THE RIGHT TO TRIAL SHOULD NOT COME WITH A PENALTY

No More Plea Agreements is a public education and advocacy movement focused on America's plea-bargaining system, the constitutional right to trial, and reforms that promote transparency, accountability, and justice.

                                  OUR MISSION

  No More Plea Agreements exists to educate Americans about how plea bargaining has transformed the criminal justice system and diminished the practical exercise of the constitutional right to trial.

  Our mission is to promote transparency and accountability, provide educational resources, encourage informed public discussion, and advocate for reforms that protect and restore the practical exercise of every American’s constitutional right to trial. 

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL IS THE FOUNDATION

  The Constitution guarantees an accused person the right to a public trial by an impartial jury. Yet today, the overwhelming majority of criminal cases are resolved without a trial.

When the consequences of exercising the right to trial can be substantially greater than accepting a plea, the question becomes larger than plea bargaining:

Can a constitutional right remain meaningful if exercising it carries a substantial additional risk of punishment?

WHY THIS MATTERS

  • The right to trial places the government before a jury and requires it to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
  • A jury provides independent citizen participation in determining guilt.
  • Trials expose evidence, witnesses, government conduct, and contested facts to an adversarial public process.
  • When cases overwhelmingly end through guilty pleas, those constitutional safeguards are exercised far less often.

A FEDERAL JUDGE WARNED ABOUT THIS PROBLEM:

  In United States v. Green, U.S. District Judge William G. Young sharply criticized aspects of the federal sentencing system that reward guilty pleas and can substantially affect a defendant’s decision whether to exercise the right to trial. (United States v. Green, 346 F. Supp. 2d 259 (D. Mass. 2004))

JUDGE YOUNG OPENED HIS OPINION WITH A WARNING ABOUT POWER:

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
— Lord Acton, quoted in United States v. Green

“If you put all the powers to prosecute, try, and execute a sentence in one person’s hands, that is the absolute antithesis of the checks and balances in the system of government that we have.”
— Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, quoted in United States v. Green

The right to trial should never carry a punishment simply because it was exercised.

THE ANSWER IS NOT A BETTER PLEA DEAL.
THE ANSWER IS PRESERVING THE RIGHT TO TRIAL.

What would happen to the system if Americans stopped signing plea agreements?

The criminal justice system would face structural overload.

  • Case volume: Over 95% of federal and state criminal cases are resolved by plea agreements. If defendants demanded trials, the courts could not process the volume. Trial dockets would multiply beyond capacity.

  • Resource strain: Prosecutors, public defenders, and judges would be overwhelmed. Jury selection, courtrooms, and staff are finite. Delays would become extreme.

  • System reset pressure: Legislatures and courts would be forced to change charging practices, sentencing laws, or trial procedures to cope. Many low-level cases might be dismissed outright.

  • Power shift: Prosecutorial leverage would weaken. The government uses plea deals to secure convictions efficiently. Without them, defendants would gain bargaining power.

  • Backlog effects: Pretrial detention populations would spike, since more defendants would await trial instead of resolving quickly. This would stress jails and budgets.

  • Public policy outcome: Either mass dismissals, radical expansion of court resources, or statutory reforms (e.g., lowering mandatory minimums, limiting charges) would become unavoidable.

The American criminal justice system depends heavily on guilty pleas to process its existing caseload. If a substantial percentage of defendants exercised their right to trial instead, existing court capacity would face severe pressure—potentially forcing changes in charging practices, sentencing policy, prosecutorial priorities, court resources, and the use of plea bargaining.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF MORE AMERICANS EXERCISED THEIR RIGHT TO TRIAL?

OUR CONSTITUTION DOESN’T DISAPPEAR BECAUSE THE SYSTEM CAN’T HANDLE MORE TRIALS.

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