Pleading Guilty: A Critique of Four Models

Abstract

Negotiated settlement of a cause in litigation is no stranger to prevailing American notions of justice. Yet there is something less than fully gratifying about compromise, and when the high principles and great social purposes of criminal justice are set in the balance, the process sometimes seems downright unsavory. What has become of the guilty plea? Is it no longer the commendable gesture of contrition, the honest confession and open acceptance of responsibility? Is it not the first motion of the penitent, a recognition of the social ethic bespeaking a potential for redemption? Do we now consider the crafty, adversary courtroom battle a nobler course? Somehow the once pure and salubrious guilty has become inextricably associated with plea bargaining,' that baleful term connoting commercial exchange of advantage more appropriate to a Moroccan market than the halls of justice. Disposition without trial can no longer be regarded as a forthright concession coupled with a blind supplication for mercy. Courtroom realities, new or newly perceived, have engendered a more modern (read: cynical) appreciation of the transaction. In many jurisdictions, criminal defendants have learned that their accusation awards them a marketable service: the exclusive