The court of appeals decided State v. Salvetti this week. The case involves several interesting issues, but I want to focus on the court's approval of "package deal" plea bargaining. In Salvetti, the defendant and his wife were charged with abusing their son. The defendant entered into a plea bargain, under which he pled guilty to Class E felony child abuse in exchange for the dismissal of a charge of Class C felony child abuse. His wife entered into what appears to have been a similar arrangement. Subsequently, the defendant moved to withdraw his plea, alleging in part that he was innocent and that he entered into the plea bargain only because it was part of a package deal, i.e., because the state's plea offer to his wife was contingent on the defendant pleading guilty as well. This, he asserted, amounted to "improper pressure" to plead guilty in violation of G.S. 15A-1021(b) and the Constitution. There's some support for this argument in Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 365 n. 8 (1978), where the Court noted that a plea bargain involving leniency for a third person “might pose a greater danger of inducing a false guilty plea by skewing the assessment of the risks a defendant must consider.” Back to Salvetti, the trial court denied the defendant's motion to withdraw his plea, and the court of appeals affirmed. Here's what it said, pretty much in its entirety: Package plea deals offer leniency for a third party that are made contingent on [...]
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