Following Andrea’s lead, I thought I would write about one of the books I read this summer: Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s autobiography, My Beloved World. Overall, the book is a good read and tells an engaging story of how Sotomayor went from being the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants who had very little formal education to her own Ivy League education and career as a lawyer and judge. It is a book clearly intended for a non-legal audience and intended to not give Supreme Court watchers much information to predict Justice Sotomayor’s future decisions.
For me, the part of the book that was the most interesting was Sotomayor’s reflections on her time as a prosecutor with the District Attorney in New York. One fascinating aspect was to see how to discuss plea bargaining without using the term (it only features once). Sotomayor’s book could easily leave the impression that Deputy DA Sotomayor barely settled any cases, and when she did so, it was as a hard-nosed prosecutor. As she writes:
“It wasn’t easy, with around a hundred cases on my desk at any time and constant pressure to dispose of them as quickly as possible. Cases with the same charge tended to blur together, especially since the DA’s Office offered standard plea deals for certain crimes: Possession of a gun? Settle it today, and it’s a class A misdemeanor. Make me wait, and tomorrow it becomes a felony. Forget about mitigating circumstances; I don’t want to hear it.”
Sotomayor notes that “a prosecutor’s career is built on a reputation for toughness and winning stiff sentences.” She goes onto describe one case where she gave a good plea deal and it all worked out for the best for the defendant. But she is careful not to leave the impression that this one case is representative. Sotomayor describes the “thrill of verbal sparring at trial” and “[n]otching up top-count prosecutions—convictions for the most serious charges—while giving up little ground in plea bargains…” Sotomayor talks about “dispositions” leaving the impression that many cases were resolved this way only because she “didn’t believe” in the case. Sotomayor alludes to a common practice of offering a lower plea deal for cases with evidentiary problems. In fairness, Sotomayor does focus on the need for prosecutors to seek justice and the value of mercy. However, she has wrapped this discussion into a larger picture which leaves the impression that plea bargaining is something that is not nearly as commonplace as it actually is and with the idea that hard bargaining tactics (don’t make her wait for a guilty plea) are the way it should be if deals are being given out.
Clearly, this autobiography is not intended as definitive analysis of the good, the bad, and the ugly of plea bargaining. And, Sotomayor’s focus in this part of the book is more on what she learned from these experiences as part of her professional development and not what she would change (or not) about how the criminal justice system functions.
It is unfortunate, as Sotomayor misses the opportunity to describe this daily reality of the criminal justice system to a broader audience to introduce them to how our criminal justice system actually works and to move the public perception beyond the idea that a plea deal from the prosecutorial perspective is only given when there are evidentiary problems or if the defendant pleads early so as not to “make” the prosecutor wait. Many parts of Sotomayor’s autobiography reflect serious thought and reflection offering interesting insights, particularly about the challenges that those who are the first generation in college face in elite higher education institutions. Unfortunately, Justice Sotomayor’s few snippets about plea bargaining fail to reach that level of analysis and insight and leave the average reader to continue thinking that plea bargaining is such a dirty business that we can’t use the term, that tough prosecutors are loath to give good deals unless there is an exceptional circumstance, that plea deals given out should help to reinforce the prosecutor’s reputation and professional standing, and that trials are still the way that most criminal cases are resolved.
