Ethics of Plea Bargains Defendants are punished for exercising their right to trial - the State advocates for the harshest possible punishment unless the defendant enters into a plea bargain which requires the defendant to, under oath, waive their constitutional right(s). Further, the trial adds several months of delay to the adjudication of her case. So, the punishment is further multiplied. Finally, how is it ethical for the State to conspire with a defendant to create and perpetuate a lie? Plea bargains are lies - both the defendant and the prosecution know that the plea is something other than the truth yet they conspire to a falsehood and then go before a Judge swear that falsehood is truth under oath. Seems shoddy.
In short: Plea bargain benefit society as a whole. If a defendant exercises his/her constitutional right to a jury trial, the trial takes up a lot of time and preparation. A jury trial costs a significant amount of time and money. Additionally, judges have to set aside court time for the trial, when instead they could be doing other things. In most states where there are elected judges, judges want to have a large number of criminal convictions, ie. Plea deals so they can say they are tough on crime. In states with appointed judges, judges will get promoted based on their number of finished cases in a year or their efficiency. For prosecutors, they favor plea agreements because a plea agreement removes any chance the defendant will have his/her conviction overturned. When one agrees to a plea one waives any and all right to appeal one's conviction; otherwise, all defendants are guaranteed at least one appeal, which are once again expensive. Additionally, defendants can petition for habeas corpus. When they plead guilty the government won't have to defend against these petitions. Defendants win because they get a lower sentence. In the end pleas are ethical because they help society as a whole making the system more efficient. The criminals who plead serve their time and cannot get their convictions overturned.
The trial at issue is a civil trial over the publication of his book Permanent Record and the non-disclosure agreement that he signed connected to his employment, see the DoJ announcement, which also notes that this is separate from a future espionage trial. The remedy sought involves no imprisonment. In the US, the constitutional right to a jury trial applies to criminal cases. See the Arpaio case, where cases involving imprisonment of less than 6 months are not subject to the jury trial requirement. The right to a jury trial in civil cases is much more complicated and fact-specific, see this answer. Not yet in evidence is the question of whether his employment agreement included a waiver of jury trial w.r.t. non-disclosure, but one should assume that the government anticipated the scenario that a person would breach the NDA. ......
No. This isn't possible. A judge can only sentence someone after they have pleaded guilty or been found to be guilty, following an indictment or criminal complaint, and multiple advisements of rights.
The life sentences were based on counts 2 and 4, distribution of narcotics by means of the internet and continuing criminal enterprise. In reviewing the sentencing hearing, all of the evidence indicates that the sentence was based on the nature of his acts, and not anything he did after his arrest. There is no way to know if prosecutors would have been amenable to a plea bargain.
My impression, and the plausible explanation in the absence of the actual facts, is that this was something that the attorney agreed to, in order to allow a skittish client to reveal information pursuant to a favorable plea agreement. The police probably insisted that the client be handcuffed to someone while doing this to prevent the client from fleeing. The attorney probably offered to do the job instead of a police officer, to be able to provide advice to his client and keep his client calm enough to do it, which might not have happened (sacrificing the favorable plea deal that the attorney negotiated) if someone else were in that role.
There is no absolute rule in such cases. It is often a matter of negotiation between the state and federal authorities, and failing agreement, a matter of which authority has the prisoner in custody. Often the question of which crime is more serious or carries a longer sentence is an issue in such negotiations.
You are quoting standards that are applicable during an appeal. So in this case, the defendant was brought to trial, was found guilty by a jury, and is now appealing that conviction. During that initial trial, the evidence was supposed to have been weighed neutrally. In an appeal, the appellate court is not attempting to re-litigate the entirety of the case. That would be costly and slow in addition to burdensome on witnesses that might have to be called again to testify. Instead, it defers to the trial court for things like the determination of facts. The standards you quote show that an appellate court is only going to overturn a lower court's verdict as insufficient if the lower court's ruling is manifestly unjust. The prosecution and the defense presented evidence on a particular element of the crime at trial. The jury determined that the prosecution met its burden, and proved the element beyond a reasonable doubt. The appeals court is not going to substitute its judgement for that of the jury particularly when the jury had the opportunity to assess the credibility of different witnesses that may not be possible from a simple text-based transcript. If the trial court convicted and the appeals court determines that the conviction was reasonable if the evidence was viewed from the standpoint most favorable to the prosecution, then the sufficiency standard would be met and the appeal would be denied. The appeals court would only overturn the verdict as insufficient if no reasonable juror could possibly have concluded that the state met its burden of proof given the evidence presented.
On the contrary, it is unethical for a prosecutor to bring a case where there is no reasonable prospect of conviction. The prosecutor is an officer of the court and as a representative of the state, their primary concern is the guilty are convicted and the not guilty are not.