plea bargaining

1. 1.

   (criminal law) a negotiation in which the defendant agrees to enter a plea of guilty to a lesser charge and the prosecutor agrees to drop a more serious charge

   “his admission was part of a plea bargain with the prosecutor”

   “plea bargaining helps to stop the courts becoming congested”

   Synonymsplea bargain

   Broaderbargaining

   criminal law · law

Questions about plea bargaining

What does plea bargaining mean?

plea bargaining means "(criminal law) a negotiation in which the defendant agrees to enter a plea of guilty to a lesser charge and the prosecutor agrees to drop a more serious charge".

What is another word for plea bargaining?

Close synonyms include plea bargain. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is plea bargaining a common word?

plea bargaining is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.