Justice Notes: Plea Deals

A White-Collar Journal forum for criminal justice, lived experience, and the personal search for redemption

---

Justice Notes: The Problem with Plea Deals

Nearly 98% of federal criminal cases end in plea deals. That’s not a justice system. That’s a bureaucratic machine designed to expedite punishment, not evaluate guilt.

For most defendants, especially in federal court, a trial is an illusion. Technically available but functionally out of reach. The financial and emotional toll is overwhelming. Legal fees for a full defense can reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The average defendant—already in crisis, already isolated—simply cannot afford the cost of fighting back.

But the barriers to a fair trial aren’t just economic. They’re also structural and linguistic, deeply embedded in the way the federal justice system operates. Most people accused of a crime are encountering the system for the first time. They are traumatized, often disoriented, and dropped into a legal universe where the vocabulary is foreign: a mix of sentencing charts, criminal history categories, offense levels, enhancements, reductions, and guideline ranges that even many lawyers struggle to fully interpret.

In this universe, the defense attorney becomes everything. The defendant is almost entirely dependent on that one individual, not just for legal advice, but for emotional clarity, strategic direction, and communication with the government.

And here’s where the cracks deepen: many defense attorneys, particularly public defenders or appointed counsel, work day in and day out with the same prosecutors and judges. Over time, these relationships evolve into professional, even collegial ones. In a system with overwhelming prosecutorial discretion, that collegiality can become quiet complicity.

In theory, defense counsel advocates solely for their client. In practice, they may be managing multiple cases at once, juggling personalities and priorities, and, at times, negotiating plea deals across cases, making unspoken trades with the prosecution. It is not unheard of for one client to accept a deal that benefits the attorney in securing a better deal for another. These conflicts are rarely transparent, and defendants often have no way to know whether their interests are being fully and faithfully represented.

Add to this the reality that many defendants plead guilty to crimes they do not fully understand. The plea agreement is typically dense, and the process is rushed. A federal indictment, the pre-sentencing report, and the guideline calculations all land like a freight train, and the clock starts ticking. Prosecutors often give tight deadlines, threatening enhanced charges if the defendant doesn’t accept the plea quickly. The accused is told to “take the deal” or risk decades behind bars.

Here’s the cruelest irony: the “deal” often feels like mercy. In many cases, it is, compared to the alternative. But it is also a form of coercion. It forces individuals to accept lifelong consequences: conviction, prison time, restitution, permanent stigma, without the benefit of a true defense.

In my own experience, I served time with men who were guilty of mistakes but not monsters, who might have prevailed in court with a real defense, plead out to avoid the crushing risk of trial. I also saw men who were overcharged, their offenses inflated by enhancements, swept into conspiracy counts for associations rather than actions. These men pleaded guilty because they didn’t know how to fight, and couldn’t afford to try.

This is not justice. It’s not rehabilitation. It’s not even efficiency. It’s a system of quiet coercion where risk aversion replaces truth-seeking, and where the scales are tipped so heavily in favor of the government that due process becomes performance art.

What we need is not just more public defenders or better training, although that would be helpful. We need structural reform. Judges should have more power to reject plea deals that feel one-sided. There should be mandatory cooling-off periods before accepting a plea. Sentencing guidelines should be simplified and made accessible to defendants in plain English. And perhaps most critically, we need transparency, an honest conversation about the fact that plea bargaining has replaced trial by jury in almost every federal case.

Until that happens, defendants will continue to walk into courtrooms not as citizens with rights, but as bargaining chips in a stacked game, where the outcome is preordained and the process merely a formality.

---

If this piece resonated with you, consider sharing it or leaving a comment. To support this work and help spread awareness about justice reform for white-collar defendants, subscribe to White-Collar Journal and stay connected. John DiMenna is a member of the White Collar Support Group.