GAINESVILLE, Fla. — After decades of new laws to toughen sentencing for criminals, prosecutors have gained greater leverage to extract guilty pleas from defendants and reduce the number of cases that go to trial, often by using the threat of more serious charges with mandatory sentences or other harsher penalties.

Some experts say the process has become coercive in many state and federal jurisdictions, forcing defendants to weigh their options based on the relative risks of facing a judge and jury rather than simple matters of guilt or innocence. In effect, prosecutors are giving defendants more reasons to avoid having their day in court.

“We now have an incredible concentration of power in the hands of prosecutors,” said Richard E. Myers II, a former assistant United States attorney who is now an associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina. He said that so much influence now resides with prosecutors that “in the wrong hands, the criminal justice system can be held hostage.”

One crucial, if unheralded, effect of this shift is now coming into sharper view, according to academics who study the issue. Growing prosecutorial power is a significant reason that the percentage of felony cases that go to trial has dropped sharply in many places.

Plea bargains have been common for more than a century, but lately they have begun to put the trial system out of business in some courtrooms. By one count, fewer than one in 40 felony cases now make it to trial, according to data from nine states that have published such records since the 1970s, when the ratio was about one in 12. The decline has been even steeper in federal district courts.

Cases like Florida v. Shane Guthrie help explain why. After Mr. Guthrie, 24, was arrested here last year, accused of beating his girlfriend and threatening her with a knife, the prosecutor offered him a deal for two years in prison plus probation.

Mr. Guthrie rejected that, and a later offer of five years, because he believed that he was not guilty, his lawyer said. But the prosecutor’s response was severe: he filed a more serious charge that would mean life imprisonment if Mr. Guthrie is convicted later this year.

Because of a state law that increased punishments for people who had recently been in prison, like Mr. Guthrie, the sentence would be mandatory. So what he could have resolved for a two-year term could keep him locked up for 50 years or more.

The decrease in trials has also been a consequence of underfinanced public defense lawyers who can try only a handful of their cases, as well as, prosecutors say, the rise of drug courts and other alternative resolutions.

The overloaded court system has also seen comparatively little expansion in many places, making a huge increase in plea bargains a cheap and easy way to handle a near-tripling in felony cases over the past generation.

But many researchers say the most important force in driving down the trial rate has been state and federal legislative overhauls that imposed mandatory sentences and other harsher and more certain penalties for many felonies, especially those involving guns, drugs, violent crimes and repeat offenders.

Stiffer punishments were also put in place for specific crimes, like peddling drugs near a school or wearing a mask in certain circumstances. And legislators added reams of new felony statutes, vastly expanding the range of actions considered illegal.

These tougher penalties, by many accounts, have contributed to the nation’s steep drop in crime the past two decades. They have also swelled the prison population to levels that lawmakers in some states say they can no longer afford, and a few have rolled back some laws.

The ‘Trial Penalty’

In the courtroom and during plea negotiations, the impact of these stricter laws is exerted through what academics call the “trial penalty.” The phrase refers to the fact that the sentences for people who go to trial have grown harsher relative to sentences for those who agree to a plea.

In some jurisdictions, this gap has widened so much it has become coercive and is used to punish defendants for exercising their right to trial, some legal experts say.

“Legislators want to make it easy for prosecutors to get the conviction without having to go to trial,” said Rachel Barkow, a professor of law at New York University who studies how prosecutors use their power. “And prosecutors who are starved for resources want to use that leverage. And so now everyone acts with the assumption that the case should end with a plea.”

“When you have that attitude,” she said, “you penalize people who have the nerve to go to trial.”

Prosecutors say they are giving defendants options and are merely charging them based on what is allowed under the law for those who turn down pleas.

While legal experts say the effect is clear in persuading more defendants to forgo trials, the trial penalty is hard to quantify without examining individual cases and negotiations between prosecutors and defense lawyers.

That is because threats of harsher charges against defendants who reject plea deals often are the most influential factor in the outcome of a case, but this interplay is never reflected in official data.

“How many times is a mandatory sentence used as a chip in order to coerce a plea? They don’t keep records,” said Senior Judge John L. Kane Jr. of United States District Court in Denver, who believes that prosecutors have grown more powerful than judges. But it is very common, he added. “That’s what the public doesn’t see, and where the statistics become meaningless.”

But one result is obvious, he said: “We hardly have trials anymore.”

In 1977, the year Judge Kane was appointed to the bench, the ratio of guilty pleas to criminal trial verdicts in federal district courts was a little more than four to one; by last year, it was almost 32 to one.

Here in Florida, which has greatly toughened sentencing since the 1990s, felony defendants who opt for trial now routinely face the prospect of higher charges that mean prison terms 2, 5, or even 20 times as long as if they had pleaded guilty. In many cases, the process is reversed, and stiffer charges are dismissed in return for a plea.

Before new sentencing laws, the gap was narrower, and trials less risky, veteran lawyers here say. The first thing Denis deVlaming, a prominent Florida criminal defense lawyer, does with a new client is pull out a calculator to tally all the additional punishments the prosecutor can add to figure the likely sentence if the client is convicted at trial.

“They think I’m ready to charge them a fee, but I’m not,” he said. “I tell them in Florida, it’s justice by mathematics.”

No matter how strongly defendants believe they are innocent, he said, they could be taking dangerous risks by, for example, turning down a one-year plea bargain when the prosecutor threatens additional charges that carry a mandatory sentence 10 times as long.

A Power Shift

The transfer of power to prosecutors from judges has been so profound that an important trial ritual has become in some measure a lie, Mr. deVlaming said — the instructions judges read stating that the jury determines guilt or innocence, and the judge a proper sentence. The latter part is no longer true when mandatory minimums and, in many cases, sentencing guidelines apply, but jurors often do not know that.

Legal scholars like Paul Cassell, a conservative former federal judge and prosecutor who is now a law professor at the University of Utah, describe the power shift as a zero-sum game.

“Judges have lost discretion, and that discretion has accumulated in the hands of prosecutors, who now have the ultimate ability to shape the outcome,” Mr. Cassell said. “With mandatory minimums and other sentencing enhancements out there, prosecutors can often dictate the sentence that will be imposed.”

Without question, plea bargains benefit many defendants who have committed crimes and receive lighter sentences than they might after trial. It also limits cases that require considerable time and expense in court.

But many defendants who opt for trial effectively face more prison time for rejecting a plea than for committing the alleged crime.

In Mr. Guthrie’s case, he was initially charged with aggravated battery on a pregnant woman and false imprisonment. But after he rejected the plea bargains, the prosecutor, more than a year later, filed the more serious charge of first-degree felony kidnapping, based on the girlfriend’s accusation that he pulled her by the arm inside her home and, once outside, grabbed her hair and pulled her on her feet the distance of several parking spaces.

Nobody is suggesting that Mr. Guthrie, previously incarcerated for 18 months on gun, assault and drug charges, is a sympathetic figure. According to a police report, he punched and kicked his girlfriend, left her with a bruised and bloody nose and a face that “appeared to be swollen,” and threatened to cut her stomach with a knife.

The assistant state attorney handling the case, Frank Slavichak, did not return calls. The chief investigator for the office, Spencer Mann, said Mr. Guthrie’s choices dictated the course of the case.

But his lawyer, Craig DeThomasis, hired after the plea rejections, said he was “plainly being punished for exercising his right to trial.” According to Mr. Guthrie’s mother, Claudia Guthrie, the prosecutor told her son at a hearing this spring that if he did not plead guilty and take a five-year sentence, higher charges would be filed that mean “you’re going to get life.” Mr. Mann did not dispute that some sort of warning of new charges was presented.

Mr. DeThomasis said that there was no evidence the girlfriend was pregnant, and that she started the altercation by hitting him in the forehead with a pipe, landing him in the jail infirmary for a week. He pointed out that she was arrested in 2009 for attacking Mr. Guthrie after telling the police he had struck her, leading police to say in a report that she had “changed her story several times and could not explain her actions.” He also said she had a history of involuntary hospitalizations, which she declined to address in a 110-page sworn deposition in February.

Mr. Mann declined to comment on the girlfriend’s background but said none of it affected the credibility of the case.

Judges in many cases can set aside verdicts that they believe are unsupported by the evidence, but they generally have no power in mandatory-minimum cases to reduce punishments below levels established through legislation.

While the Guthrie case may be a particularly stark example of how much power one prosecutor can have over a defendant’s fate, many places have given district attorneys similar influence.

“There have been so many laws passed in the various states that just about always there is some enhancement available to the prosecutor that can be used as leverage in negotiations,” said Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association.

Mr. Burns, a former Utah prosecutor, did not dispute that sentencing-law changes had made trial riskier for defendants and helped drive down the percentage of cases taken to a verdict. He also acknowledged that the plea-bargain process “clearly is coercive” when defendants face harsher or more numerous charges for rejecting deals.

But he said plea bargains were also “extremely lenient in many instances because prosecutors are taking several criminal acts off the table.” He emphasized that lawmakers time and again have given prosecutors more leverage and said it was “grossly unrealistic” to criticize district attorneys for enforcing laws that they are duty-bound to uphold — even those that are ill-advised.

“There are a lot of criminal laws that are passed that we all kind of roll our eyes at,” he said. “Sometimes they are just repetitive; sometimes they are knee-jerk responses to some high-profile case, and therefore politically motivated.”

Though national statistics are not readily available, the trend toward lower trial rates is evident in a number of places.

The National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Va., found that the percentage of felonies taken to trial in nine states with available data fell to 2.3 percent in 2009, from 8 percent in 1976.

The number of jury trials rose slightly, while nonjury trials, where a judge decides guilt or innocence, fell sharply — all while caseloads nearly tripled. The states account for more than a third of the American population, and most have mandatory minimums or sentencing guidelines or have passed toughened sentencing laws.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics, after studying partial data on state-court felony prosecutions nationwide, found that from 1986 to 2006 the ratio of pleas to trials nearly doubled.

The shift has been clearer in federal district courts. After tougher sentencing laws were enacted in the 1980s, the percentage of criminal cases taken to trial fell to less than 3 percent last year, from almost 15 percent, according to data from the State University at Albany’s Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. The explosion of immigration prosecutions, where trials are rare, skews the numbers, but the trend is evident even when those cases are not included.

Nearly nine of every 10 cases ended in pleas last year, the federal data show, while one in 12 were dismissed (the percentage of dismissed cases was substantially higher a generation ago).

The number of acquittals dropped even further. Last year, there was only one acquittal for every 212 guilty pleas or trial convictions in federal district courts. Thirty years ago, the ratio was one for every 22.

More Plea Bargaining

Experts like Ronald Wright, a former federal prosecutor and now a professor of law at Wake Forest University, say they fear that the steep decline in acquittals stems partly from more defendants, who might have winnable cases, deciding not to risk trials and reluctantly accepting plea bargains instead.

Some federal prosecutors worried that their power would be weakened by a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that made sentencing guidelines advisory only. But academics say the ruling had much less effect than what some predicted as many judges still largely follow the guidelines, and the ruling did not affect other laws that have given prosecutors more power.

While sentencing changes allowed legislators in this state to take credit for being tough on crime, they have also worked against their goal of trimming prison costs, leaving prosecutors caught in the middle.

“There is a big disconnect,” said Bill Cervone, the state attorney in Gainesville and the chief prosecutor in six counties that make up Florida’s Eighth Judicial Circuit. “There is subtle and not so subtle pressure” to reduce the numbers sent to prison.

Mr. Cervone, who was head of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, added, “Our position is, ‘Please don’t pass any new crime laws while you are also cutting our budgets.’ ” His budget has been cut 20 percent in four years.

The fiscal strains extend to judges, who face pressure to keep dockets moving. Some do not appreciate defendants who refuse pleas and then lose a time-consuming trial, he and other lawyers say.

“There are some judges who will punish you for going to trial,” Mr. Cervone said. “Legally, you cannot impose a longer sentence on someone because they exercised their right to trial,” he said, speaking of judges. “Factually, there are ways to do it.”

In some cases, he added, he wished judges had more discretion, instead of having to automatically impose an inflexible punishment.

So, too, do many judges faced with cases where legislatively mandated penalties do not square with their idea of justice.

Like the one in Polk County, Fla. that began when Orville Wollard said he fired his registered handgun into his living room wall to scare his daughter’s boyfriend out of the house after he repeatedly threatened his family.

In Mr. Wollard’s view, he was protecting his family and did not try to hurt the boyfriend, who was not hit, though the judge said the bullet missed him by inches. But after Mr. Wollard turned down a plea offer of five years of felony probation, prosecutors won a conviction two years ago for aggravated assault with a firearm. Because the gun was fired, a mandatory-minimum law required a 20-year term.

At his sentencing, Mr. Wollard said he felt as if he were in “some banana republic” and described the boyfriend as a violent drug dealer. But prosecutors said the judge had “no discretion” because of the state law.

Reluctantly, the judge agreed. “If it weren’t for the mandatory minimum aspect of this, I would use my discretion and impose some separate sentence,” he told Mr. Wollard, adding that he was “duty bound” to impose 20 years.

HARRISBURG — The state House voted unanimously Monday to ban a series of synthetic drugs, as lawmakers spoke in defense of public health.

“There is not a day that goes by that we don’t pick up the newspaper, turn on the television or radio, and hear some near tragedy, or tragedy, that has occurred because of the abuse and use of these substances,” said state Rep. Jennifer Mann, D-Lehigh.

The legislation, SB 1006, adds a series of chemical compounds used as synthetic marijuana and synthetic cocaine to the state’s list of controlled substances. To be included on the list, a substance must have a high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use in the United States and lack medical safety, according to state law.

The chemicals, which can be found in some bath salts and incenses, can cause symptoms, such as strong hallucinations, that are similar to those present after using other illegal drugs.

The bill sets penalties of up one year in prison and a $5,000 fine for those caught in possession of the synthetic drugs and penalties of up to five years in prison and fines of up to $15,000 for those caught with the intent to distribute.

“Those who are making huge profits off of our citizens will finally be held accountable with the passing of this legislation,” said state Rep. Ronald Marsico, R-Dauphin, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

While getting full support from the Legislature, the bill had opponents.

“This bill is merely the latest in a long line of bills that responds to drug abuse with criminalization. If the Legislature truly wants to address this problem, it must increase its investment in treatment programs for Pennsylvanians with drug problems,” said Andy Hoover, legislative director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The bill was supported by law enforcement and the District Attorney’s Association.

“We believe that (synthetic drugs) are a danger to the community,” said Sgt. Jack Lewis, a state police spokesman. Lewis said police lack specific numbers on the popularity of these substances “because we have no way of tracking usage yet. But you could definitely say we are seeing more and more cases of the use of bath salts.”

State Rep. Mario Scavello, R-Monroe, urged businesses throughout the commonwealth to remove bath salts from their stores.

“You will be saving lives,” said Scavello.

The bill previously passed unanimously in the state Senate, but it will have to be approved by the upper chamber again after the state House amended it to expand the list of banned substances.

Specifically, Senate Bill 448 would grant immunity to an individual for the summary offense of underage drinking as it relates to the consumption of alcoholic beverages by a person under the age of 21. Under the provisions of Senator Rafferty’s legislation, an individual must call 911 to report the person in need of medical attention, must provide their name to the dispatcher, and must remain with the person in need of assistance.

Senator Rafferty, who has been an ardent supporter and author of tougher laws to prevent underage drinking, said his legislation – which passed unanimously out of the Senate last session – is intended to protect public safety and prevent needless tragedies.

“Underage drinking is a serious matter, and we don’t want to give minors a free pass. But if kids are in trouble and require medical attention, we shouldn’t discourage anyone in a position to help them from seeking critical and timely aid,” Senator Rafferty said. “This legislation has support from several groups, including the Pennsylvania DUI Association and state District Attorneys Association because it provides a safe way to defuse an unsafe situation.”

In a move that will spare thousands of crime victims from having to testify at initial court hearings, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ordered judges to accept the testimony of police officers, rather than victims, against defendants accused of property crimes.

“This is monumental,” said Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery, who joined with Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille in pushing for the policy. “This will make things more just for the victims and the accused.”

Each year in Philadelphia, as many as 5,000 victims of car thefts, burglaries, frauds, and other felony property crimes will be spared initial court appearances. Instead, police will testify that the items in question were reported stolen.

The change is designed to end the practice by which victims must go to court merely to testify that they owned property and gave no one permission to take it. Given the delays that plague the Philadelphia courts, this has forced victims to show up repeatedly – and led many to simply give up.

The change would affect preliminary hearings in Municipal Court, at which judges decide whether there is enough evidence to merit a full trial in Common Pleas Court. The victims would still have to appear at those trials.

The change, enacted by a unanimous vote of the seven-member high court Thursday and announced Friday, will begin in 30 days.

Though the rule will take effect statewide, its impact will be most dramatic in Philadelphia. Judges elsewhere in Pennsylvania routinely allow police to stand in for victims at initial hearings, which are typically in District Court.

District Attorney Seth Williams, who joined McCaffery and top Philadelphia judges at an afternoon news conference, said the new policy would reduce witness attrition, saving cases from collapse.

“They come as willing participants and leave as frustrated, bitter people,” Williams said. “There’s no reason for them to have to come to court again and again.”

McCaffery and Williams also helped unveil an effort to combat the entrenched problem of witness intimidation.

They made public a “bench book” for judges, giving them practical and legal advice on how to spot and quell courtroom threats against witnesses.

“These two – the new rules and the bench book – are monumental,” Williams said. “They’re monumental because we are going to hold more defendants accountable for their behavior.”

McCaffery called the changes “a direct result” of a series of articles in The Inquirer on the Philadelphia court system, “Justice: Delayed, Dismissed, Denied,” published in December 2009.

In the series and subsequent articles, the paper reported that witness fatigue and intimidation, including threats, violence, and murder, contributed to a court system with one of the nation’s lowest conviction rates.

Defense lawyers were skeptical about the move to limit witness testimony. Some said it would undermine defendants’ right to confront their accusers. Others predicted it might only delay the day of reckoning for cases.

Bradley Bridge, a senior lawyer with the Defender Association, which represents indigent suspects, said the move would strip Municipal Court judges of an important role – vetting cases to make sure victims intend to stick by their accusations in court and under oath.

“If they’re not going to show up at all, then it’s better to get rid of cases early,” he said. “I think this will do no more than drag cases out at the Common Pleas level.”

But McCaffery, a former top judge in Municipal Court, said the change would end “an insidious trend” in Philadelphia, in which lower-court hearings have become far too elaborate.

This, he said, has forced victims to face the prospect of hearings that are often postponed numerous times. Castille, McCaffery, prosecutors, and even some defense lawyers say such delays are often spurious, a defense tactic aimed at wearing down witnesses in the hope that they will not show up for the next hearing.

“This was the type of creative trial advocacy that a lot of members of the defense bar practiced to get the case continued,” McCaffery said.

The new rule would end that practice in the early stages of a case by allowing hearings to go forward in a victim’s absence. The change should result in fewer postponements, less police overtime, and swifter dispositions of criminal cases, he said.

As for the new judges’ manual on threats against witnesses, Walter M. Phillips Jr., chairman of the state agency that commissioned the report, said intimidation had developed into a “high art form” carried out in ways both brazen and subtle.

Phillips, head of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, said the bench book would give judges tips on spotting threatening behavior in their courtrooms. The book is to be distributed to judges statewide.

Among its suggestions are banning electronic devices such as cell phones, cameras, and PDAs that can be used to transmit information about witnesses; training courtroom staff to be attentive to intimidating gestures; and separating the victims’ family and friends from those of the defendants in the courtroom.

Common Pleas Court Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes, who helped write the manual, called threats against witnesses “an assault on justice” in Philadelphia and beyond.

“It is serious. It happens every day,” Hughes said. “It is simply an effort to stop the truth, and it cannot be tolerated.”

Alcohol offenses and thefts continue to be the biggest problems at Penn State, according to the university’s annual crime report.
“If you look at driving under the influence, liquor law and public drunkenness, those numbers are still high,” said Penn State Deputy Police Chief Tyrone Parham.
In 2009, those three offenses alone accounted for 783 of the 1,726 Part II offenses. Part II offenses also include drug offenses and weapons possession.
During the past three years, alcohol-related offenses have gone up, along with the blood alcohol content levels of Penn State students who have required medical attention for alcohol overdoses, Parham said.
“We’d like to see all of those numbers go down. Unfortunately, the trend is people seem to be drinking larger quantities and volumes of alcohol,” he said.
Theft is also a big concern for police on campus. In 2009, theft was responsible for 439 of the 526 Part I offenses, which also include forcible rape, assault and burglary.
One reason for the large number was that a lot of the stolen property was either unattended or not secured. “They’re kind of crimes of opportunity,” said Parham.
In general, the total number of Part I and Part II offenses — more serious and more violent crimes and lesser offenses, respectively — has remained consistent during the past three years. In 2007, 2008 and 2009 offenses totaled 2,055, 2,268 and 2,252, respectively.
The only notable increase in Part I offenses during the past three years was in aggravated assaults. In 2007 and 2008 combined, there were 13 aggravated assaults. That number jumped to 23 in 2009, with 12 involving dangerous weapons.
Still, the rise in aggravated assaults hasn’t been a big problem, Parham indicated. Many of the assaults involved people who knew each other and were not random acts of violence, he said.
The report was sent out Saturday by e-mail to students, faculty and staff at University Park.
Parham said Penn State and its surrounding community remain one of the safest places to live in the country.
“Generally speaking, it’s a good thing that we don’t have significant increases in serious assaults, robberies, homicides, forceful rapes and all those types of things,” he said.
Chad Lear is a Penn State journalism student.

“Our prison system is at its breaking point,” said Andy Hoover , legislative director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “The passage of this bill, while not perfect, is another sign that the legislature is getting sm art on crime.”