LC-19 · State power
Plea-bargain leverage
The trial penalty
In ordinary words
Prosecutors can stack charges so the sentence after trial is many times the sentence offered for a guilty plea. The vast majority of convictions never see a jury.
Why people call it a crime
People call it coercion: plead guilty or risk a decade. The Supreme Court has called it a concession, not an unconstitutional burden.
A scene, not a hypothetical statute
The offer is two years. The trial exposure, if every count runs consecutive, is twenty. The defendant swears they did not do it and pleads anyway. The docket closes.
In legal terms
In Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357 (1978), the Court upheld a prosecutor who threatened a habitual-offender charge, carrying life, if the defendant refused a five-year plea. Brady v. United States (1970) held that plea pressure from a severe statute is not involuntary by itself. About 94 to 98 percent of federal and state convictions come from pleas, depending on the year and jurisdiction.
The Court treats charging discretion as a core executive power, and a plea as a contract. The trial penalty is a consequence of that discretion, not a separate offense.
Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357 (1978); Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742 (1970); Fed. R. Crim. P. 11.
Where it stops being legal
Pleas induced by threats of harm outside the case, fabricated evidence, or a failure to disclose exculpatory material under Brady v. Maryland can be withdrawn. Selective prosecution based on race remains unconstitutional, though hard to prove.