Plea-bargaining undermines the criminal justice system.

I agree with Pro's definitions. =Case=According to Cato institute, between ninety and ninety-five percent of criminal cases are resolved by a plea bargain in the United States. With this statistic in mind, I negate the resolved. C1. Plea Bargaining saves the criminal justice system time and money. The Criminal Justice system simply cannot afford to take every case to trial. Without plea bargaining, our criminal justice system could not handle the amount of cases it would have to deal with. Judge Michael McSpadden elaborates on this, stating that if every case went to trial: "You'd have to spend billions of dollars to have that many courts, to have that much time. Just not going to happen. "[1]. Law professor Bruce Green (no friend to plea bargaining) even admits that: "It's a matter of resources, of course. We have a society where a lot of things are considered crimes. And a lot of people are arrested for crimes. If you were to give everyone a trial, it would cost an incredible amount. You'd have to build a lot more courtrooms, you'd have to appoint lots more judges and you'd have to spend a lot more of the state and local and federal money to do that. So part of the reason we have a system the way we do is it's economically more efficient to do that. "[2]It's quite clear that plea bargaining saves precious resources, and since the definition of undermines states "to weaken or cause to collapse", plea bargaining does the exact opposite, it supports the criminal justice system, rather than undermining it. C2. Plea Bargaining provides justice as much as trials do. SPA: Ensures conviction of the guilty. Prosecutors sometimes wage long and expensive trials, yet lose and cause a guilty person to walk free. A recent example of the can be found in the infamous Casey Anthony trial. While logic easily showed her guilt, the jury refused to convict. Whether this is the fault of the jury, the prosecution, or the defense is ir-relevant. What IS relevant, is that a almsot certainly guilty person walked free. Take the O. J. Simpson trial as another example, and if my Opponent tries to contest this point (or these two examples) I will bring in more. Now, massive amounts of money have been wasted for a trial, and the guilty person still escaped punishment. A plea bargain would have saved money, and ensured conviction. SPB: Keeps cases from being dropped. The Oklahoma Law Review reports that when New Orleans banned plea bargaining, the District Attorney's office "rejected for prosecution 52% of all cases and 63% of all charges"[3]. This is significant, because it shows how since the courts only have a limited amount of time and money, without plea bargaining many cases cannot be tried. This is only one of many examples, which I will introduce later in this round. According the the Times online: "In the United States, defendants must be brought to trial within six months of a not guilty plea. If the trial is not held within six months, the case is dismissed. "(emphasis mine). Since we can conclude that forcing the courts to try nearly ten times the amount of cases would significantly backlog the system, many cases would be dropped entirely. In conclusion, Plea Bargaining is a needed component of our justice system. It certainly does not undermine it, rather it strengthens it. Please vote Con. Sources: 1. . http://www.pbs.org...2. . http://www.pbs.org...3. . http://adams.law.ou.edu...=Refutation=C1. SPA: For this point, Pro tries to show that people are being punished for exercising their right to trial by jury. This is unture. While sentences in a jury trial are generally more severe than those given through a plea bargain, it is not giving a punishment for pleading not guilty, rather it's giving a reward for pleading guilty and saving the court the burden of having to take them to trial. To argue that we are punishing people for pleading not guilty, is like arguing that it's punishing my sister by not giving her presents on my birthday. The vast majority of those accused are guilty, it is beneficial for the defendant and the justice system to plea bargain, which is why sentence reductions for plea bargaining exist. SPB:This actually supports my side. If the evidence is so overwhelming against a truly innocent defendant that they would most likely be convicted at trial, than plea bargaining gives them an avenue to recieve a lighter sentence. Pro's example of Robert H. also supports my side. Since plea bargaining keeps the courts from being backlogged by resolving 90+% of cases, unfortunate cases of people having to be jailed for months or years while awaiting trial would exponentially increase. As terrible as it is that the innocent Mr. Robert pled guilty, due to the lack of evidence presented by Pro on this point I must conclude that it is a unique situation and the benefits provided by plea bargaining vastly outweigh this isolated incident. C2. Pros only example on this point is the Homolka case. If you look at Pros source for this point, it states that prosecutors initially believed her to have a smaller role in the crimes, and only after the guilty plea did they discover more incriminating evidence. This example does not support Pro's claim, because her light sentence was not a result of the plea bargain, rather it was a lack of evidence. In this situation, we cannot look to plea bargaining as the force behind this injustice.