Harvey Yoder has been a resident of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia since 1946 when his family moved from Kansas by train. Harvey is an ordained Mennonite minister and now have a seminary degree and a master’s degree in counseling and since 1988 have been a marriage and family counselor and pastor of a local house church. Harvey has spoken here at HUU on a number of occasions.
On Sunday, January 23rd, he presented a sermon Justice Gone Awry. The first part is presented below:
A judge I spoke with recently told me that without the use of plea bargaining, where a deal is reached in which a defendant receives a lesser sentence in exchange for a guilty plea, the courts would be hopelessly backed up with more cases than they could handle.
When a defendant is actually guilty, I can see such an arrangement saving time and court costs and perhaps living up to its name as a “bargain.â€Â But when a defendant is not guilty, should he or she, while under oath to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,â€Â feel coerced into giving up their right to due process that might exonerate them, simply because of the risk of receiving a dreadfully long prison sentence?
You can read Justice Gone Awry on Harvey’s blog.