Freedom, Morality, Plea Bargaining, and the Supreme Court

• NCJ Number: 72341
• Journal: Philosophy and Public Affairs Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Dated: (1979) Pages: 203-234
• Author(s): A Wertheimer
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 32 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The voluntariness principle used to permit plea bargaining is argued to be sound as a theory of freedom underlying the Court's plea-bargaining decisions, even if it has not been correctly applied.

Abstract

Several case examples are presented to show how the court rules for or against voluntariness in situations where a party has pleaded guilty and then appealed that plea on the basis of having been coerced to plead guilty involuntarily. Distinctions are made between freedom and voluntariness, and the parallels that can be drawn between them in considering guilty pleas are noted. Conditions surrounding the practice of plea bargaining are outlined, together with the motives generally present when someone pleads guilty. Correlations are then drawn between plea bargaining and voluntariness, with explanations given of two accounts of voluntariness: voluntariness as a psychological phenomenon and voluntariness as the absence of penalties for one's actions. A two-prong test is then applied to explanations of voluntariness; i.e., an empirical test, which concerns the extent of the pressures brought against a defendant, and a moral test, which applies to what the person bargaining with the defendant has done and perhaps to what can reasonably be expected of the defendant under the circumstances. Case examples are then again quoted to show how the two-prong test works, with special attention to the Court's application of the second (moral) prong, to problems of choice (e.g., between incriminating oneself and the possibilities of harsher sentences), and to issues of unconstitutionality. Finally, the ways in which the Court has applied the two-prong test are explored with the conclusion that the Court has not paid sufficient attention to important moral difficulties with plea bargaining, even though its theory of freedom underlying plea bargaining decisions is sound. Provided are 82 footnotes.