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Measuring The Creative Plea Bargain, Thea B. Johnson
Measuring The Creative Plea Bargain, Thea B. Johnson
Faculty Publications
A great deal of criminal law scholarship and practice turns on whether a defendant gets a good deal through plea bargaining. But what is a good deal? And how do defense attorneys secure such deals? Much scholarship measures plea bargains by one metric: how many years the defendant receives at sentencing. In the era of collateral consequences, however, this is no longer an adequate metric as it misses a world of bargaining that happens outside of the sentence. Through empirical research, this Article examines the measure of a good plea and the work that goes into negotiating such a plea. …
A New Balance Of Evils: Prosecutorial Misconduct, Iqbal, And The End Of Absolute Immunity, Mark C. Niles
A New Balance Of Evils: Prosecutorial Misconduct, Iqbal, And The End Of Absolute Immunity, Mark C. Niles
Faculty Publications
Criminal prosecutors wield immense power in the criminal justice system. While the majority of prosecutors exercise this power in a professional manner, there is compelling evidence of a serious and growing problem of prosecutorial misconduct in this country. Although much prosecutorial misconduct results in the violation of the constitutional and other legal rights of criminal defendants, prosecutors are protected from any liability arising from these violations in all but the most exceptional cases by the defense of absolute immunity. The US. Supreme Court has justified the application of absolute prosecutorial immunity, in part, by noting that other means of incentivizing …