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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
You cannot not plea bargain your charges down by simply pointing a finger at an innocent man. You would need to have possession of evidence, knowledge of evidence sufficient to convict the other person.
How can you plead guilty to a murder (for example) if you are innocent, and then tell the police where the body is?
Plea bargains are only accepted by the courts when the accused has access to real information and evidence, not just finger pointing.
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I think that you're missing the point. I constructed two separate scenarios above (the first and third paragraphs following Mike's quotation); let me explain with a hypothetical example.
Referring firstly to a criminal pointing the finger at an innocent individual, imagine that a person, named Alpha, wants to murder someone, named Bravo, but would prefer neither to go to jail, nor be executed. Alpha decides that Charlie (whom Alpha knows) should take the fall. Alpha takes certain steps to ensure that Charlie has no alibi, plants certain circumstantial evidence implicating Charlie, then kills someone. In the ensuing chaos, Alpha is rounded up on suspicion of murder, but there isn't enough evidence available to charge him for it. Meanwhile, he is charged with something lesser (for which there is significant evidence), like possession of a concealed weapon. Alpha doesn't want to go to jail, so Alpha tells the police that he has knowledge of the murder, and wants to bargain down his weapons charge to probation. He claims Charlie talked to him about doing it, and the police round Charlie up, connect the planted evidence to Charlie, and off they go, to probably to court, maybe jail, and possibly execution.
Of course, there's a significant possibility that the police will figure out that there's treachery afoot, and go after Alpha for obstruction of justice, in addition to first-degree murder. But that's not the point. He still got an opportunity to bargain for his sentence by giving the prosecutors what they wanted. Charlie still runs a far greater risk of dying at the hand of the state than he otherwise would have; more so if the police are incompetent, or the jury is bloodthirsty.
In the second case, where one pleads to a lesser murder charge, to avoid the death penalty, imagine that Charlie is informed that there's a strong case against him, and that because Bravo was in fact a police officer, there's a "special circumstances" notation on his charge; the penalty, if convicted, is a mandatory death sentence. He can fight it, and hope that evidence implicating Alpha, and exonerating him comes to light, or, he can plead it down to a regular murder charge, with a sentence of imprisonment for life, with the possibility of parole in 20 years. Not a fun choice, but because Alpha was a meticulous criminal, Charlie is in an intolerable situation.
This situation reads like a
Law and Order script, but you must grant that it is only improbable, not impossible. By no means did Alpha need to provide enough evidence to convict Charlie on his own; he only had to provide evidence leading to a trial. And never did I mention anyone finding a body based on the deposition of someone unrelated to a crime; that's just a red herring.