Plea bargaining : acquiescing for consideration in a bureaucratic environment

Abstract

The thesis examines the use of plea bargaining within the criminal justice system. It was proposed that the major problem in understanding the process of plea bargaining was that there are many different procedures for resolving criminal cases that are lumped together and described by the term. This resulted in confusion about what plea bargaining actually is.

Contemporary definitions of the term, the nature and scope of interactions among the involved participants as well as factors influencing these interactions were examined. Case and statutory law were examined to determine the current state of jurisprudence concerning plea bargaining. It was found that approximately 90% of criminal cases were resolved by guilty pleas and there were various methods used to achieve a defendant's guilty plea. The empirical portion focused on municipal and county courts within Mahoning County and Ohio. Guilty plea and dismissal case resolution methods for aggregate misdemeanors and drunk driving cases were compared. Guilty pleas were found to be the most prevalent case resolution method. Also, for the most part, courts within the county resolved cases similarly to each other. The use of guilty please by courts within the county to resolve cases was congruent to their use by other courts in Ohio. The study concluded plea bargaining was a case resolution method that had evolved from within a bureaucratic criminal justice system was an alternative to trials. A revised conceptual definition of plea bargaining was proposed.