The essay is about plea bargaining.The research question I formulated was Is the practice of plea agreement destroying the role of Canadian courts as sentencing body by determining sentences through the negotiation process rather than seeking truth., to which my professor gave feedback as follows I think you are on the right track. The question you asked below is great. My only comment is that it appears to assume that the practice of plea negotiation agreement does not seek to the truth. Be careful when articulating a question this way, because it betrays a bias against plea bargaining that closes the inquiry. A more open-ended way of articulating your question would be something like: “How does the practice of negotiating plea agreements impact the truth-seeking function of Canadian courts, taking into consideration the specific purposes of the sentencing process?”I’m not sure if this is what you were getting at, so don’t use this exact question, but notice how beginning the question with “How…” creates a more open-ended inquiry that doesn’t presume that plea inquires are bad? As you should already be aware of, A plea bargain is an agreement between a defendant and a prosecutor, in which the defendant agrees to plead guilty or “no contest” (nolo contendere) in exchange for an agreement by the prosecutor to drop one or more charges, reduce a charge to a less serious offense, or recommend to the judge a specific sentence acceptable to the defense. The accused relieves the Crown of the heavy burden of proving guilt, in exchange for the benefit of reduced charges, or less jail time, or certainty about the ultimate sentenceI wanted to address the issue arisen by the fact that and the sentencing is determined through negotiations with the prosecutors and the accused rather than going through the trial process (truth seeking by the court and the judges), as the accused are either directly or indirectly forced to accept the charges that they do not want to. (i.e. they do not have resource for trial including time and money, merits of reduced charges and lighter punishment, etc) In such circumstances, the plea cannot be truly voluntary. There are also perverse incentives that many prosecutors can unwittingly leverage to extract guilty pleas.I also wanted to make a comparison with US court where if the accused do not accept the plea bargaining and later convicted by the judge, then the convicted will be penetrated with heavier sentencing for not accepting the plea bargaining. (rejecting plea agreement is aggravating factor in the US). It would a good idea to compare sentencing guide of Canada and US as well.It is also required to include the case laws as well, (preferably supreme court case but not necessarily).Lastly, reference (citation, footnotes, etc) should be made in accordance with the McGill style.
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