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NON FICTION TELEVISION: PLEA BARGAINING: AN AMERICAN WAY OF JUSTICE (TV)

Summary

One in this series of independent documentaries. Bill Moyers narrates this film, which documents the conditions responsible for a large number of criminal plea bargain cases at the Metropolitan Dade County Justice Building in Florida, and the effect this non-trial legal process has on the validity of the criminal justice system. This program explains the process of plea bargains, which are largely employed to allow the state to maintain high conviction rates while sparing the taxpayer a financial burden in the face of an overabundance of felony cases. Includes footage of several actual felony cases in progress; public defenders counseling clients; lawyers and judges meeting to decide on appropriate plea bargains for defendants; and interviews with Dade County judges, who assess how justice is affected when lawyers and judges, rather than evidence and witnesses, decide a defendant's fate. Highlights include the following: footage and comments on plea bargaining from lawyers at the Office of the State Attorney and from the Office of the Public Defender; Judge Lenore Nesbitt offers observations on which criminals will always be repeat offenders; Assistant Public Defender Robert Gross explains why there has to be plea bargaining; footage of a public defender trying to explain to a client why he should accept a plea bargain; Judge Joseph Durant avers why he believes that the plea bargain process sometimes fails the quest for justice; Assistant State Attorney Jay Kolfsky explains why plea bargain cases reduce lawyers to clerks; Assistant Public Defender William Clay explains pitfalls in the plea bargain process; footage of a plea bargain negotiating session between a prosecutor, a defendant, and a judge -- who is not required to be involved in these sessions; Nesbitt comments on the value of plea bargaining versus a jury trial; details of Clay's work on an innovative probation plan, and how it specifically is employed in the case of a battered woman named Barbara Jones who murdered her spouse Ulysses; footage of a trial in which a man who refuses a plea bargain is sentenced to death by electrocution; and an examination of a rape case in which a plea bargain may bar a recidivist sex offender from entrance into a rehabilitation program.

Preservation of the Post–World War II American Television Documentary Collection is supported in part by a Federal Save America’s Treasures grant administered by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Details

  • NETWORK: PBS WNET New York, NY
  • DATE: November 30, 1978
  • RUNNING TIME: 0:58:57
  • COLOR/B&W: B&W
  • CATALOG ID: T:37960
  • GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
  • SUBJECT HEADING: Public affairs/Documentaries; U S - Criminal justice system; Plea bargaining; Legal system and the courts
  • SERIES RUN: WNET (New York, NY) - TV series, 1979-1986
  • COMMERCIALS: N/A

CREDITS

  • David Loxton … Executive Producer
  • Kathy Kline … Coordinating Producer
  • Robert Thurber … Producer, Director, Writer
  • Nancy Thurber … Associate Producer, Writer
  • Bill Moyers … Narrator
  • William Clay
  • Joseph Durant
  • Robert Gross
  • Barbara Jones
  • Ulysses Jones
  • Jay Kolfsky
  • Lenore Nesbitt