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In legal terms, a plea is simply an answer to a claim made by someone in a criminal case under
common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipresen ...
using the
adversarial system The adversarial system or adversary system is a legal system used in the common law countries where two advocates represent their parties' case or position before an impartial person or group of people, usually a judge or jury, who attempt to det ...
. Colloquially, a plea has come to mean the assertion by a
defendant In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case. Terminology varies from one jurisdic ...
at
arraignment Arraignment is a formal reading of a criminal charging document in the presence of the defendant, to inform them of the charges against them. In response to arraignment, the accused is expected to enter a plea. Acceptable pleas vary among jurisd ...
, or otherwise in response to a
criminal charge A criminal charge is a formal accusation made by a governmental authority (usually a public prosecutor or the police) asserting that somebody has committed a crime. A charging document, which contains one or more criminal charges or counts, can ...
, whether that person pleaded or pled
guilty Guilty or The Guilty may refer to: * Guilt (emotion), an experience that occurs when a person believes they have violated a moral standard Law *Culpability, the degree to which an agent can be held responsible for action or inaction *Guilt (law) ...
, not guilty, '' nolo contendere'' (a.k.a. no contest),
no case to answer No case for the defendant to answer (sometimes shortened to no case to answer) is a term in the criminal law of some Commonwealth states, whereby a defendant seeks acquittal without having to present a defence, because of the insufficiency of the ...
(in the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
), or
Alford plea In United States law, an Alford plea, also called a Kennedy plea in West Virginia, an Alford guilty plea, and the Alford doctrine, is a guilty plea in criminal court, whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and ...
(in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
). The concept of the plea is one of the significant differences between criminal procedure under common law and procedure under the civil law system. Under common law, a defendant who pleads guilty is automatically convicted, and the remainder of the
trial In law, a trial is a coming together of Party (law), parties to a :wikt:dispute, dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence (law), evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to Adjudication, adjudicate claims or d ...
is used to determine the sentence. This produces a system known as
plea bargain A plea bargain (also plea agreement or plea deal) is an agreement in criminal law proceedings, whereby the prosecutor provides a concession to the defendant in exchange for a plea of guilt or '' nolo contendere.'' This may mean that the defendan ...
ing, in which defendants may plead guilty in exchange for a more lenient punishment. In civil law jurisdictions, a confession by the defendant is treated like any other piece of evidence. A full confession does not prevent a full trial or relieve the prosecutor from presenting a case to the court.


Types of plea

The most common types of plea are "guilty" and "not guilty". Pleading guilty typically results in a more lenient punishment for the defendant; it is thus a type of
mitigating factor In criminal law, a mitigating factor, also known as an extenuating circumstance, is any information or evidence presented to the court regarding the defendant or the circumstances of the crime that might result in reduced charges or a lesser sente ...
in sentencing. In a
plea bargain A plea bargain (also plea agreement or plea deal) is an agreement in criminal law proceedings, whereby the prosecutor provides a concession to the defendant in exchange for a plea of guilt or '' nolo contendere.'' This may mean that the defendan ...
, a defendant makes a deal with the prosecution or court to plead guilty in exchange for a more lenient punishment, or for related charges against them to be dropped. A "blind plea" is a guilty plea entered with no plea agreement in place. Plea bargains are particularly common in the United States. Other countries use a more limited form of plea bargaining. In the United Kingdom and Germany, guidelines state that only the timing of the guilty plea can affect the reduction in the punishment, with an earlier plea resulting in a greater reduction. In the United States, a '' nolo contendere'' (no contest) plea is when the defendant submits a plea that neither admits nor denies the offense. It has the same immediate effect as a guilty plea because the trial avoids determining the defendant's guilt.


Peremptory pleas

These pleas claim that a case cannot proceed for some reason. They are so-called because, rather than being an answer to the question of guilt or innocence, they are a claim that the matter of guilt or innocence should not be considered. They are: *''autrefois convict'' (or ''autrefois'' ''acquit'') – where under the doctrine of
double jeopardy In jurisprudence, double jeopardy is a procedural defence (primarily in common law jurisdictions) that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same (or similar) charges following an acquittal or conviction and in rare case ...
, the accused has been previously convicted or acquitted of the same charge and hence cannot be tried again. *plea of pardon – where the accused has been pardoned for the offense.


No plea entered

A defendant who refuses to enter a plea is usually interpreted as giving a plea of not guilty; the
Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure are the procedural rules that govern how federal criminal prosecutions are conducted in United States district courts and the general trial courts of the U.S. government. They are the companion to the Fed ...
, for instance, state, "If a defendant refuses to enter a plea or if a defendant organization fails to appear, the court must enter a plea of not guilty." Similarly, if a defendant attempts to enter an unorthodox plea (a "creative plea"), this will usually be interpreted as a plea of not guilty. One example of this was a defendant accused of a crime committed while protesting a
nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...
plant, who gave his plea as "I plead for the beauty that surrounds us". Until 1772, English law stated that the trial was delayed if a defendant refused to plead guilty or not guilty. Some of these defendants were subjected to ''
peine forte et dure ' (Law French for "hard and forceful punishment") was a method of torture formerly used in the common law legal system, in which a defendant who refused to plead ("stood mute") would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon h ...
'' (torture by pressing) until they entered a plea, although some died. The last recorded instance of this was in 1741. This method of torture was only used once in the
history of the United States The history of the lands that became the United States began with the arrival of Settlement of the Americas, the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. Native American cultures in the United States, Numerous indigenous cultures formed ...
.
Giles Corey Giles Corey ( August 1611 – September 19, 1692) was an English-born American farmer who was accused of witchcraft along with his wife Martha Corey during the Salem witch trials. After being arrested, Corey refused to enter a plea of guilty or ...
refused to enter a plea in response to being accused of
witchcraft Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have us ...
during the
Salem Witch Trials The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, 19 of whom w ...
and was pressed to death in 1692.


United States


"Voluntary and intelligent"

A
defendant In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case. Terminology varies from one jurisdic ...
who enters a plea of guilty must do so, in the phraseology of a 1938
United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
case, ''
Johnson v. Zerbst ''Johnson v. Zerbst'', 304 U.S. 458 (1938), was a United States Supreme Court case, in which the petitioner, Johnson, had been convicted in federal court of feloniously possessing, uttering, and passing counterfeit money in a trial where he had not ...
'', "knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently". The burden is on the prosecution to prove that all waivers of the defendant's rights complied with due process standards. Accordingly, in cases of all but the most minor offenses, the court or the prosecution (depending upon local custom and the presiding judge's preference) will engage in a
plea colloquy A plea colloquy, in United States criminal procedure, is a conversation between a judge and a criminal defendant who has been sworn under oath, which must occur when the defendant enters a guilty plea in court in order for the plea to be valid. T ...
wherein they ask the defendant a series of rote questions about the defendant's knowledge of his rights and the voluntariness of the plea. Typically the hearing on the guilty plea is transcribed by a
court reporter A court reporter, court stenographer, or shorthand reporter is a person whose occupation is to capture the live testimony in proceedings using a stenographic machine, thereby transforming the proceedings into an official certified transcript b ...
, and the transcript is made a part of the permanent record of the case to preserve the conviction's validity from being challenged at some future time. "Voluntary" has been described as "an elusive term which has come to mean not induced by 'improper' inducements, such as
bribing Bribery is the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official, or other person, in charge of a public or legal duty. With regard to governmental operations, essentially, bribery is "Corr ...
or physical violence, but not including the inducements normally associated with
charge Charge or charged may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * '' Charge, Zero Emissions/Maximum Speed'', a 2011 documentary Music * ''Charge'' (David Ford album) * ''Charge'' (Machel Montano album) * ''Charge!!'', an album by The Aqu ...
and
sentence bargaining A plea bargain (also plea agreement or plea deal) is an agreement in criminal law proceedings, whereby the prosecutor provides a concession to the defendant in exchange for a plea of guilt or '' nolo contendere.'' This may mean that the defend ...
(except for inducements involving ' overcharging' by prosecutors)." "Intelligent" has been described as "also an elusive term, meaning that the defendant knows his rights, the nature of the charge to which he is pleading, and the consequences of his plea." Virtually all jurisdictions hold that defense counsel need not discuss with defendants the collateral consequences of pleading guilty, such as consecutive sentencing or even treatment as an aggravating circumstance in an ongoing capital prosecution. However, the Supreme Court recognized an important exception in '' Padilla v. Kentucky'' (2010), in which the Court held that defense counsel is obligated to inform defendants of the potential immigration consequences of a guilty plea. Thus a defendant who is not advised of immigration consequences may have an
ineffective assistance of counsel In United States law, ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) is a claim raised by a convicted criminal defendant asserting that the defendant's legal counsel performed so ineffectively that it deprived the defendant of the constitutional right gua ...
argument. In the U.S. federal system, the court must also satisfy itself that there is a factual basis for the guilty plea. However, this safeguard may not be very effective because the parties, having reached a plea agreement, may be reluctant to reveal any information that could disturb the agreement. When a plea agreement has been made, the judge's factual basis inquiry is usually perfunctory, and the standard for finding that the plea is factually based is very low.


Special pleas

Other special pleas used in criminal cases include the plea of mental incompetence, challenging the jurisdiction of the court over the defendant's person, the plea in bar, attacking the jurisdiction of the court over the crime charged, and the plea in abatement, which is used to address procedural errors in bringing the charges against the defendant, not apparent on the "face" of the indictment or other charging instrument. Special pleas in federal criminal cases have been abolished, and defenses formerly raised by special pleas are now raised by motion to dismiss. A conditional plea is one where the defendant pleads guilty to the offense but expressly reserves the right to appeal certain aspects of the charges (for example, that the evidence was illegally obtained). In ''
United States v. Binion ''United States v. Binion'', 132 F. App'x 89 (8th Cir. 2005), is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit applied two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, '' United States v. Booker'' and '' United States v. Fanfan' ...
'', malingering or feigning illness during a competency evaluation was held to be
obstruction of justice Obstruction of justice, in United States jurisdictions, is an act that involves unduly influencing, impeding, or otherwise interfering with the justice system, especially the legal and procedural tasks of prosecutors, investigators, or other gov ...
and led to an enhanced sentence. Although the defendant had pleaded guilty, he was not awarded a reduction in sentence because the feigned illness was considered to mean that he was not accepting responsibility for his illegal behavior.


Plea in mitigation

A plea in mitigation is used during criminal law proceedings in many
Commonwealth countries The Commonwealth of Nations is a voluntary association of 56 sovereign states. Most of them were British colonies or dependencies of those colonies. No one government in the Commonwealth exercises power over the others, as is the case in a po ...
. It typically involves a lawyer telling a judge of extenuating circumstances that could result in a lesser sentence for an offender.


See also

*
Pleading In law as practiced in countries that follow the English models, a pleading is a formal written statement of a party's claims or defenses to another party's claims in a civil action. The parties' pleadings in a case define the issues to be adjudi ...


References

{{Authority control Pleas