Resolved: plea bargaining is systematicly unjust

I'll make 2 arguments in favor of plea bargaining. 1st, plea bargaining is necessary for the function of the court system. As it is, the American penal system is overburdened and understaffed. Plea bargaining remedies this in 3 ways. a. Plea bargaining allows the trial process to be skipped, saving thousands of dollars. [1] b. Plea bargaining avoids the need for the prosecution to prepare a case for the trial and for the defense to prepare a case against it which cuts down on the fees and workload of attourneys, important when those attourneys are state apointed. c. Plea bargaining results in shorter sentences, which saves about $50,000 per person, per year in prison expenses. [2] 2nd, plea bargaining better promotes justice for the defendant for two reasons. a. A defendant who is willing to admit to the crime he committed deserves a lesser punishment, which plea bargaining allows. b. If a criminal committed a crime and is willing to confess to it if given a reasonable sentence, forcing a trial on him would give him a chance at going free when he didn't deserve it, which provides no justice at all. 3rd, plea bargaining can be used in exchange for testimony, which allows for other criminals to be captured and tried more effectively. On my opponent's first contention. (Due process0.. 1st, he fails understand the difference between a right and a duty. The bill of rights allows for the right to a fair trial which the defendant is free to exercise as he or she wishes. This can include waiving that right. Foregoing a trial in such a manner is not a violation of the defendant's constitutional rights because the defendant made his own choice to do so. 2nd, cross-apply my 1st point, that plea bargaining reduces the costs of criminal justice. This means that even if the pleaing defendant isn't given the full benefit of a fair trial, at least the costs saved at his expense will allow the criminal justice system to give another criminal the full and impartial hearing he deserves. Money distribution, in this case, is a zero-sum game. Someone has to suffer a loss of rights to a lack of funds. Better the consenting individual than the non-consenting one. 3rd, cross-apply my second point. The jury trial can sometimes be bad because it allows criminals to go free. Plea bargaining prevents this. On my opponent's second contention (Compromises in justice) 1st, cross-apply my 2nd point. It is particularly applicable here. Those who admit to their crimes deserve less punishment than those who don't, so justice is being served appropriately, and in any case, a guarantee of some punishment is better than the possibility of no punishment at all. 2nd, my 3rd point applies here as well. We overall increase the net amount of justice with plea bargaining, even if it results in slightly lesser punishment for the defendant because it results in more criminal convictions for other people. 3rd, the exact measure of punishment that is deserved is arbitrary to a fault. It is hard to say that the punishment someone would receive without plea bargaining is more just than the one that would be given with plea bargaining, since there is no clear conversion factor from the typeof crime committed to years of incarceration needed for justice. 4th, my opponent's point is supported with a single example which hardly shows a systematic problem. On the third contention (innocent convictions)... 1st, plea bargaining will NEVER result in a non-consentual innocent conviction because the defendant must agree to the bargain. 2nd, this is not unique to plea bargaining. Juries can convict innocents as well. At least with plea bargaining the wrongful sentence is less severe. 3rd, PRO has no quantification of how often this happens. I suspect that people rarely, if ever, confess to a crime they didn't commit when it looks like they have a good chance with the jury. 4th, this is counterbalanced by the possibility of a wrongful innocent verdict in jury trials. Preventing guilty people from going free is over-all more important than avoiding innocent convictions because freed criminals have the potential to commit more crimes whereas there are no other injustices caused by incarcerating an innocent outside of the initial wrongful conviction. [1] http://answers.yahoo.com... [2] http://www.lao.ca.gov...