Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining Is a Bad Deal

From a prominent criminal law professor, a provocative and timely exploration of how plea bargaining prevents true criminal justice reform and how we can fix it. When Americans think of the criminal justice system, the image that comes to mind is a trial—a standard court­room scene with a defendant, attorneys, a judge, and most important, a jury. It's a fair assumption. The right to a trial by jury is enshrined in both the body of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It's supposed to be the foundation that undergirds our entire justice system. But in Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining Is a Bad Deal, University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick shows that the popular conception of a jury trial couldn't be further from reality.