From The Crime report:
The dominance of plea bargaining and the lack of transparency throughout the justice system should be addressed with “legal safeguards” to protect defendants, argues a forthcoming paper in the Stetson Law Review.
“The main issue is not prosecutorial discretion per se or even overzealous prosecutors, but the lack of oversight of the plea-bargaining process and the imbalance of power itself, which threatens the legitimacy and stability of the criminal justice system,” write the paper’s authors, Anna D. Vaynman and Mark Robert Fondacaro of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
The authors acknowledge that prosecutorial discretion is a potentially valuable tool, but they are quick to note that it creates the “potential for abuse.”
That abuse often begins with plea bargains, write the authors, adding “Are they really bargains?” Continue reading >>>
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