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WEDNESDAYS • Jan. 9, 2019
Richmond & Hampton Roads
LEGACYNEWSPAPER.COM • FREE
Rejecting plea deal means longer sentence if convicted, analysis shows
CNS – Defendants who reject plea bargains and are convicted when they choose to go to trial for many types of crimes face longer sentences – sometimes substantially longer – than defendants who make a deal, a Capital News Service analysis shows. For example, the average sentence for defendants who pleaded not guilty but were later convicted of unlawful possession of drugs was seven times longer than those who pleaded guilty, the analysis of Baltimore City court records found. People who pleaded not guilty and went to trial received, on average, sentences of two years and 10 months. People who accepted plea bargains were sentenced to about four months. Those pleas save the state the time and cost of a trial. But courts are essentially “punishing people who are exercising a constitutional right, which is the right to trial,” said Steven P. Grossman, professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. The gap in sentences was greater for less serious crimes, the CNS analysis showed, but the difference nearly disappeared in cases involving more serious charges. For example, defendants who were convicted at trial of possessing a gun in connection with a felony received sentences only about 5 percent longer – 5 years as opposed to 4
years, 10 months – than people who accepted a plea bargain on the same charges, the analysis showed. Grossman, who was a New York City district attorney before he became a professor, says plea bargaining has been common for more than a century. “We are not a system of trials,” he said. “We are a system of of plea deals.” He said judges and courts don’t see plea bargaining as a bad alternative but as “giving people a break for pleading guilty.” Courts are essentially “punishing people who are exercising a constitutional right, which is the right to trial,” said Grossman. “But,
because courts wouldn’t admit to this, they come up with all these absurd reasons for why they give people less time.” In Maryland and around the country, courts are overwhelmed with cases and more than 90 percent of cases end in plea bargains instead of trials. So, why do people plead guilty? Grossman said anyone with the fundamental understanding of human nature would know why. “They plead guilty because they want less time, which is what you would do or what I would do. The lawyers tell them they will get less time,” he said. “The only way plea bargaining works is if we give
defendants less time if they plead guilty and more time if they go to trial.” In a 2018 Nevada Law Journal article called “Making the Evil Less Necessary and the Necessary Less Evil: Towards a More Honest and Robust System of Plea Bargaining,” Grossman wrote that the trial penalty presents challenges in at least two kinds of cases. The first, Grossman said, comes in cases where defendants were given “significantly harsher penalties after trial than they were offered in a plea bargain.” And the second arises
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