Justices’ Ruling Expands Rights of Accused in Plea Bargains

[Sentath]

1. One of my local public radio stations

made it sound like Scalia was pretty hot about this.

From: http://www.examiner.com/democrat-in-national/supreme-court-rules-bad-plea-bargains-unconstitutional-justice-scalia-dissents

Judge Scalia dissented calling the decision “absurd.” Scalia mocked the liberal majority for what he coined "its newly discovered constitutional right" Scalia added "Nowhere in our constitutional jurisprudence have we ever suggested that the remedy for an unconstitutional conviction could be entirely subject to a trial judge's discretion or that the remedy could ever be no remedy at all."

And from: http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/dissenting_in_two_decisions_scalia_hits_new_constitutional_right_to_effecti/

Justice Antonin Scalia read aloud from his dissents in both cases. “Today,” he wrote in Lafler, “the Supreme Court of the United States elevates plea bargaining from a necessary evil to a constitutional entitlement. … The court today embraces the sporting-chance theory of criminal law, in which the state functions like a conscientious casino-operator, giving each player a fair chance to beat the house, that is, to serve less time than the law says he deserves. And when a player is excluded from the tables, his constitutional rights have been violated. I do not subscribe to that theory. No one should, least of all the justices of the Supreme Court.”