The Cato Institute’s Clark Neily ..., , a member of the American Bar Association’s Plea Bargaining Task Force and head of its subcommittee on impermissibly coercive plea bargains and plea practices, concludes that ... a process that “routinely” coerces through plea bargaining. [Defendants] probably would experience “intolerable pressure designed to induce a waiver of his fundamental right to a fair trial.” Plea bargaining is, Neily argues “pervasive and coercive” partly because of today’s “trial penalty” — the difference between the sentences offered to those who plead guilty and the much more severe sentences typically imposed after a trial. This penalty discourages exercising a constitutional right. A defendant in a computer hacking case, Neily says, committed suicide during plea bargaining in which prosecutors said he could avoid a trial conviction and sentence of up to 35 years by pleading guilty and accepting a six-month sentence.

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