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What percentage of felony prosecutions in Cook County, Illinois, ended in guilty pleas in 1926?
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Plea bargaining
A scene of the trials in Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony, hand-colored engraving.
In 1926, 96 percent of felony prosecutions in Cook County, Illinois, resulted in guilty pleas.1
This statistic reflects the trend during the early 20th century, when plea bargaining became standard practice in many jurisdictions, despite the fact that the process was not yet fully accepted by appellate courts at the time.1