DEVELOPMENT OF PLEA BARGAINING IN THE ADMINISTRATION ...

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66 NIALS Journal of Law and Development saved the time of the court and also spared the court the energy that would have been dissipated in going into full trial. Besides, such defendants have saved the state the expense of a trial, because their plea is accepted as an act of repentance and a step towards rehabilitation, because the abbreviated version of the case history may be less offensive than the story that unfolds at a full trial and because the judge may believe that the defendant who has pleaded not guilty has committed perjury in his defense. 45 At the trial, the American prosecutor may be reluctant to accept a plea that was offered to a defendant and rejected because he will already have lost one of the benefits to be gained from the earlier plea – the opportunity to avoid preparing for trial. 46 As we pointed out earlier in this work, a criminal defendant has a right to accept or refuse plea bargains. As compared with contract, we earlier submitted that the binding nature of plea bargains is still in doubt, if not zero. An accused person has the right to derogate from plea bargains. He can withdraw from plea bargains even if he has been sentenced on his guilty plea as a result of bargain. The danger here is that where a defendant agrees to plead guilty and he is convicted and sentenced accordingly, but later withdraws his guilty pleas, he risks a more severe punishment if he is found guilty of the charge. The case of Alabama v. Smith 47 illustrates this fact. In this case, the defendant, Smith, in 1985 was indicted by an Alabama grand jury for burglary, rape and sodomy. All the charges related to a single assault. Smith agreed to plead guilty to the burglary and rape charges in exchange for the State’s agreement to dismiss the sodomy charge. The trial court granted the State’s motion to dismiss the sodomy, accepted respondents guilty pleas and sentenced 45. Yale Law Journal (1956) “Comment: The Influence of the Defendant’s Plea on Judicial Determination of Sentences”, Yale Law Journal, 209-21. 46. Alubo A.O. op cit, pp. 8-9. 47. Supra.
Development of Plea Bargaining in The Administration of Criminal Justice in Nigeria : A revolution, Vaccination Against Punishment or mere Expediency? him to a concurrent term of thirty years imprisonment on each conviction. Later the respondent withdrew his guilty pleas, claiming that he had not entered them knowingly and voluntarily. The trial court denied the motion but the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reversed, finding that the respondent had not been properly informed of the penalties associated with the crimes to which he had pleaded guilty. The case was reassigned to the same trial judge. The State moved to reinstate the charge for first-degree sodomy, the trial court granted that motion and the respondent went to trial on all the three original charges. In course of the trial, it was the testimony of the victim that the respondent had broken into her home in the middle of the night, clad only in his under wear and a ski mask and wielding a kitchen knife. Holding the knife to her chest, he had raped her and sodomised her repeatedly and forced her to engage in oral sex with him. The attack which lasted for more than an hour took place in the victim’s bedroom, just across the hall from the room in which her three young children lay sleeping. Respondent took a stand and repudiated his post arrest statement, testifying instead that he had been in bed with his girlfriend at the time the attack took place. The jury returned a verdict of guilty on all three count charges. This time, the trial judge imposed a term of life imprisonment for the burglary conviction plus a concurrent term of life imprisonment and a consecutive term of 150 years imprisonment on the rape conviction. The rationale behind this more severe punishment was explained by the court that because the evidence presented at the trial, of which it had been unaware at the time it imposed sentence on the guilty pleas, it had heard only the respondent’s side of the story, whereas now, it has had a trial and heard all of the evidence including testimony that respondent had raped the 67
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