How Does a Plea Bargain Work in Illinois? Attorney Joshua Boardman from Combs Waterkotte discusses everything you need to know about “How does a plea bargain work in Illinois”, including DUI, drug charges, sex crimes, conspiracy, violent crimes, gun charges, and more.
Interview Transcript
Scott Michael Dunn: That’s like bargaining, right? So how does a plea bargaining work?
Joshua Boardman: A plea bargain is a memorialization of a lot of conversations and a lot of negotiation that has happened before you actually show up in court and represent to the judge that you are going to be entering into agreement with the state as to the disposition of the case with your client. But, to the specific question, how a plea bargain works, it’s defense counsel and it’s the state’s attorney reaching an agreement as to what’s going to happen. That’ll be acknowledged or implemented by the court, and that can be sometimes a plea bargain is reached because your client has very little criminal history. Sometimes a plea bargain is reached because the state has gotten into the case and realized that actually it’s not as strong or they’re unlikely to meet certain elements of the charge. There can be plea bargains based on diversion programs. For example, can the client be admitted into some sort of inpatient treatment? But a plea bargain, there’s a lot of roads to a plea bargain, so it allows the attorneys to get creative and advocate for their client based on the facts, based on their criminal history, and based on the circumstances.
Dunn: A lot of things come into play.
Boardman: A tremendous amount of details are discussed. Like I said, criminal history is a huge one. The facts of the case, sometimes it can come down to certain state’s attorneys or certain prosecutors feel more strongly about certain types of charges. Sometimes if a case has been lingering for a while, it tends to find its way to a lower portion of the case load on a state’s attorney’s desk. So a plea bargain can be a cocktail of all those different things.
Dunn: Yeah, a cocktail of convenience.
