University of Chicago Law School Chicago Unbound Journal Articles Faculty Scholarship Fall 1968 The Prosecutor's Role in the Plea Bargaining Albert Alschuler Follow this and additional works at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Albert Alschuler, "The Prosecutor's Role in the Plea Bargaining," 36 University of Chicago Law Review 50 (1968). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Prosecutor's Role in Plea Bargaining Albert W. Alschulertf Introduction During most of the history of the common law, pleas of guilty were actively discouraged by English and American courts.' For centuries, litigation was thought "the safest test of justice." 2 The past one hundred years have, however, seen a revolution in methods of criminal proce- dure. Today, roughly ninety per cent of all defendants convicted of crime in both state and federal courts plead guilty rather than exer- cise their right to stand trial before a court or jury.3 Behind this statis- tic lies the widespread practice of plea bargaining-the exchange of prosecutorial and judicial concessions for pleas of guilty. The guilty-plea system has grown largely as a product of circum- stance, not choice. The volume of crime has increased in recent dec- ades,4 and the criminal law has come to regulate areas of human activity that were formerly beyond its scope.5 At the same time, the length of the average felony trial has substantially increased, 6 and a constitutional revolution led by the United States Supreme Court has diverted a major share of judicial and prosecutorial resources from the trial of criminal cases to the resolution of pre-trial motions and post- conviction proceedings.