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A) Plea Bargaining is a central aspect of the criminal justice system and it prevents collapse.Bing 09

Plea bargainingis an admission of guilt in exchange for a reduced charge or sentence. Itisarguably one of the most publicized and controversial manifestations of the

courtroom.Affecting practically every phase of the criminal justice system, plea bargaining isused as a substitute for jury trials, disposing of almost 90% of criminal cases. Those who favor this type of

case disposition argue thatwithout plea bargaining, the entire criminal justice system would collapse

under the weight of an excessive caseload.

B) Link Most inquisitorial systems forbid plea bargaining. Burens and Haag 131Due to their international nature the courts are somewhere in between an adversarial procedural system and an inquisitorial system and t he use of plea bargains is therefore still con-tested.

While plea bargaining is widespread in adversarialmostly common lawsystems, its use in more

inquisitorial civil law systems is still debated and not generally accepted.48This is based on

the different understanding of the purpose of a criminal trial as shown earlierand goes hand in

hand with adivers comprehension of truthin a proceeding.

Inquisitorial systems are fundamentally incompatible with plea bargaining. Burens and Haag 13

One could argue that with a trend in most domestic systems towards an adversarial system, in which negotiated criminal justice mechanisms are more common, also international criminal law

should be open to such mechanisms.51Incontrast plea bargaining cannot be reconciled with the(traditional)inquisitorial

version of truth-seeking.52It is contrary to the main concept of this system that parties

influence the outcome of the trial by their actions, and that it is not an in-dependent judge

who does so.

C) Impact:First, this link turns all desert arguments- juries are racist and convict minorities more denying them due.

On the other hand,research using archival dataon felonydispositions during the mid-1970sreveals that juries tended to

sentence Hispanic offenders to prison more often than Anglos, regardless of factors such as

conviction severity or prior record(Daudistel & Holmes 1979; Holmes & Daudistel 1984; LaFree1985). If this tendency continued, it is possible that

Hispanic defendants were at a disadvantage under the no plea bargaining policy. In this

respect, then, the quality of justice may have diminished.

We suspect that the post-intervention consistency in theconviction rate reflects the case screening procedures put intoplace after the plea bargaining ban. It appears thatcases

presented to the grand jury were supported by more evidenceafter the ban (Daudistel 1980;

McDonald 1985; Weninger1987); weak cases that probably would go to trial were lesslikely to

be accepted. Indeed, recent data compiled by thescreening section of the district attorney's office

show that halfof the cases filed by police are declined for prosecution or arereferred to the county

attorney's office for prosecution as misdemeanors(see also McDonald 1985).

1Burens, Laura. Haag, Den. Plea Bargaining in International Criminal Tribunals. 2013