Punishment Without Trial, Carissa Byrne Hessick
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Punishment Without Trial
Why Plea Bargaining is a Bad Deal

Author: Carissa Byrne Hessick

Narrator: Christina Delaine

Unabridged: 9 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/12/2021


Synopsis

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. 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. That bed­rock constitutional right has all but disappeared thanks to the unstoppable march of plea bargaining, which began to take hold during Prohibition and has skyrocketed since 1971, when it was affirmed as constitutional by the Supreme Court. Nearly every aspect of our criminal justice system encourages defendants—whether innocent or guilty—to take a plea deal. Punishment Without Trial showcases how plea bargaining has undermined justice at every turn and across socioeconomic and racial divides. It forces the hand of lawyers, judges, and defendants, turning our legal system into a ruthlessly efficient mass incarceration machine that is dogging our jails and pun­ishing citizens. Professor Hessick makes the case against plea bargaining as she illustrates how it has damaged our justice system while presenting an innovative set of reforms for how we can fix it.

Author Bio

Carissa Byrne Hessick is the Ransdell Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she also serves as the director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project. Before joining the faculty at UNC, she taught at the law schools of Arizona State, Harvard, and the University of Utah. Her work on the criminal justice system has been published by the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, and numerous academic journals. She also has one of the most informative and useful Twitter accounts for anyone interested in criminal justice. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

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