The Trial Judge's Role in Plea Bargaining, Part I

The general consensus seems to be that trial judges should not participate in the pretrial negotiations that currently lead the overwhelming majority of American criminal defendants to plead guilty rather than exercise the right to trial.'The American Bar Association's Standards for Criminal Justice declard, "The trial judge should not participate in plea discussions," ' 2 and the ABA's Professional Ethics Committee has ruled, "A judge should not be a party to advance arrangements for the determination of sentence whether as a result of a guilty plea or a finding of guilty based on proof."' 3 According to the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, "[t]he judge's role is not that of one of the parties to the negotiation, but that of an independent examiner to verify that the defendant's plea is the result of an intelligent and knowing choice and not based on misapprehension or the product of coercion."'4 * The research for this study was conducted under the auspices of the Center for Studies in Criminal Justice of the University of Chicago.I am particularly grateful to