Past plea outcomes supply the sentencing benchmarks that structure later negotiations

Evidence

This personal and professional familiarity helps plea negotiations by encouraging easy interaction between the attorneys. Even more important, the outcomes of negotiations in previous cases furnish a basis <anvappropriate punishment for the defendant?» If a defense attorney is attempting to convince the prosecutor that his client should be given probation, then he may bring up past instances in which the prosecutor agreed to probation for defendants facing similar charges. If previous defendants received jail time for the same offense, he may emphasize factors that distinguish his client from them (a stable family life, no prior criminal record) to justify a more favorable outcome. But the prosecutor independently considers how this case resembles past cases and whether any factors aggravate the situation and warrant unusual severity. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1750

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the course’s treatment of precedent and like-case reasoning in appellate adjudication. — connects to: Settlement and plea bargaining are priced by the anticipated trial outcome — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1256; Plea bargaining operates as a rough informal system of precedent — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1751; Case negotiations occur in the shadow of the law set by trial outcomes

Broader Connections

• Plea bargaining operates as a rough informal system of precedent #expands (0.95) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1751
• Case negotiations occur in the shadow of the law set by trial outcomes #corroborates (0.90)