![]() ![]() The “knowingly” aspect of a plea is a little more involved. 30, 2018) (District Judge Weinstein’s 100-plus page opinion criticizing the prosecutor’s “vindictiveness” and the “trial penalty,” after a defendant refused to plead guilty). While some judges have criticized this method of inducing a plea, they have yet to convince enough judges to agree to stop this questionable practice by prosecutors. 2017) (“the Supreme Court has squarely held that a prosecutor may threaten to charge a greater offense if a defendant will not plead guilty to a lesser one, as long as the prosecutor has probable cause to believe the defendant committed the greater offense”). However, threatening life in prison, if you don’t plead guilty, is not coercion. If the prosecutor couldn’t really make a case against your wife because he lacked probable cause, your plea would likely be considered made under threats and deemed void. What would this look like? Imagine that the prosecutor offered you a deal that if you plead guilty, he won’t charge your wife with the same crime and throw her in jail, effectively making your kids orphans. This means that the court cannot accept your plea if it’s induced by coercion, false promises, or threats. To be “voluntary,” a plea must be of your own free will. What does it mean for a plea to be “voluntarily and knowingly made”? While courts tend to conflate these two terms, in reality they are two distinct requirements that must be met before a plea can be accepted by a court. It’s crucial that you understand this before challenging your guilty plea.Ī Plea Must Be ‘Voluntarily and Knowingly Made’ In this first installment in my series of columns on attacking the guilty plea, we’ll go over what it means for a guilty plea to be “voluntarily and knowingly made,” which is the standard the court uses to decide if a guilty plea can be attacked. So, the last thing a court wants to do is revisit a case it thought was final upon hearing the words “I’m guilty.” For this reason, the hurdles to successfully challenge a guilty plea are high. It’s an easy “win” for the prosecutor, and courts love them because they don’t require much work. Why are guilty pleas so prevalent? Because they’re easy. In 2018 alone, there were 73,109 federal convictions with 71,550 of them by way of a guilty plea, according to the Administrative Office for the U.S. Share: Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on G+ Share with emailĪttacking the guilty plea is probably one of the least understood concepts in the postconviction world, even though more than 95 percent of state and federal convictions are the direct result of a guilty plea. ![]()
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