If a person is given the chance of pleading guilty or innocent. Why would someone choose to plead innocent if pleading guilty gives a lesser punishment.
What happens if they plead innocent? Does the case remain open?
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The case remains open and goes to court (usually). Plea bargains are sometimes offered in return for a guilty verdict in order to save the cost of court proceedings.
Bringing a case to court when it SHOULD have been pled can get you extra punishment from an overworked court.
If they plead not guilty, the prosecution has to convince the court that the defendant is guilty under the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard of proof to obtain a guilty verdice, which requires much more solid evidence than the mere formality that it is to find a person guilty after they already pled so. People who plead not guilty are usually those who, at the point the plea is made, still believe that the evidence against them does not meet the higher standard.
You plead innocent because you or your lawyer believe that there isn’t enough evidence to convict you.
Pleading guilty doesn’t automatically get you a light sentence.
It’s only offered as an option for the prosecution in order to expedite cases of relatively lesser importance (which is still like 95+% of them in the US. Most felonies aren’t like murder)
The prosecution believes that a guilty verdict will be found, but wants to save the time and effort of presenting in court.
Defense will usually take this one. Both sides already know all the evidence that will be presented at this point, and usually know how a cause will go.
Alternatively the prosecution is not sure how the court will rule. The plea deal is then offered to convince someone to plead guilty and guarantee a lesser conviction.
The defence then decides if they want to go to trial and risk a guilty conviction, or take the plea deal.
This is what you usually see in movies because it add drama, but realistically most are the first type where the state prosecutor just wants to minimize the workload on the court system.
Sometimes people plead innocent because they are, or they believe they are. Sometimes they plead guilty because they are. Pleading guilty doesn’t necessarily mean that a person will get a lighter sentence. Judges sometimes ignore the plea deal and give the sentence they feel is just.
If you plead guilty, you admit guilt. You will be sentenced – the judge will typically accept a plea bargain agreed to by the prosecution and the defense, but occasionally people will plead guilty without one of those and in those cases the judge will often impose a somewhat lighter sentence than if you plead not guilty.
If you plead not guilty (you cannot plead innocent, at least in the US), then the trial process continues. Discovery happens, witnesses are deposed, evidence is gathered and entered into the record, etc. Then the trial itself starts – opening statements are made, witnesses give testimony and evidence is presented, and eventually the jury gives a verdict. It’s worth noting that you can often still plead guilty after the trial itself starts – though this generally pisses off the judge and won’t help your sentence as much as doing so before the trial starts.
Why would you plead not guilty? Because sometimes prosecutors are wrong, and you didn’t do it. Or you did do it but their case is weak and they either can’t pin you to the crime or can’t exclude others from the crime. Basically, you plead not guilty if you think you’ll win, or if the cost of losing is really, really high.
The ugly opposite of that last paragraph is why would you plead guilty? Because sometimes you did it and want a lighter sentence, of course, but sometimes you didn’t do it but the evidence looks really bad anyway, and you want a lighter sentence. Basically, you plead guilty if you think you’ll lose, even if you didn’t do it. The legal system, unfortunately, is not perfect.
I pled guilty because the court offered my lawyer a plea deal I could live with. I mean, I did it (called it in myself), but having to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees and penalties, when the evidence against me was my own admission of guilt, would have biased the judge towards a harsher penalty. Some people plead not guilty because they believe they have the advantage of not admitting what they’ve done, or, rarely, not actually having done it.
Firstly, it’s essential to note that the accused can plead guilty or *not guilty*. They cannot plead “innocence”. The ruling of “not guilty” does not mean they are innocent, but that the court cannot provide conclusive evidence that they are guilty.
This is the crux of why someone may plead not guilty – assuming that they have some guilt in the case, they may win the case by virtue of the prosecution not being able to prove beyond reasonable doubt. The benefit is that instead of receiving a lesser punishment – which is still a punishment that comes with a criminal conviction – they receive *no* punishment and no criminal record.
Of course, if they actually are innocent, they are obviously not going to want to plead guilty.
If they plead not guilty, it is up to the prosecution to establish the facts and provide sufficient evidence for the jury to decide if the defendant is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. “Reasonable doubt” is the key here – that a normal person would be able to make that conclusion.
For example, if a defendant was accused of murder, and during discovery there is evidence of their fingerprints, a video recording with their face, and even a social media post where that person bragged about it with photos taken on their phone with a time stamp and location marker that puts them in the scene of the murder at that time, a reasonable person would likely piece the evidence together to conclude that the defendant is guilty.
But if there’s *any* reason to doubt the prosecution’s evidence, the defendant must be acquitted. For example, if the murder weapon was never found, this can be a huge blow to the prosecution as it means that they cannot establish a clear link between the defendant and how the victim died. If the defendant knows this, they can bank on the prosecution being unable to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
I am a lawyer with experience as both a prosecutor and a criminal defense lawyer, and it’s my opinion the comments here so far are missing the bullseye.
The name of the first hearing in a criminal case varies across courts, but typically it’s called an “arraignment” or “initial hearing,” and that’s where the court requires the defendant to plead “guilty” or “not guilty.” A few thoughts from my perspective and experience:
– In the American criminal justice system, a criminal defendant is innocent until proven guilty. Practically speaking, this means that the government/prosecutor has the legal burden of producing evidence to convict a defendant. People have it wrong when they say that a defendant *pleads innocent* because that’s not what they’re doing (literally nor conceptually) — it’s more helpful to think of “pleading not guilty” as simply “*not* pleading guilty,” meaning that they’re exercising their Constitutional right to make the government meet its burden of proving the defendant’s guilt. I wish everybody understood that *pleading not guilty* really has nothing to do with a defendant’s belief that they’re guilty or innocent — only that they’re exercising their Constitutional right to make the government prove guilt using admissible evidence.
– Along those same lines, judges will often enter a “not guilty” plea on behalf of a defendant when the defendant is unable to enter a plea (e.g. because they are not in a mental state that allows them to comprehend the proceedings, or because the jail failed to transport the defendant but the judge, prosecutor, and defense counsel all want to get the case moving along). A “not guilty” plea can really be thought of as the starting pistol of a track and field event — the case really doesn’t start until an initial plea has been entered.
– It’s possible to plead guilty at the initial hearing, but for a few reasons this virtually never happens; to list a few: (1) At the time of the initial hearing the prosecutor typically hasn’t disclosed their evidence to the defense yet, and in fact in many cases a prosecutor hasn’t even been assigned to the case or reviewed the case file yet — so even if the defendant did want to plead guilty at the initial hearing, the prosecution may not actually want that to happen yet. (2) Since the defense typically hasn’t yet received the evidence at the time of the initial hearing, they also haven’t yet had time to review the evidence and file motions to exclude any evidence that was arguably obtained unconstitutionally or may otherwise be inadmissible. A not guilty plea gets the case moving, and typically a few weeks later the prosecutor discloses their evidence and the case moves along from there. (3) Even if a defendant knows they did the crime and believes that the prosecutor very likely has admissible evidence to prove it, pleading guilty “to the bench” (i.e. without a plea agreement in place) means that you’re failing to use your leverage to get a better sentence — prosecutors are often very busy and don’t have time to take every case to trial, so they may offer a plea agreement with a lighter sentence because they don’t want to go to trial, or they may outright dismiss a case because they want to use their prosecutorial discretion to simply not prosecute a particular case (e.g. possession of a small amount of marijuana) because they don’t think their community will be improved by potentially ruining a defendant’s life just because they had a little weed in their possession.
Tl;dr: A “not guilty” plea doesn’t mean anything interesting, and has basically no legal significance except that the defendant (1) is competent to understand the proceedings and (2) doesn’t want to make the foolish decision to admit guilt before seeing the evidence against them and trying to get the charges reduced or dismissed.
If you plead Guilty, you forfeit the court case, and you get judged Guilty, and you move into sentencing. But plea deals are sometimes offered by the system, so you get that plea deal which can be less than if you go to trial. The DA/system offers this deal because they want the easy conviction, and they’ll incentivize you to take it and serve your punishment and they clear that case from the books.
If you decline their deal, and plead innocent, you then go to trial. That deal is now off the table, you cannot get it, because the DA actually has to do the trial and waste resources prosecuting you. So they’ll now conduct the full trial and if they win and find you guilty, they’ll sentence you more fully, no discounts.
It’s a bit of a gamble for you. So you talk to your lawyer, the pro. Hopefully you have a good lawyer. If you don’t think you can win the case based on the evidence, it’s better to take the deal than to draw out a trial only to lose worse and have more punishment. If you think you can win, obviously you want to go to trial and try to win, but you gamble that you may still lose.
Taking a plea deal for Guilty means you 100% lose, but you lock in a discounted punishment. It makes sense in some cases, and is a terrible plan in others. Listen to your lawyer(s) and find the path that makes sense for your situation.
You’re accused of a crime. At the start of the trial you have two options: you can admit you’re guilty, or you can deny it.
Pleading guilty means you admit it, you’re saying “the accusation is true, I am responsible for the crime.” Now the trial is canceled, there’s no need to get a jury together and examine witnesses and stuff like that, because you already admitted you’re guilty. We move straight on to the punishment.
Pleading not guilty means you deny it, you’re saying “the accusation is not true, I am not responsible for the crime.” So now we have to have a trial.
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