Plea agreements are a topic of great interest for many legal minds, which is why my team recently wrote an article titled “Navigating Plea Agreements: Are They Public Documents?” When my editor asked me to write about this topic within the context of a youth sports organization like Denville Baseball, he caught me a little off guard. I hadn’t considered that many parents might be more likely to know the latter words than the former. But, with youth baseball beginning again, I realized that the wisdom carried by even the most mundane legal documents is as crucial to maintaining a healthy baseball community as knowing the rules and accepted practices of the game. This meant that this blog should serve as an introduction, not just to the legal workings behind plea agreements, but to why youth sports organizations like Denville Baseball need to know about them.

Our youth baseball league serves the greater Denville area of Morris County NJ with a dedication to community involvement, sportsmanship, and encouragement. However, legal processes such as plea agreements and public records must also play a part in these community-minded organizations. When does a plea agreement become public or private, and does it really matter? For the sake of establishing the context for this blog, we’ll keep it a very simple explanation. A plea agreement is a negotiation between the defendant and prosecution in a criminal trial; it is a way of establishing early resolution for the prosecution without going through a full court trial.

The only reason plea agreements are worth mentioning in the context of Denville baseball is that they have the potential to be made public. If a member of the greater Denville community is a defendant in a criminal case, the plea agreement may be accessible to the public, as long as it isn’t kept confidential for reasons such as the defendant being involved in a law enforcement position of power. This is important for youth sports organizations like Denville Baseball because the individuals and families involved in local sports organizations often have closer ties to the greater community. A plea agreement that was made public could be grounds for removing that individual from a youth sports coaching position, even if they were not charged for or convicted of a crime against a kid or other member of the team.

Even one misused word in a public records document such as a plea agreement could be evidence of a felony or a misdemeanor charge, keeping in mind that reasoning doesn’t always factor when a plea agreement becomes public. It might seem a little bit presumptuous to make this statement, but the basic awareness of legal processes such as the plea agreement is something that can help protect anyone who is a member of a youth league like Denville Baseball. This includes the kids who play, the parents who root for them and volunteer to coach their teams, and the bigger group of people who step up to officiate the game.

Understanding these legal processes, as well as the purpose behind the processes, empowers those within the community to play vital roles in protecting public interests. Access to any and all records of proceedings is something of great benefit to civic-minded individuals, as it allows them to be informed of any potentially damaging legal entanglements of potential leaders in their communities. These individuals have a penchant to step outside of their comfort zone to do what is best for the children, whether that means getting a starter-sponsored field service agreement signed before the first game or pulling the cover off of an empty field to prevent an injury to a kid.

The main point to understand about plea agreements is that they may very well be public documents, but they’re not necessarily produced in such a way that everyone is aware they can be read. Often, public documents such as these require a request for access on the parts of interested parties. In the context of Denville baseball, this means that volunteers at the local level need to be the ones to make these requests for information and maybe a bit more knowledge about the process behind public documents would make everybody involved a little more comfortable doing so.

When a plea agreement is filed, it becomes part of the public record. Public records refer to any kind of record in government databases that can be accessed by any member of the general public with a little effort on their part. For example, there are some 60 different exemptions to FOIA, or Freedom of Information Acts; these exemptions include the medical records of a person involved in proceeding, the names of the individuals involved, financial records of the person charged, and anything else that might be protected for one reason or another. But when it comes to examining a plea agreement, it’s essential to remember that people involved in dishing out plea agreements, whether they’re judges or prosecutors are merely human beings with an inherent ability to make mistakes.

If a plea agreement was recorded in the wrong way, the names of the individuals in the agreement might be posted and now belong to the general public. They are out there on the Internet, so anyone who decides to look them up can see them and potentially do with them whatever they choose. But if a plea agreement is kept under wraps for one reason or another, the general public might not have all of the information which they would otherwise have had. In this way, communities such as those volunteering at Denville baseball can help maintain the integrity of local leagues because there are plenty of others who are unlikely to appreciate the value of fair and transparent agreements.

Some people are more preoccupied with their own ideas of “justice” than they are the place of the youth baseball league, and they may very well use whatever they find to try and harm an individual. This means that the youth baseball community needs to be vigilant in protecting records of any publicly filed plea agreements, just like they are about teaching their children the value of winning or losing gracefully on the baseball diamond.

For more information on public records, you can visit the National Archives.

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