Before you accept a plea bargain, understand the in-depth breakdown of the plea process and your constitutional rights.

What Really Happens When You Plead Guilty? Essential Rights, Plea Bargains, and Court Procedures Revealed

When someone pleads guilty to a crime, it’s much more than just signing a form or standing before a judge. Steve Palmer, a seasoned criminal defense attorney, breaks down everything you need to know about plea bargains, what your rights really are, and why understanding the process can make all the difference in court.

Whether you’re a client facing charges, an attorney, or simply interested in the justice system, this episode details what happens step-by-step—what a plea colloquy entails, the rights you give up, and the legal obligations of your attorney.

Bullet Takeaways:

• The meaning of knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily pleading guilty—and why it matters
• What a plea bargain is, how it works, and the importance of written agreements
• Essential constitutional rights you are waiving (jury trial, confrontation, compulsory process, right to silence, appeal, and more)
• The risks of assuming what a judge will do at sentencing—and why there are no guarantees
• Why thorough communication with your attorney before going to court is crucial

5 Frequently Asked Questions about pleading guilty

1. What does it mean to plead guilty "knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily"? - It means the defendant fully understands what pleading guilty involves, is not being coerced, and is making the choice freely and with all necessary information.
2. What is a plea colloquy and why is it important? - A plea colloquy is a dialogue in court to ensure the defendant understands their rights, the plea terms, and what they are waiving. It helps protect the plea from being challenged later.
3. Which constitutional rights are given up when pleading guilty - Rights waived include: trial by jury, presumption of innocence, right to remain silent, confrontation of witnesses, compulsory process, right to appeal, and the right to an attorney at trial.
4. Are recommendations from the prosecutor or defense about sentencing binding on the judge? - In Ohio, most recommendations are not binding. The judge has discretion and can change their mind, even after expressing intent to follow the recommendation.
5. Why is preparation with your attorney before a plea so important - Without thorough pre-plea discussions, clients may not truly understand what they are agreeing to. Proper preparation ensures informed consent and reduces the risk of misunderstandings or regret.

Submit your questions to www.lawyertalkpodcast.com.

Recorded at Channel 511.

Stephen E. Palmer, Esq. has been practicing criminal defense almost exclusively since 1995. He has represented people in federal, state, and local courts in Ohio and elsewhere.

Though he focuses on all areas of criminal defense, he particularly enjoys complex cases in state and federal courts.

He has unique experience handling and assembling top defense teams of attorneys and experts in cases involving allegations of child abuse (false sexual allegations, false physical abuse allegations), complex scientific cases involving allegations of DUI and vehicular homicide cases with blood alcohol tests, and any other criminal cases that demand jury trial experience.

Steve has unique experience handling numerous high publicity cases that have garnered national attention.

For more information about Steve and his law firm, visit Palmer Legal Defense.

Copyright 2026 Stephen E. Palmer - Attorney At Law

Mentioned in this episode:

Circle 270 Media Podcast Consultants

Circle 270 Media® is a podcast consulting firm based in Columbus, Ohio, specializing in helping businesses develop, launch, and optimize podcasts as part of their marketing strategy. The firm emphasizes the importance of storytelling through podcasting to differentiate businesses and engage with their audiences effectively. www.circle270media.com

All right, lawyer talk off the record on the air.

I, you know, sometimes I talk about big picture stuff. I just did one on

free speech and fighting words and time, place, and manner. We did all that.

And sometimes I do something more specific, but you know what comes up a lot?

And this happened to me yesterday. By the way, I am a criminal

defense attorney. I represent folks charged with crimes, good, bad, or ugly, like it or

not. That's what I do for a living. And

part and parcel with that, and this came up yesterday or the day

before, when you do this job, it all blurs together. But

anyway, my client was pleading guilty to something.

And that meant that we had negotiated an outcome of a case, a resolution of

a case. There was a plea, there was a negotiated plea bargain, and my

client was entering a guilty plea.

And it dawned on me as I sat down with my client in advance

the day before, and talk to him about how this was going to

work, what it meant, and answered my client's questions.

That has become routine for me, but I don't think it's routine for a lot

of lawyers. And I think a lot of times I see people in court go

through this colloquy, they call it, where they plead guilty or even no

contest to something. And it just happens like that. It's all this procedure.

It's getting mixed around and nobody quite understands it. So I'm going to break it

down. Like it or not, I'm going to break it down right here. And I'm

going to have the discussion with you that I have with a client or a

client who's proposing to plead guilty. Okay. About what it

means. So here's the big picture. First, before you plead

guilty, you have to understand what the

maximum— you have to— let me even go— let me go even broader.

It has to be done knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily.

Now, those are buzzwords. Those are constitutional buzzwords. That means

that if it's going to be— if it's going to comport, if it's going to

be consistent with due process, And you're going to— you

have to understand what you're doing knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily. That means

you know what's going on. That means you have all the facts

necessary to make the decision and that nobody is forcing you to do it.

In other words, you're not getting arm twisted. There's no backdoor threats. There's no, hey,

you better plead guilty or else. You have to understand it.

It has to be knowing, intelligent, voluntary. Now, what does that mean? First, that

means that you can't be— it can't be coerced. In other words,

I can't be saying you better plead guilty or else this.

Now, you might be thinking, well, isn't it always sort of

coerced? Because if you plead guilty, there's always a reason you're pleading

guilty. And it might be just to avoid the risk of a trial. It might

be because you're actually guilty. It might be because you're getting a plea bargain. It

might be because in the case I'm talking about, somebody was charged with

a certain level of misdemeanor. And because of the plea bargain, it got dropped

all the way down to the lowest level of misdemeanor. So isn't that,

isn't that a reason, right? So yes, it is. But it's

written down. So a plea agreement is like a contract. And in

Ohio, we have criminal rules and under the criminal rules, we

write down what the deal is. So there's a piece of paper

and on the piece of paper it says, you're pleading guilty to X.

And as a result of this, here's what can happen to you. So

those are the terms of the deal. So typically what happens is the

colloquy would go like this. You're not coerced into

doing this, and there are no threats or other

promises aside from what is written on the page here,

aside from the terms of the deal itself. So nothing outside, there's no backdoor stuff.

There's nobody saying behind the scenes, unless you plead guilty, we're

going to do this. And I'm trying to think of scenarios where

that has happened anyway. There probably are, but generally that's the question. So you're not

getting arm twisted into it. There's no threat of force.

There's no anything else. So one,

you know what you're doing. And 2, there's no threats.

Now let's go back to one for a second. Do you know what you're doing?

The next phase of this is that I would spend time talking with my clients

about, do you understand what's going on? You're pleading guilty to this offense. Yeah. Here's

what this offense means. It means that you were

knowingly causing or attempting to cause physical harm to somebody else. That would be an

assault in Ohio, as opposed to say a felonious

assault in Ohio. So now it's a misdemeanor. Then I would go through the

elements of that offense with my client. I would say, here's what this means. And

then I would say, here's the deal. We could go fight this in

court. Here are the defenses that we might have. Here are why they're

probably not going to work. Yeah. Here's what the evidence is against you. Here's what

we have. In other words, this knowing it intelligently means that

the client understands what the deal is, understands what the terms of the deal, and

understands why they're doing it. And this is where it's

important for me to sit down with my client before the plea and sort of

explain this. And it starts at the time they call me. They call me and

they hire me and we talk about the case.

I go through the facts of the case. I go through the law of the

case with them. We get discovery or information from the prosecutors about what the evidence

is against my client. We even do our own investigative work We have

meetings about it. We have discussions about it. We talk about it. And at the

end of all that process, we get to the point where there's a plea bargain

offered. Maybe it's on the, on the night before jury trial, we get an offer.

Maybe it's weeks before, I don't know. But usually by the time that

happens, I have had a lot of conversations with my client and they understand

what the evidence is. I've forced them, or I've at least shared the

discovery with them. I can't force somebody to read it, but my clients should. They

have access to everything. that they're allowed to have access to, and I've answered

all their questions about it. So when I get to that conversation, I can say,

yeah, you understand what the defenses are and you know. Here's where the

attorney-client relationship often goes awry. You have lawyers who don't

have those conversations. Maybe they're doing all the work, maybe the lawyer understands it,

maybe he has every good reason to

recommend the client take the plea, but if he hasn't had those conversations with the

client, the client doesn't understand it. And then when you get to the plea,

sometimes it breaks down. And I'll tell you how in a second. But

that's sort of the intelligently, the knowingly intelligently part of it.

You understand what the deal is. Another part of that is what are the

maximum punishments? What, like, what can happen to you if you plead guilty?

So in the assault case I talked about, that would be 6 months in jail,

$1,000 fine, or that's the maximum. Now here's what

trips people up a lot too. You write on the paper and it

says you're pleading guilty to Misdemeanor assault in

Ohio, maximum possible punishment is 6 months in

jail, $1,000 fine. Client looks at me and

says, what the heck? You told me I was getting probation or I had a

chance at probation. Yes, you still do. This is just the maximum. And

in our forms, in our colloquy, in most, we don't talk about what the

minimums are or what we think the judge might do. We talk about what

the maximum is. And that means you have to understand in the worst case scenario

what can happen to you. The other thing you have to understand is

no matter what we are telling the judge, a lot of times there are something

called recommendations. There are different types of recommendations. You can have

recommendations of the parties that bind the court. Federal court has this. It's called a

binding plea agreement. You have other type of recommendations in Ohio where

both parties, the prosecutor and the defense, look at a judge and say,

judge, we recommend that you give my client straight probation or

maybe only a fine. We don't want any jail. We don't think it's appropriate.

We've talked about the case. We know about the case. We're just

recommending what you do. Judge says, yeah, I'll consider that recommendation.

And I've even had it this way where the judge says, yes, I'll go along

with that. But then we get in court and the judge hears

something and changes his mind and says, look, I know what I told you,

but I'm changing my mind. This guy's going to jail.

So there was a recommendation. The judge didn't have to follow it in Ohio. There's

other states where they do. And there's certain binding recommendations.

But in Ohio, judges don't have to follow it and it can all fall apart,

which is why before the plea, I had this conversation with my client. I say,

look, we have a recommendation. It's right here in black and white, but this is

only a recommendation. The final decision is up to the judge and the

judge has every right to turn this down and do what he

or she wants to do with the case. And this can

happen even if I got input from the judge in advance. Let's talk about that

for a second. There are a lot of times where a

lot of courts where I can go into

the hearing or the judge has been intimately involved with the case

all the way through. We've had 2 or 3 pretrial conferences. Sometimes we do that

in chambers back at his desk or in the jury room, wherever it would be,

or even in open court. And the judge says, yeah, I hear you. That

makes sense to me. I'll go along with that recommendation. Other judges

will say, sorry, I don't promise or get involved in any

of this. I reserve the right to impose whatever sentence I want. I'm not

going to tell you what I'm going to do in advance. This is where it

gets dicey for people. In other words, somebody says, look, I'm

pleading guilty. I could get 6 months in jail and a $1,000 fine. What's the

judge going to do? All right, here's where attorneys get in

trouble, or not trouble, but Here's where, here's

where things can get wishy-washy. Lawyer says, look, I've been in front of Judge X

for the last 20 years. I've pled hundreds of cases in front of Judge X.

I've practiced in this town my entire career. I've never seen Judge X

do more than this on the type of case that you have.

But he could do more. Now that's what we're saying as

lawyers. But when a client is sitting there listening to that, the client is only

hearing the judge is going to give me probation because that's what he's always done.

And I'm not saying the clients are, I don't

know, wrong or inattentive. I just think that a lot of times there's this deer

in the headlights where, you know, there's fear, there's emotion, there's

stress. They're hearing what they want to hear, the best case scenario.

I spend a lot of time trying to have these conversations well before

the day of the plea to say, look, I don't know what the judge is

going to do. I can tell you what I think he's going to do. But

I don't know. And we have to go into this. We have to go appear,

do this plea, sign this plea agreement with the presupposition

that he's not or that he may not. And we have to be okay with

it when he doesn't. We just don't know. And

now there are times where I can, where I have to stress that more than

others based on who my client is and the history of the case, based on

who the judge is and the history of the case. You know, it all depends.

Sometimes I'm more confident than others what a judge will do.

Sometimes I just flat out don't know. And I will admit, I have been

caught twice in my career flat-footed when a

judge in advance agreed with what we were recommending,

told me what he was going to do in advance, and then changed it in

real time on the record when I stood up to do the plea.

And it happens twice in my career. It's happened. There are ways to

handle that. There are ways to deal with it. But it definitely is

off-putting. And that has changed how I talk to clients. I say, listen,

I even tell clients those 2 examples and say, this has happened. And I'm not

trying to talk my client out of it necessarily, but he has to do it

knowingly and he has to do it intelligently and he has to do it voluntarily,

meaning he understands what's going on. After we have

these discussions, we talk about the

constitutional side of it. Whenever you enter a plea of guilty,

or no contest or whatever it is in a case,

you have to understand what your rights are. You have to understand that you're waiving

your rights. You have to understand those 2 components.

What are your rights? So look, boring as it may be, this is

interesting stuff. This is like a first— this is like a senior government class. I

wish they taught this stuff in government. They probably don't anymore. We have this thing

at the beginning of our Constitution called the Bill of Rights. And in the Bill

of Rights, it sort of outlines all this stuff that has to happen or what

your rights are in a criminal setting. And they've sort of evolved into this

discussion that happens when people enter a guilty plea.

You have a right to a jury trial. If the case is one that can

put you in jail, you have a right to a jury trial. That means trial

by jury. In Ohio, on misdemeanors, that means

you have 8 jurors. In felonies, you have 12. And you

have a right at that trial to be presumed innocent. This is

called the presumption of innocence. So right to a jury, the 6th Amendment is going

to pick up a lot of these. So your right to trial by jury is,

you can find it, just open up your pocket, pull out your pocket Constitution, turn

it to the first section of the Bill of Rights, and you're going to find

under the 6th Amendment a right to trial by jury.

At that trial, you have a right to be presumed innocent, the presumption

of innocence. This is sort of one of these due process

rights that applies to the states. You have a right at the trial to

remain silent. In other words, you don't have to testify. The

judge, the prosecutor, nobody can say, all right, Mr.

Smith, you're charged with a crime. Climb on up on that witness stand and talk

to us about what happened. They can't force you to do that. You can guess

what that one is. That's your 5th Amendment right.

And instead you can remain silent and you can say, screw you, prosecutor. You

proved me guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. at my jury trial.

There are other rights that happen at that jury trial, other things that will, how

it unfolds in a constitutional way.

You have a right at that trial to cross-examine witnesses. That's called the right of

confrontation. Again, pull out the 6th Amendment, read it, you'll see it. You have a

right to confront your accusers in an open and public trial. You

have a right to an open trial and you have a right to confront

your accusers, or we call that cross-examination. As you've heard me say here

before, the greatest legal engine ever discovered or ever invented for the

discovery of the truth is your right of confrontation.

Meaning the prosecutor calls its witnesses, say

Officer Flanagan, he comes up, it's a DUI case.

And he tells this tale of woe about, oh yeah, I pulled,

pulled your client over and he was wasted. He was this, he was that.

I get to stand up and I get to ask him questions. And almost universally,

I'm asking questions the prosecutor didn't. Almost universally, I'm asking questions that

help my client. Almost universally, I'm bringing out

evidence that helps establish the defense because why in

the adversarial system that we have would we expect Officer Flanagan to say

the good stuff for us? We don't. Our system

incorporates that into it and it's called the right of confrontation. But it doesn't stop

there. We also have something called the right of compulsory process.

Fancy talk for saying we get to use a subpoena to drag a

witness into court. Right. And testify. I get

it. We can't force that witness to say what we want that witness to say.

But in theory, if we've got a witness out there, your neighbor who

saw it, your best friend who was with you, whatever, or

even a lot of times it's a government entity that has documents that are relevant.

I subpoena the person in charge of that, say, bring with you some

documents that are going to be helpful to my case. It's called the right of

compulsory process. If that person

doesn't show up, in theory, I can use the court power

to drag that person into court in cuffs. I can't make that person say

what I want when they get there, but I can drag them into court. Sometimes

they take the Fifth Amendment when they testify. Sometimes they don't

say what we want or they change their story completely. And we can argue about

that, but I have that right of compulsory process.

And I go even further. when my colloquy of rights, when I talk to my

clients about their pleas, I talk about

what happens at trial. During trial, I would be objecting. I would say,

objection, they can't do that. Or maybe before trial, I filed a motion to

suppress. I said, look, Judge, they're not allowed to use this evidence because

they entered my client's house or they stopped my client's car or they searched his

backpack or they went through his— they rumbled through his stuff and they didn't

have a warrant and that violated the Fourth Amendment. And the judge before trial

denied it and said, sorry, Charlie, we're letting that evidence in. No Fourth Amendment

problem. And then I get to trial and somebody's talking about hearsay and I'm

screaming and yelling. I'm howling at the moon. They can't do this. They can't do

this. Judge says, sort of like My Cousin Vinny, that is a coherent,

well-thought-out, whatever objection, overruled. Yeah, you lose the

objection. After trial, if you've lost the

trial, you have a right to appeal. And this is called a direct appeal as

of right here in Ohio. And we can appeal directly to the Court of Appeals.

So in sum, you're giving up your right to trial by jury. You're giving up

your right to be presumed innocent. You're giving up your right to force the prosecutor

to prove you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt at that trial where you can't be

forced to testify against yourself. You're giving up your right of

confrontation during trial to actually cross-examine

or have your lawyer cross-examine your accusers. You're giving

up your right of compulsory process and your right to appeal. And I

forgot a big one, but it's sort of implicit. You have a right to an

attorney to represent you at trial. And the reason I forget about it a lot

is because I am the lawyer talking to my client. Now, what does all this

mean? Back to what we're talking about, this long, boring discussion. You

have, you have, when you stand up to do a plea, there has to

be a meaningful dialogue between you and the judge about

these rights, about what the possible

punishment is, what the maximum possible punishment is, what the terms of the deal are,

and an understanding. That you're giving up all these rights, that you're not

going to have a trial, that you're not going to do all these things that

we talked about. And I can send you to jail and don't pass go and

off you go. And there are other details to it. But the point of me

telling you this is people don't understand this. And I think it's a— we do

our clients a disservice at times when at the last minute,

and it happens sometimes, it's just part and parcel with what's going

on in the nature of our line of work. Sometimes at the last minute, we

get a deal and we're just stuck going through this. Right. And often,

I'll say this, judges and prosecutors are often,

I don't know, they don't have any sympathy and no patience for the time it

takes for me to have this discussion with my client. They give me a plea

bargain on paper and I'm expected to drag my client in 2 minutes later

and do the plea. But I always, and then I get

knocks on the conference room door, you know, hey, are you ready? Is you guys

ready? The judge is on the bench and blah, blah, blah. I'm just like, listen,

My guy's given up his right to a trial. We're ready for jury trial today

and we're going to resolve it. Give me, give me 15 freaking minutes at least,

because this is important stuff. And, you know, I try to avoid

that as much as I can, because when you go into a courtroom for the

first time, you've never been there and you stand up in front of a judge

and you start talking. We've all been there. Like anybody who's done a public speech

knows what that's like. Your vision narrows, your heart rate

increases, the adrenaline starts rushing. And you just start answering. And I've had

so many clients tell me, I just pled guilty. I didn't even really understand what

was going on. I don't, in fact, I barely

remember it. And courts of appeal later will say, look, the guy said he

understood. What else can we ask? So there's 2 things are true, I think.

One, the client didn't understand, or the defendant didn't understand what was going on because

this was all happening so fast and he sort of freaked out and had this

panic adrenaline rush. And 2, he said that he did understand because it's

on the record with this meaningful dialogue. I'm not saying that there's a

better way, but I'm just— actually, I am. The better way is

if you have the opportunity, and let's say it on both ways. If you're a

lawyer and you're not having these discussions with your client the

day or two before, or even the week before going in when you know

it's going to be a plea, and you're doing your client a disservice.

And if you're on the other side, if you're a client, your lawyer

is saying, look, you got to plead guilty. Ask him or her, ask your attorney

what that's going to be like, what it's going to feel like, what it's going

to look like. And I think I can often make people feel

better about it because I can say, look, here's what's going to happen. Remember we

were in that courtroom for the pretrial or for this other hearing?

We're going to be standing at that very table. We're going to go in and

this judge likes us to stand. So we're going to be standing and we're going

to be facing the judge. The prosecutor's going to go first and the prosecutor's going

to say, Look, Judge, here are the terms of the deal, and spell it all

out. Judge is going to then turn to us. Is that what the terms of

the deal are? Yes. Mr. Client, do you understand all that? Yes. All

right, then it's going to go back to the prosecutor. Prosecutor's going to read a

bunch of facts into the record about the case because

those are the facts that the judge needs to find somebody guilty. Judge is going

to turn back to us. Counsel, have you heard those facts? Oh, I've heard them.

Yep. Do you have any objection? Not for purposes of the plea, or maybe I

do. Maybe I want to say, Judge, I just want to add one thing. Maybe

We had a valid self-defense claim, we thought, but we're not going to do that.

You know, whatever it is, we may or may not want to add facts. But

again, Mr. Client, do you understand what your lawyer has said here, that those are

the facts? Yes. Sometimes judges will even put

clients under oath there and make the client tell them what the facts are.

And if you're a lawyer and you have not prepared your client for that, I

assure you that that gets really awkward really fast

and very difficult for the client. And it's not fair to the client.

Then it goes, then the judge will say, okay, well, look,

I'm going to go through your constitutional rights and have a

discussion with you, Mr. Client. And then the judge is going to go through all

this stuff we just talked about. After that,

the prosecutor, if it's, if there's going to be a sentencing hearing right away, the

prosecutor will give his spiel. I'll give my spiel. The judge will impose sentence. Sometimes

it gets continued for sentence. That's another discussion. Anyway. Okay.

I get it. This probably isn't the most exciting topic, but it's important. If you're

in that situation, it's important that you understand it. If you've got a question

about it, if you've been through a plea colloquy and you want to talk about

that, give us the facts in the comments. I love reading about this stuff. And

if you're an attorney, do better if you're not doing this stuff.

Me too, right? We all, we all do it. I try to do the best

I can to make sure my clients know what's going on because then, then

it's just that they know what's going on. All right. Lawyer talk off the record

on the air till now.