ABSTRACT
The plea bargain in the economy of criminal justice has many important features of the contract in commercial transactions. The conviction secured through jury trial, so familiar in countless novels, films, and television programs, is beginning to be seen as the aberration it has become. The well-publicized convictions of Spiro Agnew and Clifford Irving were secured through such plea bargains, in 1974 in New York City, 80 percent of all felony cases were settled as misdemeanors through plea bargains. It is a common place that plea bargaining could not be eliminated without substantial alterations in our criminal justice system. Plea bargaining involves negotiations between the defendant and the prosecutor as to the conditions under which the defendant will enter a guilty plea. The practice of plea bargaining has evolved in the unregulated interstices of our criminal justice system. Its development has not gone unnoticed. There is a substantial literature on the legality and propriety of plea bargaining.
