I affirm the resolution that: Plea bargaining ought to be abolished in the United States

criminal justice system. I will contend that plea bargaining coerces innocents, convicts
innocents, and ruins presumption of innocence, any of which violate Sixth
Amendment protections of due process, proving that plea bargaining is both
unconstitutional and overwhelmingly unjust.
 Definitions
Plea bargaining talks defendants into giving up their right to a fair trial:

Black’s Law Dictionary, Free Online Legal Dictionary, 2nd Edition, 2017, downloaded on July
24, 2017 from http://thelawdictionary.org/plea-bargaining/
What is PLEA BARGAINING? An agreement set up between the plaintiff and the defendant to
come to a resolution about a case, without ever taking it to trial.

Abolition ends a system, practice, or institution, meaning that the Affirmative can win
the debate by showing that plea bargaining as currently practiced should disappear,
not that plea bargaining must disappear altogether.
Oxford Living Dictionaries, 2017, downloaded on July 24, 2017 from
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/abolish
Abolish: Formally put an end to (a system, practice, or institution)
 Value
My value is justice, which means to give each individual his or her due
Manuel Velasquez et al, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael Meyer, Markkula
Center for Applied Ethics, Issues in Ethics 3, Spring 1990, downloaded on July 24, 2017, from
https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/justice-and-fairness/
Justice means giving each person what he or she deserves or, in more traditional terms, giving each
person his or her due. Justice and fairness are closely related terms that are often today used
interchangeably. There have, however, also been more distinct understandings of the two terms. While
justice usually has been used with reference to a standard of rightness, fairness often has been used
with regard to an ability to judge without reference to one's feelings or interests; fairness has also been
used to refer to the ability to make judgments that are not overly general but that are concrete and
specific to a particular case. In any case, a notion of desert is crucial to both justice and fairness.
 Criterion
My criterion is protecting the innocent, which should be the priority of criminal justice
systems
Matthew Scott, Barrister with over 25 years experience, January 2, 2014, “Protecting the
innocent is even more important that convicting the guilty, BarristerBlogger: Matthew Scott’s
Legal Comment Argument and Discussion, downloaded July 24, 2017 from
http://barristerblogger.com/2014/01/02/criminal-trials/
A criminal justice system should not be “geared” towards “bringing the guilty to book.” On the
contrary, if any gearing of the scales of justice is required it should be towards protecting the
innocent. The great eighteenth century jurist Blackstone – no bleeding heart liberal – famously declared
it better that ten guilty men escape than that one innocent suffer. The principle was taken up
enthusiastically in America and eloquently explained by John Adams, second President of the United
States: “It is more important that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt be punished; for
guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world, that all of them cannot be punished; for guilt and crimes
are so frequent in the world that all of them cannot be punished; and many times they happen in such
a manner, that it is of not much consequence to the public, whether they are punished or not. But
when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned … the subject will exclaim, ‘it is
immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security.’ And if such a sentiment as
this were to take hold in the mind of the subject that would be the end of all security whatsoever.” It is a
principle that should be at the heart of every civilised legal system.
 Contention One:
Threats of lengthy sentencing help tilt plea bargaining against defendants
Daniel S. McConkie, Visiting Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University Law School, 2015,
“Judges as Framers of Plea Bargaining,” Stanford Law & Policy Review 26, p. 77
Plea bargaining is even more coercive where, as is often the case in the federal system, the potential
prison sentences are lengthy. Prosecutors need higher plea/trial differentials to tempt defendants to
plead out to long sentences. For example, a defendant faced with a plea offer of one year and an
anticipated post-trial sentence of two years might decide to try his chances at trial because two years
of custody might not seem long compared to the chance of an acquittal. In contrast, if the penalties for
the same offense were ten years on a plea and twenty years post-trial, defendants are less likely to
gamble with longer periods of their lives. Relatedly, several common federal criminal statutes carry high
statutory maximum penalties, which accommodate large plea/trial differentials. The court advises
defendants of these penalties before the guilty plea, typically at the arraignment. This advisement,
which carries the judge's imprimatur, is misleading: the maximum penalty almost is never imposed.
Also, plea bargaining leads prosecutors to game for wrongful convictions two different
ways
Albert W. Alschuler, Emeritus Professor of Criminal Law and Criminology at the University of Chicago,
2015-16, “A Nearly Perfect System for Convicting the Innocent,” Albany Law Review 79, p. 919
A law school casebook asks whether plea bargaining "convicts defendants who are in fact innocent (and
would be acquitted [at trial])." As the question indicates, the fact that plea bargaining may lead some
innocent defendants to plead guilty is not a powerful criticism of this practice. The casebook asks
whether plea bargaining increases the number of wrongful convictions. Because no one can know how
many wrongful convictions are produced either by trials or by guilty pleas, the question may seem
unanswerable. But in fact the answer is easy. Convicting defendants who would be acquitted at trial is
one of the principal goals of plea bargaining. "Half a loaf is better than none," prosecutors say. "When we
have a weak case for any reason, we'll reduce to almost anything rather than lose." If the correlation between "weak cases" and actual
innocence is better than random, plea bargaining surely "convicts defendants who are in fact innocent (and would be acquitted [at trial])."
Prosecutors engage in both "odds bargaining" and "costs bargaining." That is, they bargain both to
ensure conviction in doubtful cases and to save the costs of trial. Were a prosecutor to engage in odds bargaining
alone, he might estimate a defendant's chance of conviction at trial at 50% and this defendant's probable sentence if convicted at trial at ten
years. Splitting the difference, the prosecutor then might offer to recommend a sentence of five years in exchange for a plea of guilty. Five
years is what economists would call the defendant's "expected" sentence - his predicted post-trial sentence discounted by the possibility of
the
acquittal. An offer of five years, however, would leave a risk-neutral defendant indifferent between pleading guilty and standing trial, and
prosecutor hopes to avoid a trial. He does not want the defendant to be indifferent. The prosecutor
therefore engages in costs bargaining as well as odds bargaining. He tailors his final offer, not to
balance, but to overbalance the defendant's chances of acquittal. This prosecutor may offer four years
in exchange for a plea - or two or three. One can easily discover real-world cases in which prosecutors
fearful of defeat at trial have struck bargains allowing defendants facing potential life sentences to plead
guilty to misdemeanors.
 Contention Two:
Presumed innocence is a joke because the status quo is nearly perfect for convicting
innocents
Albert W. Alschuler, Emeritus Professor of Criminal Law and Criminology at the University of Chicago,
2015-16, “A Nearly Perfect System for Convicting the Innocent,” Albany Law Review 79, p.921
Shawn Bushway, Allison Redlich, and Robert Norris recently provided evidence that real-world plea bargaining fits the economic model just
described. They presented a hypothetical aggravated robbery case to 1585 prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges, offering one of sixteen
evidentiary variations on the case to each respondent. They asked each respondent to estimate the likelihood of conviction at trial, the
probable sentence following conviction at trial, and what sentence the respondent would accept as part of a plea agreement.For all but a
few variations, the average acceptable sentence following a guilty plea was less that the predicted trial
sentence discounted by the likelihood of acquittal. Plea bargaining plainly makes it advantageous for
innocent defendants with good prospects of acquittal to plead guilty. A legal system in which a
prosecutor could convict whomever he liked just by pointing could lead to conviction in cases in which
the prosecutor had no evidence at all. This system would be even more effective than ours in producing
wrongful convictions. Ours, however, is nearly perfect. Officially, we profess adherence to the principle
that guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Our Supreme Court declares, "It is critical that the moral force of the
criminal law not be diluted by a standard of proof that leaves people in doubt whether innocent men are being condemned." In almost
every case, however, plea bargaining vaporizes the legal standard.
 Contention Three:
Police-influenced plea bargains may be employed to cover for misconduct
Jonathan Abel, Fellow at Stanford Constitutional Law Center, April 2017, “Cops and Pleas: Police
Officers’ Influence on Plea Bargaining,” Yale Law Journal 126, p. 1771
But there may also be times when the police are more inclined than the prosecutor to settle a case.
Where going to trial would lead police misconduct to be disclosed through discovery, pretrial motions
practice, Brady and Giglio disclosures, or cross-examination, police officers may want to settle the
criminal case to prevent embarrassing information about the police agency from coming out. If an
officer does not have to testify at a trial, there is no need to provide information that would impeach his
credibility, such as information about his history of misconduct. Likewise, if an arrest was effected
through an illegal surveillance program or with excessive force, settling the case by guilty plea would
spare the police agency from having its practices publicly exposed at trial. Were the prosecutor the only
one whose interests mattered, the threat of police embarrassment might not register. But if police have
more influence over the negotiations, there would be a greater potential for pleas that help the police
department to save face, even if the pleas otherwise do little for the prosecutor. A variation on this face-saving
interest can be found in the conditions the prosecutors set for the guilty plea. Where there is potential that the criminal
defendant will sue the police department later on for civil rights violations, the police might have a
particular interest in obtaining a guilty plea--even to reduced charges--if the plea contains a promise
that the defendant will not bring any future lawsuit resulting from the case. The U.S. Supreme Court has
signed off on the constitutionality of incorporating an agreement not to sue into the guilty plea. This civil
litigation context is another example where the police would have an interest in settling the case that
the prosecutor would not otherwise have had on his own. Similarly, the police may want a guilty plea
because the conviction itself protects against some civil rights litigation. Bill Amato, an attorney for the Tempe Police
Department in Arizona, referred to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Heck v. Humphrey for the rule that a federal civil rights claim for
damages cannot prevail if the suit's success would imply that a criminal conviction is invalid. "[T]hat's not something that prosecutors
necessarily know," Amato said, so "[I] went to my city prosecutor's office one day without any case pending" and told the prosecutor about this
the decision about what charge to
doctrine: "'Don't plead it to the trespass, plead it out to the aggravated assault." In this way,
plead a defendant to has implications for the police department's civil liability--implications that the
prosecutor likely would not know, or care, about if the police were not involved in the negotiation
process. Another example where police may push for a particular plea offer is in cases involving officers
as defendants. As noted earlier, certain guilty pleas will strip officers of their law enforcement
credentials and pensions, while others will not.