Word: plea
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When prosecutors pick which criminal charges to file, they need have only probable cause, or reasonable belief that the suspect committed the crimes charged. This low standard creates room to pile on the most severe charges possible to bully a defendant into a plea bargain. If a case ends up going before a jury, the prosecutor would have to prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt. So why give him the chance, Davis argues, to "intimidate, harass or coerce a guilty plea" with charges he knows he cannot prove at trial? Davis would bump the probable-cause standard to something...
...Plea Bargaining...
...enforced by state bars, prosecutors argue that such changes would tie their hands unnecessarily. But some prosecutors are at least willing to open themselves to scrutiny. In places like Milwaukee, San Diego and Charlotte, N.C., they are letting the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice examine their charging decisions and plea-bargain offers for discrepancies in how black and white suspects are treated. The three-year study will go through 2008, and these offices have promised to use the results to make their practices fairer. It's a significant start and one Davis hopes will prod other prosecutors to move...
...combat troops from Iraq by March 2008, but the wording is sufficiently muzzy--the President can change policy "subject to unexpected developments," Alexander told me--so that Bush can pretty much ignore it at will. Still, there is a possibility that the amendment will succeed as an anodyne bipartisan plea for a change of strategy, which would be an oddly benign, if ineffectual development. "It's a sleeper amendment," Alexander said. "It's there for Senators who are tired of voting for futile partisan resolutions that fail...
...negatives, including a troubled school system, fewer flights in and out of the city and a reputation for official corruption - a lingering problem brought to the fore in recent weeks by the indictment of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson of New Orleans on bribery and corruption charges and the guilty plea of a former Orleans Parish School Board president, Ellenese Brooks-Simms, who admitted in June to taking more than $100,000 in bribes in exchange for her support of a multi-million dollar public school system contract...