HIGH COURT DEBATES PLEA DEALS

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court debated Wednesday whether people pleading
guilty deserve to see more of the case against them first - a requirement
the Bush administration warned could cause bottlenecks in the courts.

Prosecutors must turn over evidence to defendants who plead innocent and go
on trial.

Justices are considering whether anyone contemplating a guilty plea has a
constitutional right to see information collected by prosecutors that could
help them. An appeals court has said they do.

Justice Antonin Scalia said the issue is whether a defendant "should know
what the house odds are before he rolls the dice."

"It would undermine the plea bargaining system," Solicitor General Theodore
Olson told the court.

Tens of thousands of cases nationwide will be affected by the court's
decision, he said. "No system is perfect or ever will be perfect," but the
U.S. courts give defendants enough protections, Olson argued.

The court may not settle this issue now. Several justices said there are
jurisdictional problems with the case, involving the sentence of Angela
Ruiz. Justices could dismiss the case without a ruling or throw out the
appeals court decision which the Bush administration is contesting.

Ruiz pleaded guilty to importing marijuana after agents found 66 pounds of
marijuana hidden in the 1970 Mercury Cougar she was driving in southern
California near the Mexico border in 1999.

About 95 percent of convictions in federal courts involve guilty pleas,
Olson said.

Ruiz's attorney, Steven H. Hubachek, said some innocent people accept plea
bargains rather than risk much longer prison sentences if convicted in a trial.

There's a "societal and individual interest," he said, in changing the
system to make sure blameless defendants know more of the evidence against
them before agreeing to a plea bargain.

Justices seemed disturbed by the potential impact on courts. They were told
some cases have already been dismissed because of the ruling by the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Instead of encouraging innocent people to take their chances at trial, the
information may persuade them to plead guilty, Scalia said. "It's crazy."

"You're asking for a really major change in the system," Justice Stephen
Breyer told Hubachek.

Ruiz had turned down the government's offer of a "fast-track" guilty plea,
which entitled her to a lighter sentence in return for waiving several
time-consuming steps. One is the usual requirement that the government must
give defense lawyers any information that might help prove the defendant's
innocence.

Her lawyers argued she had a constitutional right to the information. She
was sentenced to 18 months in prison, which her lawyers are contesting.

Prosecutors said they have a duty to reveal any information about a
defendant's innocence but don't have to release all of their case.

The plea bargain case is the last the court will hear this term. Justices
will spend the next 2 1/2 months preparing rulings. The next arguments are
scheduled for October.