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Corrections/Police
Victims and the Prosecutor
The popular debate about the proper place of victims in criminal justice decision-making tends to be embedded in terms of balance. One side of the debate says that victims of crime should take an active role in plea bargain negotiations while the other side feels that victims should not be able to influence a prosecutor's decision making. Victim participation is currently incorporated at sentencing due to the fact that sentencing is a discrete, public proceeding in which the judge makes a decision that is based on preset criteria and characteristically justified with some specificity. Victim participation is not so readily included into plea negotiations since such negotiations are typically private, unplanned interactions in which the prosecutor makes decisions with no public explanation based on criteria that are frequently unarticulated (O'Hear, 2007).
Proponents of victims being involved in plea negotiations feel that such a practice is not favorable to participation that victims perceive to be effective and prosecutors perceive...
Those against the practice also feel that if victims are allowed to participate in the please negotiations that this would give them the right to prohibit a decision to plea bargain. They also feel that mandatory consultation would weaken the prosecutorial discretion that the state has (Inviting Victim Participation in Plea Agreements, 2005).
Supporters of victims having more of a role in plea negotiations feel that these arguments are simple not true. To date no state has given or construed a victim's right to confer to be a victim's right to direct the prosecution of the case. Laws granting victims a right to confer merely provide them with a chance to be heard, giving them a say, not a veto. Courts in several states have also ruled that a victim does not have the independent right to start or stop a criminal pros-ecution. The victim's desires regarding prosecution, even though im-portant, are not determinative (Inviting Victim Participation in Plea Agreements, 2005).
Guilty pleas account for over ninety percent of felony convictions in…
References
Inviting Victim Participation in Plea Agreements. (2005).
http://www.crimevictimsinstitute.org/documents/no22005.pdf
O'Hear, M.M. (2007). Plea Bargaining and Victims: From Consultation to Guidelines.
Marquette Law Review, 91(1), 323-347.
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