When a plea agreement includes a plea bargain, does the prosecution need to express the prosecution's belief that the witness would testify to certain facts?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. Walker, B221399 (Cal. App. 2011):

The inclusion of such facts was not improper. When an agreement includes a plea bargain, it is appropriate to express the prosecution's belief that the witness would testify to certain facts, to insure that there is a factual basis for the plea to lesser charges, so long as the language does not condition the bargain on such facts. (People v. Garrison, supra, 47 Cal.3d at p. 770.) Further, "[t]he assumption that the witness will receive the benefit of his bargain only if his testimony is beneficial or valuable to the prosecution is not alone such an inducement as to place him under the kind of compulsion condemned in Green and Medina: 'What is improper . . . is not that what is expected from the informant's testimony . . . will be favorable to the People's case, but that the testimony must be confined to a predetermined formulation or rendered acceptable only if it produces a given result, that is to say, a conviction.' [Citation.]" (People v. Garrison, supra, at p. 769.)

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