When Americans think of the criminal justice system, they picture a trial. The right to a trial by jury is supposed to undergird our entire justice system – but that bedrock constitutional right has all but disappeared thanks to plea bargaining. In 2018, more than 97 percent of defendants pleaded guilty. In Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining Is A Bad Deal, Carissa Byrne Hessick makes the case against plea bargaining and illustrates why we need to fix it if we ever hope to achieve lasting criminal justice reform.

Join the Jacob Burns Center for Ethics in the Practice of Law on Dec. 2nd to hear Professor Byrne Hessick discuss the book's arguments and implications for legal ethics in conversation with Burns Center Co-Director and Cardozo Law criminal law Professor Jessica Roth.

Carissa Byrne Hessick is the Ransdell Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she also serves as the director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project. Her work on the criminal justice system has been published by the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, and numerous academic journals. She has an informative Twitter account covering criminal justice.