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Full-Text Articles in Law
Fictional Pleas, Thea B. Johnson
Fictional Pleas, Thea B. Johnson
Faculty Publications
A fictional plea is one in which the defendant pleads guilty to a crime he has not committed with the knowledge of the defense attorney, prosecutor and judge. With fictional pleas, the plea of conviction is totally detached from the original factual allegations against the defendant. As criminal justice actors become increasingly troubled by the impact of collateral consequences on defendants, the fictional plea serves as an appealing response to this concern. It allows the parties to achieve parallel aims: the prosecutor holds the defendant accountable in the criminal system, while the defendant avoids devastating non-criminal consequences. In this context, …
American Buffalo: Vanishing Acquittals And The Gradual Extinction Of The Federal Criminal Trial Lawyer, Frank O. Bowman Iii
American Buffalo: Vanishing Acquittals And The Gradual Extinction Of The Federal Criminal Trial Lawyer, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This essay is an invited response to Professor Ronald Wright's impressive study of the fact that the acquittal rate in federal criminal trials is declining even faster than the rate of trials themselves, Trial Distortion and the End of Innocence in Federal Criminal Justice, 154 U. PA. L. REV. 79 (2005). The essay concurs with Professor Wright's conclusion that one significant factor driving down both federal trial and acquittal rates is the government's use of the markedly increased bargaining leverage afforded to prosecutors by the post-1987 federal sentencing system consisting of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines interacting with various statutory mandatory …