I am a young lawyer and I am attempting to work out a guilty plea in a criminal case. The assistant district attorney has threatened that if the client does not accept the plea, he will charge the client again with far more serious charges. Is that ethical?

Obviously, this is a practice that has been used for many years by prosecutors to induce defendants to plead guilty. Sometimes, a defendant becomes very stubborn or hard-nosed and the prosecutor uses the threat of re-indicting or adding more serious charges if there is no agreement reached on a plea to a lesser charge.

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