Plea bargaining is a practice in which defendants are offered a deal from the prosecutor to plead guilty to a certain charge or charges in exchange for a more lineate sentence. Furthermore, as a result of agreeing to a plea deal, defendants waive their rights to a trial and their right against self-incrimination. The Bill of Rights was created as a way to safeguard defendants and create an adversarial justice system. During trials, the State is supposed to make its case and defendants should not even have to provide a defense. The State needs to prove a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The Bill of Rights limits the prosecution’s power and is meant to safeguard the freedom of the accused. Additionally, the Fifth and Sixth Amendments protect defendants against self-incrimination and guarantees impartial juries, meaning we have several safeguards in place to protect defendants who go to trial. Yet, less than ten percent of criminal cases are brought to trial with these safeguards in place. Over ninety percent of criminal defendants waive their…show more content… Great discrepancy in punishments have been reported by those who have agreed to a plea deal versus those who invoked have their constitutional right to trial. In one instance with two similar defendants, one plead guilty and received a four-year sentence, the other exercised their right to trial and received a twenty-year sentence. Today people are punished simply for exercising their constitutional right to trial and this is further evidence that plea bargaining is unconstitutional (Lynch, 2003). Plea bargaining is a way for prosecutors, judges, and defense attorneys to avoid the workload that was intended for them. Rather they are now disposing of countless cases in the matter of minutes by offering plea deals to innocent defendants or defendants who believe the system will punish them simply for invoking their right to
