Plea bargaining in the United States
The constitutionality of plea bargaining was established by "Brady v. United States" in 1970, although the Supreme Court warned that plea incentives which were sufficiently large or coercive as to over-rule defendants' abilities to act freely, or used in a manner giving rise to a significant number of innocent people pleading guilty, might be prohibited or lead to concerns over constitutionality. "Santobello v. New York" added that when plea bargains are broken, legal remedies exist.
Inquisitorial system
In adversarial systems, the defendant may plead "guilty" or "no contest" in exchange for reduced sentences, a practice known as plea bargaining, which is an extremely common practice in the United States. In theory, the defendant must allocute or "voice" his or her crimes in open court, and the judge must believe the defendant is telling the truth about his or her guilt. In an inquisitorial system, a mere confession of guilt would not be regarded as ground for a guilty verdict, and the prosecutor is required to provide evidence supporting a guilty verdict; however, this requirement is not unique to inquisitorial systems, as many or most adversarial systems impose a similar requirement under the name "corpus delicti".