... Has anyone else read this bit of pending legislation? It seems to require prosecutors to notify victims of potential plea offers or deals BEFORE the plea's accepted.

In misdemeanor courts this sounds pretty burdensome. If I'm reading it correctly, few new cases will be able to be actually resolved in one setting. Any case with a victim (individual or corporate) would now seem to involve us getting ahold of that victim, telling them "Hey, this is what we think we're going to do in this case" ahead of the actual plea. I sure can't do that from court on docket day, so I suppose we're looking at a lot of reset cases and a lot of added confusion.

Am I reading this right?

Quite often it will not be reasonably practical to inform the victim. I suppose the court could determine otherwise before accepting the plea and thus delay the proceeding. But, we can hope this will be the exception and not the rule.

The process for handling a guilty plea set out in article 26.13, CCP, only applies to felony cases. See article 27.13; McGuire v. State, 617 SW2d 259 (Tex. Crim. App. 1981), as discussed in The Perfect Plea, page 106. For misdemeanors, see article 27.14, CCP.

And, it isn't pending legislation. It's the law, effective for any felony plea agreement presented to a court after 8/31/11.

I don't read it as requiring victim notification before the plea is offered; it says "notice of the existence and terms of any plea bargain agreement," not offer.

The bill also only applies to victims as defined in CCP Art. 56.01, which are limited to victims of certain listed crimes or victims who suffers "personal injury or death".

trying to notify a victim who has suffered death...

Seances will explode in popularity!

Thanks for the clarification John; I probably could have just consulted that book... but to be fair, it was over eight feet away at the time.

I agree that the language of the law uses the word "agreement," Shannon. But (in the context I was envisioning) there would be no viable way to plead people out at an initial setting, since I can't have an agreement until I talk to them and see what they want to do. Unless the victim just happened to be in court for me to discuss things with there would have to be a lot of reset cases. However, as John points out, I won't have that problem in misdemeanor court.

Yeah, maybe now TDCAA's book editor can see why The Perfect Plea should be available as an app on your iPhone. Don't want you pulling a muscle reaching across your desk.

quote:

---

Originally posted by David H:

I agree that the language of the law uses the word "agreement," Shannon. But (in the context I was envisioning) there would be no viable way to plead people out at an initial setting, since I can't have an agreement until I talk to them and see what they want to do. Unless the victim just happened to be in court for me to discuss things with there would have to be a lot of reset cases. However, as John points out, I won't have that problem in misdemeanor court.

---

I agree with that interpretation.