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Parent debate

• Resolved: In the United States, plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is unjust

1978 case of Paul Lewis Hayes

• The most famous example of this unfolded in the late 1970s, in the case of Paul Lewis Hayes. He was a petty criminal with two felony convictions on his record when he was caught forging a cheque for US$88.30. Hayes was told by prosecuters that he would get a five-year prison term if he pleaded guilty, but life imprisonment, under Kentucky's Habitual Criminal Act, if he sought a trial. Hayes sought a trial and was convicted as a habitual offender and sentenced to life in prison. He is still in prison for an $88 crime. Many consider this to be an excessive punishment that violates the notion of due desert.

• In 2001, Chief Judge William Young of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts said, "Criminal trial rates in the United States and in this district are plummeting due to the simple fact that today we punish people -- punish them severely -- simply for going to trial. It is the sheerest sophistry to pretend otherwise."[1]

Counter-argument

Criminals are not "punished for going to trial." They never had any right to some kind of lesser charge- the prosecutor doesn't "threaten" to charge them with any crime other than the one they are believed to have committed. The defendant is punished for the crime that he or she committed. The lesser charge/sentence would facilitate a lesser punishment, however that does not invalidate or make the original unjust.