[MRM]

No. Plea bargaining has always been an essential part of the common law based legal system. I can't speak for civil law countries like France or Louisiana. It is a constitutional right to plead guilty to charges. The prosecutor under the division of powers (prosecution is part of the executive branch) gets to select the approprite charges. The legislative and judicial branches can't interfere with the charging decision, but the legislature can set minimum or maximum sentences and the judge has to approve the plea bargain and can reject the plea bargain if the judge thinks the deal isn't fair - either too harsh or too lenient. But it has always been part of the system.

Each prosecutor's office has a set of guidelines that they follow for charging and negotiating pleas. Some offices might have a policy saying that they won't plea bargain on certain charges, but that's just a local policy.

Probably at least 95% of all cases are plea bargained today. I'd guess it is far higher. But that's not necessarily a perjorative. Most people are guilty of what they are charged with, and most of the work involves simply figuring out the appropriate sentence for the crime. Remember, most crime is not a violent felony. Most charges are for relatively petty offenses and get disposed of fairly quickly. Most of the rest of the cases the defendant is guilty of something, but not exactly what was charged. The prosecutor adjusts the charges accordingly and the judge issues an appropriate sentence for that jurisdiction. Serious and violent crimes are far more likely to go to trial, simply because prosecutors are less willing to plea bargain them and the state is willing to put more resources into them. Consequently the defendant is more willing to take his chances at trial because the risk of getting a harsher sentence after trial is minimal when the offer is to plead guilty and do the max or take your chances at trial and do the max if convicted.

In the old days there was relatively less crime and fewer civil rights so it was easy to try cases quickly and cheaply so there was probably less plea bargaining. But there has always been plea bargaining and the vast majority of convictions have always been obtained through guilty pleas.