Plea Bargaining

Reputed underworld figure Robert (Fat Bobby) Paduano, accused of trying to take over the Newport Beach drug trade, pleaded guilty Monday to 43 felony counts of residential robberies, extortion, conspiracy to sell cocaine and false imprisonment. As part of an agreement with county prosecutors, Paduano was sentenced to eight years in state prison. Paduano's guilty plea came after a lively and unusual exchange between the defendant and Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans.

The right to a fair trial by a jury of one's peers is one of the most sacred guarantees of the Bill of Rights, but the dirty secret is that it isn't exercised very often. More than 97% of federal convictions and 94% of state convictions result from guilty pleas. Recognizing that reality, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 this week that defendants have a constitutional right to be informed by their lawyers about the possibility of a plea bargain and the implications of turning one down.

Orange County Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks has shaken up some judges and defense attorneys with a directive to his prosecutors to move plea bargaining out of the privacy of the judge's chambers into the open courtroom where the public can see what is happening. Some judges and defense attorneys don't like the idea. They fear that Hicks' policy will discourage plea bargaining and thus overload the system with a backlog of criminal cases going to trial instead of being settled.

Reporting from San Diego -- Poway attorney Theresa Erickson was a star in the complex, competitive, and sometimes lucrative business of helping childless couples adopt babies. She was a frequent guest on national TV shows; she self-published a book on "assisted reproduction," and she presented herself on her website as a tireless, fearless advocate for adoption. Eager to expand her business, she was looking to attract gay clients. A different Erickson will appear for sentencing Friday in San Diego federal court: an admitted felon, the alleged ringleader behind an international scheme to pay surrogates to carry embryos to term so the babies could be placed with couples throughout the United States.

The background and state of plea bargaining in the Ventura courts was done an injustice in your profile of Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury on March 17. The article correctly reported that, in the early 1980s, dozens of criminal cases were dismissed "when the public defender took every misdemeanor case to trial to protest the district attorney's no-plea-bargaining policy." Unfortunately, when it concluded that the district attorney "beat down the challenge from the public defender's office," history was revised.

Mary Ruth Blanco, a 71-year-old West Covina woman charged with the botched armed robbery of a gas station to help pay her taxes, has accepted a plea bargain offer from prosecutors and hopes a judge will approve it, her attorney said Wednesday. In a move that could mean she avoids time behind bars, the district attorney's office has offered to drop a special circumstances charge of using a gun, said Steve Angelo, her nephew and a family spokesman.

Christian Slater rejected a plea bargain deal from New York City prosecutors Thursday on a charge of allegedly groping a woman. Slater was charged with forcible touching -- a misdemeanor that carries up to one year in jail -- after he allegedly walked up behind a woman and grabbed her buttocks as she was buying a soda in a small grocery store on Manhattan's Upper East Side in the early morning of May 31.

Stephanie Rene Vick and her sister, Sonya Lee, claimed that they only wanted to teach Sonya's abusive boyfriend a lesson. They bound and gagged Antonio Ariza and left him in a closet in a Santa Ana home to think about what he had done. But Ariza suffocated.

The White House today pulled back from its description of talks with Panama's Gen. Manuel A. Noriega as legal "plea bargaining" but said the aim of the negotiations remains the same--his ouster. Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater indicated that White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr.'s characterization last week of the talks with Noriega, who has been indicted on drug trafficking charges in Florida, as plea bargaining had raised objections within the Administration.

Prosecutors and attorneys for Mayor Roger Hedgecock said Thursday that negotiations on an out-of-court settlement of the conspiracy and perjury charges against the mayor had broken down, but other sources said that a plea bargain still could be reached, perhaps as early as today. Michael Pancer, Hedgecock's defense attorney, emerged from a long plea bargaining session with Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller and said: ". . . I see no possibility of a plea bargain . . .

Boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. will reportedly accept a plea bargain to avoid a felony conviction in connection with a domestic violence case involving the mother of three of his children, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Tuesday. Calls to Mayweather and his representatives were not returned. Clark County (Nev.) District Attorney David Roger told the newspaper that Mayweather on Wednesday will plead guilty to one count of battery domestic violence and two counts of harassment, all misdemeanors.

An estimated 95% of criminal charges are resolved through plea bargains, so an incompetent lawyer at the plea stage can harm his client just as much as an attorney who bungles a trial. The Supreme Court has been asked to restore the terms of plea bargains that two defendants did not accept because of lawyer malpractice. The cases give the justices an opportunity to enforce fairness in the legal system at every level. In 2007, Galin E. Frye was charged by the state of Missouri with driving with a revoked license, a felony because he had several previous convictions.

Actress Lindsay Lohan could return to court in two weeks to cut a deal on a felony theft charge for allegedly stealing a necklace from a Venice jewelry store. During a hearing Thursday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Keith Schwartz told the "Mean Girls" star, who has had several brushes with the law in recent years, that she would return to his courtroom March 25 only if she struck a plea bargain with the district attorney's office. Otherwise, Judge Stephanie Sautner will preside over an April 22 preliminary hearing to determine if enough evidence exists for the actress to stand trial.

Advocates for the disabled are urging a Los Angeles County judge to throw out a plea bargain for an employee of an El Monte day care center who confessed to sexually assaulting three mentally disabled clients, saying his eight-year-sentence was an injustice. The proposed sentence for Juan Fernando Flores "does not reflect the harm sustained by the victims nor the severity of the crimes committed," Robert J. Baldo, executive director of the Assn. of Regional Center Agencies, said in a letter to Superior Court Judge Jack Hunt.

A federal appeals court panel today refused to reinstate a proposed plea bargain that guaranteed Anaheim Ducks owner Henry Samueli that he would spend no time in prison as a result of alleged stock manipulation at Irvine microchip designer Broadcom Corp. The three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals did not rule on the merits of the arguments by Samueli, the billionaire co-founder and former chairman of Broadcom. It said instead that it has no jurisdiction at this time, ruling that Samueli must wait until after he is sentenced before appealing the rejection of his plea agreement.

Facing the prospect of spending at least 3 1/2 years behind bars, onetime Super Bowl star Plaxico Burress on Thursday accepted a plea bargain with a two-year prison sentence for accidentally shooting himself in the thigh at a Manhattan nightclub. The former New York Giants wide receiver pleaded guilty to one count of attempted criminal possession of a weapon, a lesser charge than he had faced. He will be sentenced Sept. 22, and lawyer Benjamin Brafman said he expects Burress to begin serving his sentence immediately after.

Pressing to fill gaps in what is known about the movements of suspect Timothy J. McVeigh before the Oklahoma City bombing, authorities have reopened plea bargaining with Michael Fortier, seeking his cooperation and possible testimony about his longtime friend's actions. Sources close to the case said Tuesday that Fortier, who has told authorities of accompanying McVeigh to Oklahoma City before the attack, still wants to escape any prison sentence for his alleged involvement.

The White House, insisting that it must consider all available means to bring about the resignation of Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega, Thursday defended its consideration of a deal that could involve dropping drug indictments pending against Noriega in Florida. "What this amounts to is a plea bargain," White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said. He declined to give specifics of the negotiations with Noriega and asserted that no agreement has been reached.

Five members of the "Jena Six" pleaded no contest Friday to misdemeanor simple battery and won't serve jail time, ending a case that thrust a small Louisiana town into the national spotlight and sparked a massive civil rights demonstration. The five were sentenced to seven days of unsupervised probation and fined $500.

Even by the standards of politics in Southeast Los Angeles County, where investigations of politicians are common, Bell Gardens City Councilman Mario Beltran seemed particularly adept at finding himself in the cross hairs of detectives, prosecutors and even federal agents. For the last 2 1/2 years, the 31-year-old politician had seemed to skate on the edge: In 2006, Beltran was found unconscious on the floor of a downtown L.A. hotel frequented by prostitutes.