Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

Too often, the guilty plea hearing process practiced in our federal courts fails to adequately ensure the validity of a defendant’s change of plea decision. Rather than engage in colloquies that are sufficiently in-depth and truly aimed at ascertaining voluntariness and defendant comprehension, critical details are frequently glossed over, and defendant guilty pleas are accepted without meaningful inquiry.

While academics have skillfully critiqued the Sixth Amendment and its trial-focused provisions, comparatively scant focus has been expended on the equally, if not more, critical change of plea hearing. Compassionless Plea Bargaining seeks to fill this gap with its focus on a recent controversy that threatened to engulf the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice into an unfortunate—and arguably embarrassing—controversy.

In December 2018, President Donald Trump signed into law the First Step Act. Designed primarily to address the nation’s mass incarceration crisis, one of its more overlooked features was a provision that addressed sentencing modification. Commonly referred to as compassionate release, the Act sought to ease the ability of defendants to obtain a modification of their sentence in the event of an extraordinary life circumstance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as the virus spread rapidly through correctional facilities, compassionate release requests predictably skyrocketed—and so did the workload of federal prosecutors tasked to respond to these motions. As a result, many U.S. Attorney’s Offices included provisions in plea agreements requiring defendants to forgo their compassionate release rights under the Act in exchange for the concessions offered by the government. A brewing controversy ensued, with critics, including the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, arguing that the government was leveraging its substantial negotiating power, and defendants were often agreeing to such waivers in the absence of a full awareness of the attendant consequences. In response, Attorney General Merrick Garland discontinued the practice in March 2022. However, the reprieve is likely to be short-lived, as future attorneys general will almost certainly resuscitate the practice.

The byproducts of a guilty plea are varied, deeply consequential, and, as evidenced in the compassionate release context, can even be fatal. This Article explains why federal change of plea hearings too often fail to adequately assess the knowledge and voluntariness underlying a defendant’s guilty plea and offers a proposal for reform.

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