The 180

Alright, I think it is time for me to be honest with the readers of my blog with how I even came about writing about the injustice of plea bargaining. I could NOT think of any topic to write about for the blogs and I ran into a friend at the library, where I was stressing out because as usual I had waited till the last minute (yes, one hour before English) to narrow my topic down. Then he told me about how his sister was doing a project on the morality of plea bargaining at her high school. I nodded my head, agreeing with every word he was saying, while secretly thinking to myself “What the heck is plea bargaining?” I will admit I knew a little bit about it, but all I knew was that it helped out the defendant with sentencing as long as he/she gave more information about the case. So in other words, I knew the minimal of what I should. So why share this with you? Why am I admitting to the fact that I knew practically NOTHING about this process…to prove to you what I HAVE learned.

Throughout this entire blogging session I have been accusing the United States Justice System of injustice. Boy was I wrong. I had been reading source after source bashing the legal system for the incorrect justice that was being served because of checks and balances. “The prosecutor holds all the power!” was the main theme of most of the articles. But when writing my analysis post I knew I had to write an unbiased one…what a TASK! So I called up a family friend…last minute of course… to see if he could lead me in the right direction of possible sources for pro-plea bargaining. Robert J. Conrad, Jr. was the man I called. Why is he important? He has served as a defense attorney, a U.S. district attorney, and now he is a federal judge. What angle had he not hit, besides being a defendant of course! I went into the conversation bold and full of biased and in leaving I felt extremely enlightened. All I can say is WHAT AN ATTORNEY! He listened to every point I had to say about the anti-views of plea bargaining and in the end he opened my eyes to the one thing I was failing to recognize, the plea of guilt. I would love to write word for word what he said to me about the plea bargaining system…so I did…after the phone conversation I sent him an interview via e-mail, which he so graciously responded to. I found it so intriguing I had to put it on my blog and of course use him as a source!!

So okay, what did I learn through all of this? I found blogging to be just like our justice system. It was a long and tedious process, it might take days to get a point across, just like it might take months to get your fair and just trial, but at the end of the day if you were willing to wait for the RIGHT and JUST verdict you would receive it. The plea bargaining process is not meant to fool anyone within the system, only if we try and fool it do we get the unjust punishment. Just as the Constitution has made amendments over time, the prosecutors use their discretion to alter sentencing in hopes of getting more leads, in hopes of benefiting the society. We are the voters; we are the ones who decide who these people of justice are to make the judgment calls. If we do not do our research, we will be fooling ourselves into getting an unjust system. In short, if I had not done my research, I would be living with an unjust decision.