Agreement between a Prosecutor and a Defendant - Essay Example

A prosecuting attorney can decide to let someone who is convicted accept a plea bargain. Sometimes the plea bargain is given to the wrong person. Plea bargaining should be abolished under certain circumstances.

            Crimes that are felony offenses should not be able to accept a plea bargain. If the charge is damaging enough to qualify as a felony, the charge should not be able to be lessened. Those who are guilty of a certain crime should be held responsible for the crime committed. To give an example of why plea bargaining should be abolished in some cases is important. If a man is convicted of a felony rape charge, the charge can put the man in jail. In jail, he will be forced to serve time for a crime that he committed. While in jail, he can no longer hurt anyone else. If the man is offered a plea bargain and this plea bargain will keep him out of jail, he will be free to be out on the streets again. In this case, he may commit another crime. This can allow taking another victim. It is easy to see how this could have been avoided.

            On the other hand, there is a good side to offering a plea bargain. In some cases, the person convicted may be innocent. It may be hard to prove the innocence and the only hope for the one convicted is a plea bargain. Recently, a man was accused of shooting and killing another man. (Bigham2010)The man accused, if found guilty, would receive a lifetime in jail. Because of a plea bargain, the man had received a four-year sentence. This is possible because of the lack of enough evidence if the case would go through a lengthy trial. If the man is innocent, he only has to waste four years of his life and not his whole life.

            Plea bargaining can be either a good thing or a bad thing. It is dependent on the prosecuting attorney. The prosecuting attorney needs to be good at his or her job. The prosecuting attorney needs to take into consideration the case and whether or not a plea bargain is going to be beneficial. It is also safe to say that plea bargaining should be abolished in some cases. Many countries do not even allow plea bargaining and require all cases to go straight to trial.