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Results for nolo contendere
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A plea made by the defendant in a criminal action that is substantially but not technically an admission of guilt and subjects the defendant to punishment but permits denial of the alleged facts in other proceedings.
[Latin nōlō contendere, I do not wish to contend : nōlō, first person sing. present tense of nōlle, to be unwilling + contendere, to contend.]
‘I do not wish to contend, fight, or maintain ]a defense[‘; statement that the Defendant will not contest a Charge made by the government. The defendant will lose the case, but this cannot be used as an admission of guilt in any other legal proceedings.
[Latin, I will not contest it.] A plea in a criminal case by which the defendant answers the charges made in the indictment by declining to dispute or admit the fact of his or her guilt.
The defendant who pleads nolo contendere submits for a judgment fixing a fine or sentence the same as if he or she had pleaded guilty. The difference is that a plea of nolo contendere cannot later be used to prove wrongdoing in a civil suit for monetary damages, but a plea of guilty can. Nolo contendere is especially popular in antitrust actions, such as price-fixing cases, where it is very likely that civil actions for treble damages will be started after the defendant has been successfully prosecuted.
A plea of nolo contendere may be entered only with the permission of the court, and the court should accept it only after weighing its effect on the parties, the public, and the administration of justice.
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Nolo contendere, in criminal trials, in some common law jurisdictions, is a plea where the defendant neither admits nor disputes a charge, serving as an alternative to a pleading of guilty or not guilty. Its literal translation from Latin means, "I do not contest," and is also referred to as a plea of no contest, to stand mute, or, more informally, a nolo plea. Nolo contendere, while not technically a guilty plea, has the same effect as a guilty plea, and is often offered as a part of a plea bargain.[1]
A plea of nolo contendere in many jurisdictions is not a right, and carries various restrictions on its use. In the United States, state law determines whether, and under what circumstances a defendant may plead no contest. Several other common law countries, however, prohibit the plea altogether.
In Australia, a plea of nolo contendere by a defendant in a criminal trial is not permitted. The defendant must enter a plea of guilty or not guilty. Where a defendant refuses to enter a plea the court will record a plea of not guilty.[2]
One of the most famous nolo contendere pleas in United States history was that of
A conviction arising from a nolo plea is subject to any and all penalties, fines, and forfeitures of a conviction from a guilty plea, and can be considered as an aggravating factor in future criminal actions. However, unlike a guilty plea, a defendant may not be required to allocute the charges, and the conviction may be used to establish neither negligence per se, malice, nor whether the acts were committed at all, in later civil proceedings related to the same set of facts as the criminal prosecution.[3]
In some jurisdictions, such as the U.S. state of Texas, the right to appeal the results of a plea bargain taken from a plea of nolo contendere is highly restricted. In Texas, defendants who have entered a plea of nolo contendere may only appeal the judgment of the court if the appeal is based on written pretrial motions ruled upon by the court.[4]
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Business Dictionary. Dictionary of Business Terms. Copyright © 2000 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Law Encyclopedia. West's Encyclopedia of American Law. Copyright © 1998 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Politics. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Nolo contendere". Read more |
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