Hyderabad: Plea Bargaining, which was introduced into the Indian criminal justice system in 2006 to quickly reduce the number of under trial prisoners and increase the number of convictions, has failed to yield results due to lack of interest among prosecutors and awareness about it among people.
Plea bargaining can be defined as pre trial negotiations between the accused and the prosecution during which the accused agrees to plead guilty in exchange for certain concessions by the prosecution.
Over 11 years after the Plea Bargaining Law came into force, only some 500 cases have been settled through it in the country. In fact, in AP and Telangana, there has been no case of plea bargaining so far.
Plea Bargaining has, however, proved an effective tool for speedy disposal of cases in the US, Germany, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica, France and Italy.
In the US, plea bargaining is available even in murder cases. Peggy Sue Thomas, a former ‘Miss Washington’, for instance, accepted a plea bargain in 2013, one week before she was to stand trial on a first-degree murder charge.
Cornell Hull, accused of shooting to death Jason Stovall and attempting to kill the latter’s girlfriend, also entered a guilty plea in a capital murder case in Hot Spring Circuit Court in the US.
A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge re-affirmed a plea deal on June 15, 2017 that allows Indian-American Abhi-shek Gattani, a former Silicon Valley CEO, to serve only 13 days in jail for allegedly abusing his wife for over a decade.
Jurists say one of the reasons why plea bargaining has not worked in India may be the exce-ssive caution that trial courts exercise in accepting such pleas.
Legal experts say the basic idea of plea bargaining is that the accused can bargain for lesser punishment by accepting guilt as soon as police files the charge sheet and before the trial begins.
When the accused opts for plea bargaining bef-ore commencement of trial, the court grants time to the accused and the prosecution to work out a mutually satisfactory disposition of the case, which may include the accused paying the victim compensation and other legal expenses incurred during the pendency of the case.
Where a satisfactory disposition of the case is worked out, the court disposes off the case by sentencing the accused to one fourth the punishment provided for the offence.
Once the court passes an order in a case of plea bargaining, no appeal can be made against the order in any other court.
