Court Opinion

ID: 9786668
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:00:30.173868+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:47.461828
License: Public Domain

THOMPSON, Judge,
dissenting.
¶ 17 Plea bargaining is a core prosecutorial power. Donald, 198 Ariz. at 417, 1139, 10 P.3d at 1204. Plea bargaining is within the discretionary power of the prosecutor. State v. Morse, 127 Ariz. 25, 32, 617 P.2d 1141, 1148 (1980). “[T]he process of plea bargaining ... is left to the prosecutor’s discretion.” State v. Delk, 153 Ariz. 70, 72, 734 P.2d 612, 614 (App.1986). In Arizona, there is no right to a plea bargain. Morse, 127 Ariz. at 31, 617 P.2d at 1147.
¶ 18 In her separate opinion in Donald, then-Judge Berch noted that our supreme court had held that “[wjhen or whether to offer a plea agreement is ... a matter committed to the sound discretion of the prosecution, an executive branch agency.” Donald, 198 Ariz. at 418, ¶ 48, 10 P.3d at 1205. Judge (now Chief Justice) Berch opined “that ordering the prosecution to offer a particular plea agreement transgresses too deeply into the prosecutorial realm and usurps too great a portion of the function of the executive to comport with separation of powers principles.” Id. In the same way, directing punishment of the prosecution, and disallowing its view of the requisites of justice and public safety, by excluding its evidence disclosed *550pursuant to its duty under the rules, because the trial prosecutor, in preparation for trial, withdrew a plea offer previously explicitly rejected in -uniting by the defendant, is an unjustifiable usurpation by this court of powers committed to the executive authority of this state. I would not read Rule 15.8 so broadly as to allow this usurpation, and cannot countenance the result reached by the majority.
¶ 19 Accordingly, respectfully, I dissent.