Interesting court pleas

I don’t recall what case was the focus or even where I saw it, but I recently read an online article in which a defendant in a court procedure entered an “Alford plea.”

Obviously, “guilty” or “innocent” are by far the most common pleas entered by defendants and attorneys in U.S. courts. But there are a couple of others that show up now and then, and both present a fine opportunity to wonder: The “Alford plea” and the “no contest plea.”

For the record, an Alford plea means that a defendant in a criminal case doesn’t admit guilt but acknowledges that the prosecution has sufficient evidence to obtain a conviction. Basically, it allows the defendant to resolve the case without admitting wrongdoing while still being treated as guilty and subject to applicable sentencing.

The plea results in a conviction appearing on the defendant’s criminal record, which of course can impact multiple aspects of life, like background checks (for employment and lot of other reasons), possession of firearms and much more. 

The Alford plea is named after the United States Supreme Court case of North Carolina vs. Alford in 1970 in which Henry Alford had been indicted on a charge of first-degree murder and was faced with the possibility of the death penalty if convicted in a jury trial.

The no contest plea (from the Latin phrase, nolo contendere) is slightly different. It means a defendant doesn’t admit guilt but also doesn’t dispute a given charge and accepts the consequences without admitting responsibility. While the legal effect is the same as a guilty plea in terms of conviction and punishment, a no contest plea can offer some protection in civil cases where the defendant might face liability. 

The term first appeared in legal usage in 1829. It has a major place in the history of United States politics, because in 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew pleaded no contest to a felony charge of tax evasion and subsequently resigned. President Richard Nixon replaced him with House Republican leader Gerald Ford, who of course became president when Nixon resigned following the Watergate investigation.

OK, so an Alford plea involves the defendant pleading guilty while simultaneously maintaining their innocence, while a no contest plea involves neither admitting nor denying guilt but accepting the consequences of the charges. 

Wild.

Let me point out that while the judicial system in the United States might often seem to leave plenty of room for improvement, I fully believe it’s by far the best of its kind on Planet Earth. At the same time, I understand why these pleas might exist, but to me, they’re both fraught with loophole-laden admittance of guilt.

And if you’re a defendant, how cool is that? You know you’re up the creek without a paddle, but you can still avoid the deadly waterfall via a bunch of words.

And hey, at least you don’t live in a nation ruled by “Sharia Law” where you could have your hands cut off at the wrists before being thrown into a jail where you’re forced to exist without adequate food or water and are blocked from any contact with loved ones and sheltered from general access to the real world.

And I guess it’s also good that we’ve progressed beyond justice by six shooters and nooses.

For the record, the Alford plea is called the Kennedy plea in West Virginia. I didn’t look up why.

Anyway, I guess there must be viable logic behind the original purpose of these procedures that are deemed OK within our complicated, sometimes convoluted and always interesting judicial system.

But I honestly don’t get it.

Doug Davison is a writer, photographer and newsroom assistant for the Houston Herald. Email: ddavison@houstonherald.com.