Court Opinion

ID: 9467825
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:57:45.770612+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:33.257056
License: Public Domain

RUBIN, Circuit Judge, with whom RANDALL, Circuit Judge,
joins, dissenting.
All plea bargaining, whether for reduced sentences, elimination of counts or for lesser offenses, involves negotiation for an admission of guilt to a criminal offense in return for a promise of benefits from the state. Such bargaining compromises both the state’s interest in law enforcement and the individual’s personal liberty. It is tolerable only because of the exigencies of our law enforcement mechanisms and of our system of criminal courts. However, save for the fact that the result is negotiated, plea bargaining is fundamentally different from the compromise of civil litigation. The values, the stakes and the interest of society are all different. See Rubin, How We Can Improve Judicial Treatment of Individual Cases Without Sacrificing Individual Rights: The Problems of the Criminal Law, The Pound Conference: Perspectives on Justice in the Future (A. Leo Levin & R. Wheeler, eds. 1976), reprinted in 70 F.R.D. 79, at 177, 183-86 (1976), and the authorities cited therein. Therefore, I cannot join in Part I of my brother Hill’s dissent.
I agree fully, however, with his analysis in Parts II, III, IV and V and the conclusion he reaches. A trial judge who joins in sentence bargaining enters the contest with infinitely greater bargaining power than the accused. He is seldom completely neutral: absent public interest in the trial of a particular case, it is in his interest to dispose of cases without trial and, thus, to clear his docket with minimal effort. If he may offer the defendant a deal in return for a guilty plea, and then, when this proffer is rejected, impose a greater sentence, without stated and justifiable reasons, he not only exerts coercive pressure on the accused but affects detrimentally the administration of justice in his court. The criminal defense cogniscenti will quickly learn that, when this judge’s proffer is rejected, the defendant, if convicted, will pay a higher price. It is a denial of due process for the judge thus to stain his robes.