Many people are not familiar with plea bargaining. Different from other countries in the world, in the United States, more than 90% of criminal cases are closed through "plea bargaining". The so-called "plea bargaining" is officially called "plea bargaining/agreement" (plea bargaining? Bargain/Agreement) usually refers to the criminal punishment of suspects by admitting crimes. There are three common plea bargaining agreements: the defendant lightens the charges and pleads guilty, the prosecutor suggests a lighter punishment to the judge, and the suspect agrees to admit certain facts.
The reason why the United States adopts plea bargaining is mainly due to the consideration of the effectiveness of judicial resources allocation. Prosecutors in the United States bear a very high burden of proof in criminal cases, and reaching a plea bargain with suspects can save time and resources for other cases. Moreover, prosecutors at the state level in the United States are all elected, and their conviction rate is also a weight for their re-election. Therefore, the prosecutor naturally hopes that the suspect will confess as soon as possible.
As for judges, due to the long-term lack of funds and manpower in courts at all levels in the United States, a criminal case may last for months or even years, and judges also hope that the two sides can reach an agreement as soon as possible. For most suspects, it is naturally a good thing to be able to reduce the punishment. With the shortening of prisoners' serving time, the utilization rate of prisons will also increase, which can alleviate the problem of overcrowding in American prisons to some extent. It is precisely because of this seemingly win-win situation that plea bargaining has gradually become the mainstream way to deal with criminal cases in the United States.
However, with the passage of time, the problem of plea bargaining has gradually emerged, eroding the cornerstone of American judicial justice. It is precisely because of the pressure of political achievements that prosecutors often list various charges, sometimes as many as hundreds, and then use this as a reason to intimidate and induce suspects to delete some less tenable charges in exchange for the suspect's confession. Although this method is effective, it has also caused many unjust, false and wrong cases. In particular, the lack of judge and jury in plea bargaining has significantly expanded the power of prosecutors, and also led to the inability of a large number of criminal suspects to hire good lawyers and find it difficult to effectively defend them.
Back to this case, the situation is very different from the general situation in the statistical sense. First of all, this case is a federal criminal lawsuit, and federal prosecutors have no tenure and election pressure (although they also pursue conviction rate, it will not be the only job evaluation standard), so they will use their trading rights more cautiously.
Secondly, there is only one charge of kidnapping in this case so far. With the deepening of the investigation and the appearance of Zhang himself, the prosecutor may increase the charges of sexual assault or homicide, and it is difficult to make too many compromises on the basis of only one charge.
Thirdly, at present, the prosecution has not fully disclosed the evidence. Even if the evidence is disclosed, the legal person needs to combine a lot of practical experience, such as past cases, jury composition, and prosecutor experience. Before we can speculate on the possible action taken by the prosecution. At present, any analysis based on limited media reports is immature.
Of course, it does not rule out that the case will eventually be closed by a plea agreement between the prosecution and the defense. However, considering the huge advantage of the prosecution in this system and the defendant's financial ability is not enough to pay the high lawyer's fee, the punishment for the defendant may be the upper limit given by the American criminal justice system.
As long as we can get the criminal to confess!