University of Colorado Law School Colorado Law Scholarly Commons Articles Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship 2017 "Make Him an Offer He Can't Refuse"-- Mezzanatto Waivers as Lynchpin of Prosecutorial Overreach Christopher B. Mueller University of Colorado Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles Part of the Contracts Commons, Courts Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Evidence Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Citation Information Christopher B. Mueller, "Make Him an Offer He Can't Refuse"-- Mezzanatto Waivers as Lynchpin of Prosecutorial Overreach, 82 MO. L. REV. 1023 (2017), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/ articles/969. Copyright Statement Copyright protected. Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship at Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. “Make Him an Offer He Can’t Refuse” – Mezzanatto Waivers as Lynchpin of Prosecutorial Overreach Christopher B. Mueller* ABSTRACT Plea bargaining is the dominant means of disposing of criminal charges in the United States, in both state and federal courts. This administrative mechanism has become a system that is grossly abusive of individual rights, leading to many well-known maladies of the criminal justice system, which include overcharging, overincarceration, convictions on charges that would likely fail at trial, and even conviction of “factually innocent” persons.