<DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid"> OK, we live in a fascist dictaorship, writhing under the iron heel. Now that I have admitted it, will you give the point a rest? It's tiresome. jks It seems that the US ceased being a free country a long time ago. It still retains it as a concept, kept alive in fictional TV dramas, but in the real world it is no longer practised. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plea/etc/script.html FRONTLINE The Plea Written, Produced and Directed by Ofra Bikel "...CHARLES GAMPERO, Sr.: He told me point blank, told me and my ex-wife, he said, "If I-- I will give your son 25 to life, so you better take the plea. Or if you don't take the plea, he's getting it." NARRATOR: According to Professor Green, these kinds of threats are constitutional and legal. BRUCE GREEN, Prof of Law and Ethics, Fordham U: Some years ago, a defendant argued to the Supreme Court it's inherently coercive if the prosecutor says to me, "You can plead guilty and get 3 years in jail. Otherwise, you can go to trial and have all your trial rights, but if you're convicted, you face 30 years in jail." That sounds like coercion. And to you and me and most ordinary people, that sounds pretty coercive. But under the Constitution, that's not considered coercive. And so if you plead guilty with-- in order to avoid an infinitely harsher sentence, that's considered a voluntary plea." ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV> <hr size=1>Do you Yahoo!? Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=26640/*http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush">Enter now</a>.