The Impossible Choice: Navigating Plea Bargains as a Public Defender (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Imagine you're a public defender with a client accused of a serious felony. Your conversation almost always begins in jail. In the visitation room, you begin preparing him for the most important decision he has ever made. And he'll have to make that decision while sitting in a cage. The prosecution has offered a plea bargain. It expires soon. If he accepts a guilty plea, he'll get out of jail sooner than if he goes to trial. Before the plea offer expires, your investigator tries to identify and interview the prosecution's witnesses. Are they unreliable, making faulty assumptions, lying? It all matters to your client's freedom, but you're operating in the dark because you don't know who those witnesses are. Why not just ask your client what happened? That might work if you were guilty. But innocent clients can't tell you what actually happened because, for the most part, they don't know. You lay out the options for your client. He could go to trial, but a judge may detain him, which means waiting in jail for months, if not years, before a jury hears the case. The idealist in you hopes that your client will fight. You think he could win. But the realist in you recognizes that if he loses, he will go to prison, potentially for decades. The other option is he could accept the plea offer. It would mean going home sooner. It's no wonder that 95% of defendants accept plea offers. It's also no wonder that so many people, exonerated of crimes like manslaughter and drug offenses, originally pled guilty. Your client signs the paperwork, admitting to something that you believe in your gut he did not do. The judge asks you, does either counsel know of any reason that I should not accept the defendant's guilty plea? You want to shout, yes, your honor. This plea is the product of an extortive system of devastating mandatory minimums and lopsided access to evidence. My client faced an impossible choice. He is saying what is necessary to avoid the possibility of losing his life to prison. Instead, you reply, no, your honor.