Courtroom 302 Chapter 1 Summary

Courtroom 302 Book Review

Steve Bogira, a prizewinning writer, spent a year observing Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courthouse. The author focuses on two main issues, the death penalty and innocent defendants who are getting convicted by the pressure of plea bargains, which will be the focus of this review. The book tells many different stories that are told by defendants, prosecutors, a judge, clerks, and jurors; all the people who are being affected and contributing to the miscarriage of justice in today’s courtrooms.

Plea Bargains

Plea bargains are one of the most controversial debates that are discussed over the criminal justice court system. A plea bargain is when a defendant agrees to plead guilty to a crime and in exchange for something, for example a lesser sentence. There are three types of plea bargains. Charge bargaining is when a defendant pleads guilty to a less serious charge than the original charge. Count bargaining is when the defendant pleads guilty for some of the charge, but not all. Sentence bargaining is when the defendants get a lesser sentence than the maximum penalty. Through the course of this semester it has been brought to our attention, multiple times, about the problems plea bargaining has caused. Many defendants are pressured by those who surround them in

Courtroom 302 is one of the busiest courtrooms in the United States and that isn’t always the case, but the processes are still the same. According to our textbook, (Neubauer, D.W. & Fradella, H.F., 2017, p. 13) “The overwhelming majority of crimes involve burglary and theft.” Which Courtroom 309 gives many cases that involved some sort of theft or robbery, like the case that mentioned earlier. It also gives a great representation of the flaws that our criminal justice system