Resolved: In the United States, plea bargaining for testimony is unjust.

AFFIRMATIVE I strongly affirm with the following resolution when it states; "Resolved: In the United States, plea bargaining for testimony is unjust." My Paramount Value for this round is Justice, which is defined as giving each his due in a fair and impartial way. My Value Criterion for this round is The Maximization of Rights, for I strive to obtain the most rights and forms of justice for all society. Raising the people's rights to the highest possible degree. Contention I- Guilty Pleas by the Innocent Are Unjust A. Innocent persons are often coerced into guilty plea, "Grenada Williams-Fisher [Southern U. Law School], SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, Fall 2005, states 'Many innocent individuals have been convicted of crimes they did not commit because they felt they had no other option other than to plead guilty. Sometimes the innocent are economically disadvantaged and will not be financially able to obtain the best defense possible. Many times prosecutors offer plea bargains to individuals they know are innocent, or do not have the evidence to convict, because of political pressure to have someone answer for the crime committed.' Plea bargaining does not allow the maximization of rights, for it forces the suspect to plead guilty, which takes away their rights for a speedy trial, as the prosecution would force the suspects to believe their rights are going away, as that they had been "proven" guilty already. B. SK/A06.05) Steve Maich, MACLEAN'S, July 9, 2007, p. 60, states, 'Consider the case of Robert H. --an unidentified man whose case was first described in a 1994 paper for the University of Chicago Law Review by Albert Alschuler and Andrew Deiss. According to the authors, Robert spent six months in the early 1990s in an Atlanta jail without any formal charges before meeting with a public defender. On the day she met him, she told him he'd been charged with a felony, but if he pleaded guilty he could go home that day because of the time he'd already served. If he pleaded innocent, he'd be kept in custody for at least another year awaiting trial. Not surprisingly, Robert pleaded guilty. Only later did authorities realize that due to a bureaucratic error, he'd been mistaken for someone else and should never have been arrested, let alone convicted. In this situation, a suspect was unfairly influenced to believe that he was guilty, thus making him believe that he had no more rights. In this way, plea bargaining forces people to think they are guilty, preventing the implementation of rights. Contention 2- Lenient Sentences For Criminals Are Unjust. A. RETRIBUTION REQUIRES PUNISHMENT FOR ALL WRONGDOING Russell L. Christopher [Asst. Professor of Law, U. of Tulsa], FORDHAM LAW REVIEW, October 2003, states 'One of retributivism's most important principles is the duty to punish culpable wrongdoers. As Kant famously expounded, "the Principle of punishment is a categorical imperative, and woe to him who crawls through the windings of eudaemonism in order to discover something that releases the criminal from punishment." Hegel agrees that "it would be impossible for a society to leave a crime unpunished." Though some modern forms of retributivism conceive punishment to be merely permissible, the view that punishment of wrongdoers is obligatory remains the "dominant" and "standard retributive view." Thus, "the retributivist regards the punishment of the guilty to be categorically imperative whenever the opportunity to give such punishment presents itself." ' B. LENIENCY IN EXCHANGE FOR TESTIMONY IS UNJUST Russell L. Christopher [Asst. Professor of Law, U. of Tulsa], FORDHAM LAW REVIEW, October 2003, states, 'Michael Moore suggests that the conception of retributivism as embodying an absolute duty to punish each and every wrongdoer precludes a retributivist from engaging in immunity bargaining. As Moore explains, "it might be thought that we rightly refuse to punish some guilty persons in order to be able to punish other, more seriously guilty persons - as when we give immunity, in order to extract testimony needed to convict the latter. How can the retributivist accommodate these practices, given that the retributivist regards the punishment of the guilty to be categorically imperative whenever the opportunity to give such punishment presents itself?"' Contention 3- EFFICIENCY IS IRRELEVANT TO ISSUES OF JUSTICE A. Plea bargaining is based on efficiency, not morality. Steve Maich, MACLEAN'S, July 9, 2007, states, "Most legal professionals have come to grudgingly accept the system, warts and all. But that acceptance seems based more on practicality than principle. In 1975, the Law Reform Commission of Canada called plea bargaining "something for which a decent criminal justice system has no place." By 1989, faced with a system bogging down under its own weight, its position had completely reversed: "plea negotiation is not an inherently shameful practice," the commission concluded. Most legal professionals concede that rampant plea bargaining plays havoc with legal statistics, as defendants are routinely overcharged and end up convicted of lesser offences. Most even agree that prosecutors have too much leeway in the games they can play to extract guilty pleas, such as withholding potentially exculpatory evidence--a tactic sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002. Still, they say, the courts would grind to a halt without plea bargains." B. EFFICIENCY COULD BEST BE ACHIEVED BY LAWLESSNESS Jacqueline E. Ross [Associate Professor of Law, U. of Illinois], THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LAW, Fall 2006, states, '"Acknowledging that plea bargaining "is a more flexible method of administering justice" than traditional adversary proceedings and that "it affords a far greater range of alternatives than do most trial proceedings," Alschuler argues that "flexibility is ... an advantage that all lawless systems exhibit in comparison with systems of administering justice by rules."'