|
Vocapedia >
USA > Law, Justice > State justice
Arraignment > Plea
FRONTLINE
The Plea
Aired: 06/17/2004
01:24:38
Rating: NR
Nearly 95 percent of all cases
resulting in felony convictions
never reach a jury.
They are settled
through plea bargains
in which a defendant
agrees
to plead guilty in exchange
for a reduced sentence.
But what are the implications
of a system that relies on pleas
to expedite justice?
Aired: 06/17/04
https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-the-plea/
enter
his / her
plea
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/04/
1168030399/what-trumps-arraignment-was-like-at-the-courthouse
enter a not guilty
plea
enter a plea of
not guilty
plead not guilty
to 34 felony counts
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/04/
1168094097/donald-trump-felony-charges-reaction-trial
plead not guilty
to perjury, obstruction charges
plead not guilty
to 977 charges
plead not guilty (...)
to nearly
1,000 rape, kidnapping
and sexual abuse charges
plead not guilty
to charges outlined in a 471-count indictment
enter a plea of guilty or no contest
plead
plead
innocent
proclaim his innocence
plead not guilty
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/09/
413086475/dennis-hastert-to-appear-in-a-chicago-courthouse-for-arraignment
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/17/
ariel-castro-arraignment/2523731/
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/
dealer-is-arraigned-on-charges-related-to-sale-of-disputed-masterpieces/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/us/25loughner.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/us/09jackson.html
plead not guilty
to charges of
first-degree assault
and two counts of armed criminal action
plead not
guilty
to charges of murder and attempted murder
plead not guilty
to charges of
second-degree murder, attempted murder,
assault and criminal possession of a
weapon
unrepentant
plead
guilty to
N
plead guilty to second-degree murder
by complicity
plead guilty to contempt of court
plead guilty to obstruction of
justice
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/us/02detroit.html
plea agreement
under a plea agreement
plea deal
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/02/
526580300/former-s-c-police-officer-pleads-guilty-in-shooting-of-walter-scott
plea agreement
agree to a plea bargain
agree to plead
guilty to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/national/01nightclub.html
enter the plea
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/national/01nightclub.html
plead guilty
to defrauding the
world's largest retailer
and to not paying federal income tax
on his ill-gotten gains
plead guilty to three
felony counts
plead guilty
to fraud, public
corruption and tax evasion
plead guilty to indecent assault and
corruption of minors
guilty plea
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/nyregion/15actress.html
enter his/her guilty plea
plead guilty to fraud and conspiracy
plead guilty to vehicular homicide
military justice > arraignment
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/12/22/
460694035/bowe-bergdahl-defers-entering-plea-at-arraignment
Corpus of news articles
Vocapedia > USA > Law, Justice > State justice
Arraignment > Plea
In Guilty Plea,
Actress’s Killer
Changes Story to Robbery
February 15, 2008
The New York Times
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
His original confession had the ring of truth: He was an illegal immigrant
working on a renovation job in a Greenwich Village building when the imperious
woman upstairs confronted him over construction noise.
They argued. She scratched him. Panicked that she would call the police and that
he would be deported, he punched her and pushed her to the floor. Mistakenly
thinking he had killed her, he hanged her from the shower rod of her bathroom,
in a staged suicide.
But in a courtroom on Thursday, the construction worker, Diego Pillco, 20, told
a very different story of how he killed the woman, Adrienne Shelly, a filmmaker,
on Nov. 1, 2006. Ms. Shelly, who was 40 and the mother of a 3-year-old daughter,
had just finished a film, “Waitress,” which opened to warm reviews after her
death.
Mr. Pillco, a short, boyish-looking man, speaking softly through a Spanish
translator, told a judge in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that the argument
had not been over noise, but over a robbery.
He told the judge that Ms. Shelly had caught him stealing money from her purse
after he had slipped into the apartment at 15 Abingdon Square that she used as
an office.
When she picked up the phone to call the police, he said, he grabbed it and
covered her mouth as she started to scream.
“When she fell to the floor I saw a sheet and decided to choke her, and that’s
what happened,” Mr. Pillco said.
The judge, Carol Berkman, prodded him: “And you tied a sheet around her neck and
strung her up?”
“Yes,” Mr. Pillco replied, “and I made it look as if she committed suicide on
her own.”
It sounded like a straightforward confession to murder, which could have brought
Mr. Pillco a sentence of 25 years to life in prison, if he had been convicted by
a jury.
Instead, Mr. Pillco pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, first-degree
manslaughter, and was promised a fixed sentence of 25 years in a deal negotiated
with the Manhattan district attorney.
It was a hard choice dictated by the existence of the first confession,
according to an official in the district attorney’s office, who was not
authorized to speak on the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
If he had gone to trial, the official said, Mr. Pillco probably would have stuck
by his original story, which might have convinced a jury that Ms. Shelly’s death
was merely reckless, even though the prosecution would have argued otherwise.
In that case, if convicted he could have received a maximum sentence of 15
years. It appeared that the defense may have feared the opposite outcome, that
Mr. Pillco would be convicted of murder and sentenced to life. Mr. Pillco’s
lawyer, Thomas Klein, of the Legal Aid Society, declined to comment on his
strategy.
Ms. Shelly’s husband, Andy Ostroy, her stepdaughter and other relatives sat
quietly in the courtroom during the hearing and declined to comment afterward.
But their grim faces conveyed what the judge said out loud: that their assent
had been given reluctantly. “Well, I’m not going to ask whether they’re happy
with this,” Justice Berkman said, after the lead prosecutor, Peter Casolaro,
assured her that the family had agreed to the plea.
There was little about Mr. Pillco’s first confession that added up, according to
prosecutors. He told detectives five days after the killing that Ms. Shelly had
confronted him in the apartment where he was working. The floor of that
apartment was covered in gypsum dust, the prosecutor said, yet Ms. Shelly’s
shoes, socks and the hems of her pants were clean.
Rather, it was Mr. Pillco’s shoeprints, traced in construction dust on the
toilet and the rim of the bathtub where Ms. Shelly’s husband found her hanging,
that gave him away.
Mr. Pillco, an illegal immigrant from Ecuador, had come to the United States 8
to 10 months before the murder, the official said.
Ms. Shelly, who was born in Queens as Adrienne Levine, had just finished
“Waitress,” a film about an unhappily married, pregnant waitress who finds joy
in baking pies (and having an affair) that she wrote, directed and appeared in.
The film was later shown at the Sundance Film Festival and then went into wider
release.
Ms. Shelly was best known for her roles in Hal Hartley’s dark comedies “The
Unbelievable Truth” and “Trust.” She also appeared in more than two dozen Off
Broadway plays and in television shows.
In court on Thursday, after Justice Berkman asked, “What happened?” Mr. Pillco
gave this account.
He had been returning from lunch in the basement of the building when he saw Ms.
Shelly in an elevator. “The lady was coming up in the elevator,” he said. “So
when I saw her, I decided to rob her.”
He waited on an upstairs landing and watched her go into her apartment. She left
the door open, he said, and he slipped in, took her purse, and removed money; he
did not say how much.
After describing the fight for the phone and the struggle that ensued, he
stopped his recitation. After a conversation with his lawyer, he added one last
sentence. Mr. Pillco’s final words to the court were, “I just want to ask
forgiveness to her family.”
The judge replied, “I doubt that you will get that, sir.”
In Guilty Plea,
Actress’s Killer Changes Story to Robbery,
NYT,
15.2.2008,
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/
nyregion/15actress.html
Related > Anglonautes >
Vocapedia
state justice > plea deal / arrangement
federal
justice
prosecution
> plea deal / non-prosecution agreement
U.S. Constitution,
U.S. Supreme Court,
State Supreme Courts
justice, law > USA
justice, law > death penalty > USA
prison, jail > USA
justice >
courtroom artists, miscarriage of justice > UK, USA
Related > Anglonautes > Documents
Historical
documents > USA
| 
