Last week I agreed to a plea deal on a stabbing case. The defendant walked into a deli, pulled out a knife and repeatedly stabbed someone waiting on line. To say that the defendant and the victim had a history of disputes between them is to put it mildly. Let's just say that they had been unfriendly toward each other for quite some time. The entire incident was captured on the store's security cameras, which provided shockingly clear footage. When I interviewed the victim, she was well-spoken and credible. The defendant gave a videotaped confession to police after waiving her Miranda rights. It was a case that I probably couldn't lose if it went to trial. And it made me wonder: if the evidence was so good, why did I agree to a plea deal in this case?
It made me consider a different scenario. I am currently assigned four open cases for a different defendant. His family keeps bailing him out, and he keeps getting arrested for selling drugs. After he got arrested for his third case, I stopped making him plea offers. I figure that I might lose one case, and maybe even two, but it's extremely unlikely that I would lose four cases. And if a jury convicts him of even one case, I will likely be able to persuade a judge to sentence him to more prison time than he would agree to in a plea deal. But is my decision to forgo the plea-bargaining process in order to obtain the maximum possible sentence a drain on the court's and the witness's time?
