ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) (11/17/84)
Last winter I saw a description of a bizarre case in (I think) Florida. A man was accused of murder and went to trial. While the jury was out, the prosecutor offered him the following deal: if he would change his plea to guilty, he would be sentenced to forty years without parole, but if he did not change it and he was convicted, he would be sentenced to death. He maintained that he was not guilty. However, he felt that forty years was not too high a price to pay to avoid the risk of being executed, so he changed his plea. Three minutes later, the jury found him not guilty. The last I heard about that case was that an appeals court had refused to hear the case, because once there is a guilty plea there is no verdict to appeal. Does anyone out there know more?
robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison) (11/20/84)
In article <3113@alice.UUCP> ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) writes: >Last winter I saw a description of a bizarre case in >(I think) Florida. A man was accused of murder and >went to trial. While the jury was out, the prosecutor >offered him the following deal: if he would change his >plea to guilty, he would be sentenced to forty years >without parole, but if he did not change it and he was >convicted, he would be sentenced to death. > >He maintained that he was not guilty. However, he felt >that forty years was not too high a price to pay to avoid >the risk of being executed, so he changed his plea. > >Three minutes later, the jury found him not guilty. This may have happened as described, but there are a lot of things wrong with it. - The prosecutor could threaten to ask for the death penalty, but does not have the authority to determine that the defendant would be sentenced to death. If he offered this bargain and the defandant's attorney did not explain how uncontrollable the offer was, there may be grounds for appeal based on a plea of guilty by coercion, or improper legal representation. If a plea of guilty was accepted, the jury should have been immediately stopped from deliberating. How could they have "found" anything? perhaps reporters polled them and discovered that that is what they were about to report. In most states now (I think), there is a separate trial to determine sentence after the trial to determine guilt. If that is the case in Florida, the story sounds even more fishy. Finally, if it is clear that the jury was going to find the defandant not guilty, he must be an incredibly good candidate for a pardon. I wonder why an appeal was necessary. By the way, I'm not a lawyer. - Toby Robison (not Robinson!) {allegra, decvax!ittvax, fisher, princeton}!eosp1!robison