8 thoughts on “Cohen Criminal Information”

  1. I’d never before seen “plead” used as the past tense of “plead,” and I thought it an error. I looked it up in Bryan A. Garner’s A DICTIONARY OF MODERN LEGAL USAGE and learned that “pleaded” is best, but that “pled” and “plead” have gained some standing in American English. Garner adds that a problem with “plead” as the past tense “is that many readers will suffer a miscue by seeing ‘plead’ at first as a present-tense verb.” Exactly; that’s what happened to me. If “plead” as the past tense of “plead” is not an error, then it should be. I urge you not to use it.

    1. For some, likely irrational, reason, I don’t like “pleaded.” Going forward, I will use “pled.” I will shortly edit this posting accordingly.

      Thank you.

    1. It is amazing that computers know so much. But can we be sure that the computer knows to look at “plead” only as past tense?

      By the way, how would one pronounce “plead” as past tense-as “plead” or “pled”? The former, as in “He plead guilty,” sounds awful, like someone just learning English, unless one were using “plead” as the past tense of “plea” rather than of “plead,” as in “He plead for mercy.”

      1. Can we also be sure that the computer knows to look at “plead” only as the past tense of “plead” and not as the past tense of “plea”?

      2. I think I was wrong about the past tense of “plea.” It too should be “pleaded” or “pled.”

  3. Lawyers who practice criminal law often will use the phrase “pled out,” as in: Lawyer 1: “What happened in that bank robbery case you were handling? Lawyer 2: “My client plead out.”

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