Justices Side With Prosecutors Who Reneged on Plea Bargain
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that a defendant upset when prosecutors renege on a plea bargain need to bring the issue up at trial, not on appeal.
With a vote of 7-2, the court in Puckett v. U.S (PDF), cleared up a split in the circuits and narrowed a federal rule that allows for exceptions to a rule that claims not made at trial are forfeited and can’t be raised on appeal, SCOTUSblog reports.
The underlying case involved James Benjamin Puckett, who pleaded guilty to an armed bank robbery in Dallas. Part of the plea deal was that prosecutors would tell the judge at sentencing that Puckett had accepted responsibility for his actions and should get a lesser sentence, the Washington Post reports.
A condition of the plea was that prosecutors would tell the sentencing judge that Puckett had accepted responsibility for his actions and should be eligible for a shorter sentence.
After Puckett’s plea and before sentencing, Puckett was implicated in another crime. And prosecutors switched gears and told the sentencing judge that Puckett shouldn’t get credit for accepting responsibility.
Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia, said that since Puckett “obviously did not cease his life of crime,” giving him credit for accepting responsibility “would have been so ludicrous as itself to compromise the public reputation of judicial proceedings.”
