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Welcome to the website for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of California.  On this site you will find press releases and public announcements, my monthly reports about the office’s activities, and information about our district, our office and what we do.  There are also descriptions about  various programs and initiatives involving our office and links to websites for the federal courts, law enforcement agencies and task forces, as well as other useful sites.

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September 2012
Issue No. 30

The U.S. Attorney's Report to the District
           

In a U.S. Supreme Court opinion earlier this year, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the criminal justice system today “is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials.”  He observed that about 97% of federal convictions nationwide are the result of guilty pleas.  The statistics for this district are roughly consistent with that figure.  As Justice Kennedy wrote in the same opinion, noting the prevalence of plea bargaining is not to criticize it.  Courts have long approved of plea agreements as central to the administration of justice.  Securing a conviction by guilty plea rather than jury trial is vastly more efficient, conserves investigative, prosecutorial and judicial resources, and spares victims the agony of testifying in a public trial.  Plea agreements serve the interests of defendants, too: the federal sentencing guidelines provide an incentive, in the form of a small potential reduction in sentence, for defendants who accept responsibility for their crimes and enter a timely guilty plea.

Some question a justice system so tightly bound to plea bargaining, and in a recent editorial by a national newspaper it was asserted that federal prosecutors unfairly coerce guilty pleas by charging more serious crimes than the evidence warrants.  There is room to debate the proper role of plea bargaining, but the claim that federal prosecutors overcharge cases to gain a bargaining advantage is wrong.  Federal prosecutors understand that their mission is to do justice in individual cases, not just to secure a conviction or to get the maximum sentence. 

Click here to read the entire report »