When a person no longer wishes to fight a criminal charge against him or her, he or she has the option of pleading “guilty” or “no contest.” While these may sound quite different, they are actually very similar, albeit with one major difference.
To accept a guilty plea, the court must find a factual basis for guilt. This generally means the judge must be convinced that the defendant admitting guilt, is in fact guilty. A guilty plea is telling the court, “I have committed the criminal acts with which I am charged.”
A no contest plea, also known as a “nolo contendere” plea, has one important difference from a guilty plea. Entering a plea of no contest is effectively telling the court, “I am not admitting I did the criminal act with which I am charged, but I do not wish to challenge these charges.” This is an important difference because a no contest plea allows the defendant to dispose of the criminal proceedings without admitting guilt which may be used against him or her in a later civil trial.
A good example of where a no contest plea would be useful arises when a defendant is accused of running a red light and getting into an accident. The defendant may be facing the criminal charge of a ticket for running the light as well as a civil suit by the owner of the vehicle he hit. Wishing to simply pay the fine for traffic ticket and take traffic school, the defendant here should enter a plea of no contest. That way, he can dispose of the criminal charges without admitting that he did indeed run the red light and open himself up to liability in the much more expensive civil suit.
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