Plea Bargains Could Be Worth More than Trial Sentences
Video Transcribed: Hi, I’m Stuart Ericson, an attorney in Wagoner, Oklahoma, and we are going to discuss the pros and cons of a plea bargain.
So if you’re charged with a misdemeanor or a felony, the state of Oklahoma will give you a plea offer. The plea offer could be 10 years in prison, it could be five years probation, and it could be five years deferred, where after five years you could get your case expunged, dismissed, and expunged. It could be five years of a suspended sentence. It’s freedom on probation, but a conviction right then and there, after the plea and sentencing. So that is always the decision. People want to know, do I take the plea or do I continue to fight this? And there are a lot of pros and cons to it.
If you’re facing a 25-year plea bargain on a violent offense, and the state has good evidence against you, and the state later has maybe found some weakness in their case, but they still have enough, they think, to convict. And even if you may think that they have enough to convict, they lower the plea offer to 10 years. All right. If their initial offer was 25, many times they will come down to resolve a case. 10. All right. So now you decide if I take this to trial and there is enough evidence, the jury could really whack me. The jury could give me 20, or 25 years. I have a bird in hand offer of 10. Now, what does it mean? It means for sure I’m going to prison. So those are the tough decisions that have to be made in a plea bargain.
I’ve seen it both ways, of course. I’ve gone to jury trial and gotten acquittals for my clients. I’ve seen clients as well for myself and every defense attorney’s going to have this where the plea bargain was low and may be worth taking. And the defendant, rightfully so, they have every right to go to trial, takes it to trial, and the jury hammers them and they get a big number. And that does happen. The best example of that is the defendant, the female that pushed her husband out of the building in Tulsa from 18 stories tall through the window, and fell to his death. She was charged with manslaughter. I believe the state of Oklahoma offered her five years in prison. She said no, and went to trial. I think that the jury gave her, and this all could be checked out, but I think 40 years or 25 years, something pretty big. So she turned down five years and got convicted anyway, got a big number, and of course, sadly enough, she ended up killing herself in prison. And not to say she did anything wrong by going to trial and getting that big number.
But again, it’s always worth to consider consulting with your attorney to decide, do we take this deal or do we not. And many people want to take deals because they know they did it and let’s just get through the process. Let’s just get the best deal that I can get and move on down the road. Many people know they committed the crime, the evidence is good against them, and they don’t want to spend any extra money on it. So yeah, they’re going to take the plea bargain and hey, let’s get this done, the least cost possible and go that route. So there are just a lot of things to decide about whether a plea bargain or not.
Now, here’s the one thing everybody needs to know. A defendant is under no obligation ever to take a plea bargain, and no defense attorney should ever threaten or coerce their client to take a plea bargain. In fact, if you do take a plea bargain, one of the questions on the forms as you enter your plea, the question is, has anybody forced you, coerced you, or threatened you to enter this plea? Because that is not allowed. A defense attorney shouldn’t say, “You have to do this. You’re dumb if you don’t,” this, that, or the other where you just feel ultimately pressured to do it. No, you have every right to claim your innocence and make the State of Oklahoma prove to the court beyond a reasonable doubt that you did this. So it is the defendant’s decision whether to ever take a plea or not because you have a right to go to trial and nobody can take that right away from you.
But boy, some of the decisions to get there are tough. And you may have family members telling you to take a deal. You may have other family members saying, no, fight this to the very end, and you may want to fight it to the very end and the attorney throws out a number for a jury trial and you’re like, oh my gosh, how can I afford that? Do I need it? It can be a complicated, stressful time, but that is where you need to know what is it I want to do and how do I get this accomplished. Because nobody can force you to take a plea bargain.
So a tough situation and my guiding parameter on that usually is I ask my client to look at their entire life. If the evidence is strong against it and there’s a very low plea bargain offer of, say, maybe two years in, well, how’s that going to affect your entire life versus potentially going to trial and getting a 20-year sentence? How’s that going to affect your life? So these are all just factors to consider in the plea bargain situation, which is tough. And you would need guidance and counsel from an attorney, and you would obviously have one if you’re charged with a criminal offense, you would have an attorney.
So questions about that, reach out to me, a Wagoner criminal defense lawyer at wagnerlawyer.com.
