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.
Plea bargain
Plea bargaining is a significant part of the criminal justice system in the United States; the vast majority (roughly 90%) of criminal cases in the United States are settled by plea bargain rather than by a jury trial. Plea bargains are subject to the approval of the court, and different States and jurisdictions have different rules. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines are followed in federal cases and have been created to ensure a standard of uniformity in all cases decided in the federal courts. A two- or three-level offense level reduction is usually available for those who accept responsibility by not holding the prosecution to the burden of proving its case; this usually amounts to a complete sentence reduction had they gone to trial and lost.