On The Toxic and Manipulative Use of Plea-Bargains

Beyond the issue of political, legal, and taxpayer expedience, plea-bargains are good for the guilty and bad for the innocent. For the guilty, allows the guilty person who committed a crime to get off with a lesser charge that often does not do justice to the actual severity of the crime; and for the innocent, the plea-bargain often intimidates an innocent person to plead guilty to a 'lesser charge' that he or she rightfully should or would not be found guilty on -- however, the potential prospect of losing the case and facing a much 'stiffer penalty' -- eg., either jail time or significantly more jail time than would be connected to the 'lesser charge and conviction' -- threatens, intimidates, and coerces the person on trial into pleading guilty to a charge -- even if it is the lesser one -- that he or she should not rightfully be convicted of. The case of the man in Toronto that is just receiving media attention here now who pleaded guilty to an assault that carried a two year sentence when it now looks like it may have been a 'Bernardo assault' is a perfect example of the type of 'wrongful conviction' I am talking about.

This is probably the case also in hundreds of 'domestic violence charges' (my pure speculation without the facts to back me because there aren't any facts to write about, just conjecture and a 'warped sense of domestic justice' -- again, my editorial and obviously male-biased opinion). Men plead guilty to a 'lesser sentence' that may or may not carry a 'criminal record' but still carries a 'black stain on the man's integrity and character' complete with recorded police fingerprints and a file on the man's conviction in order to avoid the threat, intimidation, and coercion of jail time -- even though, in actuality, for the one man who does one day have the courage to push the ple-bargain aside, the right man in the right case should be challenging the 'abuse of the man's Charter of Rights in the home, by police, by the bail judge, by the prosecution, and by the Government of Canada. Equal rights means equally fair treatment -- and equal punishment -- for both sexes; it doesn't mean that one sex gets 'profiled and scapegoated' for the problem of 'domestic violence' when the issue is by far and large -- a 'two-sex problem' with generally 'two victims and two victimizers of similar or different proportions'.

-- dgb, June 21st, 2008.