Justice Michael P. Donnelly

Justice Michael P. Donnelly

Plea agreements and motions to withdraw pleas are often the subject of appeals or requests for post-conviction relief.

Justice Michael P. Donnelly of the Supreme Court of Ohio recently shared ideas for plea agreement reform with the Council of Chief Judges of State Courts of Appeal.

The national organization invited Justice Donnelly to speak as a part of its Great Educational Moments Series. Members face the same issues involving plea bargaining that he faced in his 14 years as a trial judge in the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.

“Ninety-seven percent of all criminal cases are resolved by plea bargaining, rather than proceeding to trial,” says Justice Donnelly. “There’s still a lot of mystery that shrouds plea bargaining.”

Justice Donnelly suggests the system can improve with greater transparency in plea negotiations.

Transparency can be achieved, he believes, by looking at a plea bargain through a contract lens. Both sides are looking for a benefit and the terms of the negotiation should be shared in open court.

“When I became a neutral in the adversarial process, ascending to the bench,” Justice Donnelly recalls, “I acted as I had when I was in practice meeting frequently with the parties in chambers off the record.”  

“Judges in my state frequently oversee the process by conducting meetings with prosecutors and defense attorneys behind closed doors.”

He took issue with what was decided in those unrecorded closed-door meetings as it affected people who were not in the room: the defendant and any victims. And they might never know the specifics of why the deal was struck.

Justice Donnelly says that’s when he decided the discussion needed to happen in open court, where everyone could focus on the merits of the case, everyone was accountable for their representations, and it was all on the record.

The full video of Justice Donnelly’s remarks can be viewed at: https://bit.ly/34RW3IS

For more information on the issue, Justice Donnelly has also written on the subject in The Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, which was covered in a CNO story.