What is a Plea Agreement?

A plea agreement or plea deal is a contract between the state and the defendant.

“So a plea agreement is a contract between the state and the defendant about how they will resolve their criminal case, that’s pending. They come in lots of different varieties, including ones where you just change the range. And sometimes where you agree to every single aspect of what the sentence is going to be. And sometimes there are ones in-between where you agree about some of the terms but not other terms, and let the judge decide some things but not other things. And you can get really creative. It’s so easy to get creative that I can’t even sort of describe all of them. Every plea agreement is a little bit different. But it is, at its base, a contract by which everyone, the state and the defendant, agree about how their case is going to be resolved.” ~ Criminal Defense Attorney, Jacob Rigney

Soundbite from Episode 10 of Tales from the Brown Desk