservative Court has nonetheless recently expanded jury trial rights,19 strengthened Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause,20 contracted class of defendants eligible for death penalty,21 and reigned in prosecutorial control over sentencing. …
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 4
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