History Main / PleaBargain

* ''Film/{{Snitch}}'': It's established as standard that if a person is charged with a drug offense they can roll on someone else to get lesser charges and thus a reduced sentence. John's son Jason however is the one who'd been rolled on, and won't intice anyone else into drug dealing to save himself, so he's facing at least a decade behind bars. Horrified by the prospect, John steps in to help instead, making a deal with the prosecutor and DEA to bring down some drug dealers so his son gets lenience. [[spoiler:Eventually, he nails such a big fish that Jason is set free with all the charges dropped.]]

* In the American version of ''Series/ShamelessUS'' Fiona is arrested for child endangerment for accidentally allowing her younger brother Liam to get into some cocaine she had out in the open. Her somewhat overworked lawyer tells her that it would be best to plea bargain, as she's a first time offender, it's a fairly open-and-shut case, and at worst she'd probably only get 1-3 months in jail. Fiona, however, is resistant to plead guilty as the entire affair was an accident, and has to be persuaded to accept the plea deal (she ends up not having to actually serve any time, and is instead given probation).

* ''Series/CalvinAndHobbes'' completely destroy the living room from trying to play ball indoors, leading to this exchange:

* ''Series/{{Deputy}}'': District Attorney Carol Riley tells Hollister she plans to cut a deal with [[DirtyCop corrupt former detective]] Johnson that will have him plead guilty in exchange for light punishment, as she thinks a public trial would damage the city. Hollister opposes this strongly, and works to kill the plea deal.

Essentially, the defendant agrees to plead "guilty" to one or more charges, in exchange for a lighter sentence. Often, a lesser charge is agreed to, avoiding a harsher penalty. For example, plea bargaining a felony down to misdemeanor, or an offense that would get the defendant on a "sex offenders" listing down to one that will not. The prosecutor may also ''recommend'' a lighter sentence to the judge, usually within the standard range. For instance, crime A is worth 6-9 months, crime B is worth 18-24 months. The accused was originally charged with crime B, but bargains and pleads guilty to crime A, and in exchange, the prosecutor recommends a sentence of 6 months. The judge may choose to give more, but only up to 9 months. Also note that the acceptance of the plea bargain is entirely dependent on the judge: if he or she feels the plea bargain is a gross {{miscarriage of justice}} (if a first-degree murder is pleaded down to manslaughter, for example), the plea bargain can be ''rejected''. If this happens, expect the judge to rebuke the prosecution. The other side of the coin is the problem with District Attorneys "front loading" the charges and potential sentences against the defendant to encourage a plea bargain. Many defendants who are either innocent or at least believe they have a reasonable chance at being found not guilty at trial plea bargain out anyways -- if crime B is worth 5-10 years jail but a plea bargain is available for crime A that allows for 6-9 months jail, many defendants would take the plea even if innocent to avoid the risk of spending 10 years inside.

And it's a pretty good deal for the prosecution too, usually. Sure, they probably could have gotten a conviction, but full trials take time, and money, and tie up attorneys who could be working on the next case. It has been pointed out many times that if a sizable number of defendants suddenly refused to plea bargain, it would cause a collapse of the entire legal system, as the government would be unable to hold trials for them all (some have suggested they do this to protest). In the United States, as much as '''97% of cases are resolved by plea bargaining'''.[[note]]Note that on account of the US' peculiar drug laws, a lot of these are drug cases. Evidence tends to be particularly airtight with drug possession -- after all, it's hard (though [[RefugeInAudacity not impossible]], and also [[TooDumbToLive not recommended]]) to say "No, I wasn't carrying any drugs" when the police have the drugs and you before the court -- making trials a waste of everyone's time. Because the facts are usually undisputed, usually the defense might make a few motions to see if the drugs can be suppressed for some kind of police misconduct, but that almost inevitably fails, and then begins the bargaining. Weapons-possession charges follow much the same pattern: the prosecution just has to show that you had the weapon and weren't licensed. This can get a little complicated (for instance, when the weapon isn't a gun but something like a knife that could be used as a tool, or when there's a gun in a car with multiple people and nobody will cop to owning it), but it's fundamentally not a case that's really suitable for trial.[[/note]] Note also this can be subject to EaglelandOsmosis. In most civil law nations, it's simply not possible. Even if you plead guilty, they do a full trial to establish how much time you get. In the other [[UsefulNotes/TheCommonLaw common law]] nations, it's officially frowned on and officially doesn't happen. Unofficially, it happens all the time, but it's considered very impolite to suggest it. This has been a huge issue at international tribunals. Depending on conditions in the facility a suspect is held in prior to trial, it could also be seen as [[PerpSweating coercing a confession]]; criminal-justice reforms like those implemented in UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC in the 1980s and UsefulNotes/NewJersey in 2017, which feature getting rid of pretrial detention in most cases, are partly aimed at fixing this problem.

* The ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' pilot has Sisko invoke the Ferengi version of plea bargaining when Nog gets arrested; he drops the charges if the Ferengi keep themselves (and their community-building business) on the station instead of leaving as they planned, or he makes sure Nog gets a long sentence. Sisko freely calls it blackmail in later episodes.
** Sisko calls plea bargaining a Ferengi legal tradition, but the way the criminal cases against Bashir's father and Ezri's brother are resolved indicate that it's alive and well in the Federation criminal justice system.

* Despite possibly killing close to a hundred people, serial killer Carl Eugene Watts ("The Sunday Morning Slasher") was nearly released in 2006 due to a plea bargain made at the time of his initial conviction. Thankfully, evidence was uncovered of two more murders he committed. He was convicted in both cases. Watts died in 2007 while serving two life sentences.

** In ''Series/MajorCrimes'', this is spelled out as a key point . As the Los Angeles city government is nearly broke, the cops are pushed to get crooks to confess and make these deals because plea bargains can't be appealed and thus the D.A.'s office saves a fortune on those cases. Several of the cops aren't happy that murderers will get light sentences but have to go along with orders from on high.

-->'''Jon:''' Santa knows when you've been bad.
-->'''Garfield:''' Maybe I could cop a plea bargain.

* In the second case of ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyJusticeForAll'', the first thing Franziska von Karma tells Phoenix at the start of the trial is that he would be pleading "justified self-defense" within the first 10 minutes of the trial. Phoenix is later gave the choice of pleading or not, but the situation is a ButThouMust and he ends up not pleading. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] because entering a plea of "justified self-defense" would be the same as confessing to a murder, which would ruin the client's life.

Now, if the prosecution's case is weak, or you've got a flair for the dramatic, {{Courtroom Antic}}s and [[MyRuleFuIsStrongerThanYours looking for technicalities]] might [[OffOnATechnicality win the day]]. But sometimes the evidence is airtight, the prosecutor is a pro, and the judge has no mercy. At that point, the client's best interest might lie in making a Plea Bargain.

* In season 12 of ''Series/CriminalMinds,'' when [[spoiler: Spencer Reid]] is arrested for murder, he's quickly offered a plea deal to serve as little as a few months in jail. His attorney thinks he should take it, but a combination of believing himself to be innocent (he was drugged at the time, so he doesn't actually remember) and the knowledge that ''any'' conviction would bar him from further employment with the FBI, he refuses it out of hand. It becomes moot by the end of the episode; the prosecution had managed to locate the murder weapon, giving them a ''much'' stronger case, so they took that deal and any potential others off the table.

* During Prohibition, "bargain days" were the only way many courts could keep up with the alcohol-related workload. Everyone who agreed to plead guilty in exchange for the smallest penalty the judge could get away with would be scheduled for the same court date, and the formalities were zipped through to clear as many cases off the docket as possible.
** Nowadays this often happens (albeit less frequently) with possession charges for small amounts of marijuana. Again, the issue here is that in contraband cases, a trial is generally worse than useless--it would be pointless for the defendant to deny the charge, since the only way you get caught is if the cops actually see you commit the crime (carrying the contraband), so once the defense lawyer has tried and (usually) failed to get the evidence suppressed for alleged police misconduct, the defendant usually just wants to get the business over with.
* [[UsefulNotes/{{Canada}} Canadian]] serial killer Karla Homolka is one infamous example of a plea bargain. After assisting her husband Paul Bernardo in the murder and rape of three girls (including her own sister) in the city of St. Catharine's, she struck a deal with the prosecutors and received a 12 year sentence in exchange for taking the stand against Bernardo, who ended up getting life. Unfortunately, not long after the trial closed, tapes were found of the murders that revealed that Karla had had more to do with the murders than previously thought. For this reason, the case is often referred to as "the {{deal with the devil}}."
** Any smart prosecutor would make the deal dependent on her telling the full truth, with the agreement being that it was invalid if she didn't. In the USA, the prosecutor can do this. Such agreements can be worse for the guilty party than otherwise, because they can allow the prosecutor to then use any statements made prior, as well as set aside statutes of limitation.
*** Whatever deal was made was finalized when the court pronounced its sentence; Canada has legal rules similar to American Double Jeopardy laws that prevent retrials except under specific conditions. The intelligence level of the prosecutor was irrelevant; while it's difficult (but possible, unlike in the U.S.) to retry someone found not guilty, it's most certainly not allowed to try someone a second time for a crime for which they ''had already been found guilty and been sentenced'', regardless of new information.

* This is spelled out as a key point in ''Series/MajorCrimes''. As the Los Angeles city government is nearly broke, the cops are pushed to get crooks to confess and make these deals because plea bargains can't be appealed and thus the D.A.'s office saves a fortune on those cases. Several of the cops aren't happy that murderers will get light sentences but have to go along with orders from on high.

* Happens all the time on ''Series/TheCloser'' and its AfterShow, ''Series/MajorCrimes''. One instance of it on ''The Closer'' is notable because it backfired ''spectacularly''. An elderly shopkeeper and his 8-year-old grandson are shot to death by a local gang member, and the police think that they know who it is. They also think that ''another'' gang member witnessed the murder or maybe, at most, was an accomplice. The potential witness is offered an immunity agreement, stating that he won't get charged with anything in exchange for telling them everything he knows, in the hopes that his testimony will be enough to get the other guy. Except it turns out the guy they thought did it was innocent, the "witness" committed the murder himself, and the other guy just happened to come into the shop as the killer was leaving. So basically, they've just let a guy off scot-free for murdering an old man and a child.

* In ''The Trials of Oscar Wilde'' the title character's lawyer is disgusted when he learns that Wilde lied under oath about being gay (it's the lie that he objects to; he feels like Wilde suckered him into betraying his professional ethics). However, he agrees to defend Wilde against charges of [[ValuesDissonance "gross indecency"]] when he learns that the prosecution is offering plea bargains to male prostitutes in exchange for evidence against Wilde - at the time, this sort of arrangement was absolutely unheard of under English law, and the lawyer feels it's a far worse perversion of justice than Wilde's perjuring himself.

* In ''WebComic/SchlockMercenary'', the Toughs end up on the wrong side of general Xinchub, who attempts to arrest them (as part of a scheme to force them into performing a mission for him). As part of his list of criminal activities by the Toughs, Xinchub mentions how Kevyn making the Teraport open source and giving the technology out freely to the entire Galaxy constitutes treason because the list of recipients included known enemies of humanity. Kevyn asks if he can plea-bargain it down to the lesser charge of "Grand Spamming" for having essentially spammed the known Universe in the process. TheRant points out that this actually not a good idea, since spammers are ''more'' hated than traitors in the future.