DOJ-OGR-00000207.tif

7 and on. See Robert H. Jackson, The Federal Prosecutor, 24 J. AM. JUDICATURE Soc’y 18, 18 (1940). United States v. Osorto, 445 F. Supp. 3d 103, 109 (N.D. Cal. 2020). To permit the United States to escape the plain language of its agreement in this case would work a detriment on the entire plea system. This is of particular concern given that the criminal justice system “is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials.” Missouri v. Frye, 566 U.S. at 143-44. For the plea system to work in practice, defense counsel and defendants must be able to rely on the written promises made by the government and trust that courts will honor and enforce those promises down the road, even when it means that the Department must forego a meritorious prosecution. Consider a situation where a defendant agrees to plead guilty to a violent felony that will bring substantial prison time. He agrees to plead only because the “United States” promises in writing that it will not charge any co-conspirators in the offense, including the defendant’s brother, and because the plea agreement contains no geographic or other limitation on that promise. The defendant should be able to rely on the government’s bargained-for promise that he alone will suffer incarceration. And a prosecutor in a different district must not be permitted to charge his brother with conspiracy to commit the same offense. DOJ-OGR-00000207