ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a discussion of a famous essay in criminal procedure in which its author, Yale Kamisar, contrasted the situation of defendants while being questioned with their much more protected status in courtrooms. He used the metaphors of the “gatehouse” and the “mansion” to describe the two worlds. The gatehouse is that dark and dank building outside the mansion where arrestees are subject to trickery and pressures to confess and the mansion is the bright and open courthouse where prosecutors are hemmed in by defense attorneys and judges. Unfortunately, the protections in the courthouse arrive too late for most defendants. The chapter uses two extreme plea-bargaining cases—one federal and one state—to show how completely the metaphor has broken down because the pressures a prosecutor can put on a defendant to admit guilt in the courthouse are far greater than the police have at their disposal. The chapter ends by explaining why harsh drug laws and three-strikes laws are an American phenomenon. European criminal justice systems are strongly committed to the principle of proportionality so sentences of such severity are not possible. In the United States, proportionality in sentencing is an option, not a mandate.
