Plea bargain
agreement in a criminal case between the prosecutor and defendant
A plea bargain, also known as a plea agreement or plea deal, is a legal arrangement in criminal law where the defendant agrees to plead guilty or no contest to a charge in exchange for concessions from the prosecutor. These concessions can include a reduction in the severity of the charges, the dismissal of some charges, or a more lenient sentencing recommendation. Plea bargaining serves as a mechanism to expedite the resolution of criminal cases, allowing both the prosecution and the defense to avoid the time, expense, and uncertainty of a trial. It is a prevalent practice in the United States, where it resolves about 90% of criminal cases, and has been adopted in various forms in other legal systems worldwide.
Plea bargains can take different forms, such as charge bargaining, where a defendant pleads guilty to a lesser offense, or sentence bargaining, where the expected sentence is agreed upon before a guilty plea. In addition, count bargaining involves pleading guilty to a subset of multiple charges. While plea bargaining can reduce the burden on courts and offer defendants a chance for lighter sentences, it has been subject to criticism. Detractors argue that it may encourage defendants, including the innocent, to plead guilty out of fear of harsher penalties if convicted at trial. Proponents, however, emphasize its role in conserving judicial resources and providing a degree of certainty for all parties involved.
The practice of plea bargaining has spread globally across common law jurisdictions, like the US and UK, but varies significantly based on local legal traditions and regulations.
The public source identifies “Plea bargain” as agreement in a criminal case between the prosecutor and defendant. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Plea, bargain and agreement.
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This entry incorporates text from “Plea bargain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.