Reply to post: Re: Plea bargaining

Post Office coughs £57.75m to settle wonky Horizon IT system case

Armus Squelprom

Re: Plea bargaining

It isn't explicitly called "plea bargaining", but this sort of thing happens often in UK and not necessarily wrongly. If the defendant knows that the evidence will convict them*, they may negotiate a lesser charge in return for guilty plea, or offer a lesser plea in the court proceedings. Eg Smith denied murder but offered a guilty plea to manslaughter or Jones denied causing death by dangerous driving but offered a guilty plea to driving without due care and attention.

(* what distinguishes the Horizon cases is that the defendants and courts were not aware of how unreliable and weak the evidence was. This recent judgement suggests that the Post Office were also substantially unaware, and were blindly relying on Fujitsu's assurances that the computerised records were "robust".)

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