Fairness and the Willingness to Accept Plea Bargain Offers (original) (raw)
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Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2021
Existing research suggests that incentives to plead guilty may influence guilty and innocent defendants differently. This study examines that possibility through testing theoreticallyinformed predictions relating to the interaction between different types of plea discount (sentence length and sentence type), guilt, and probability of conviction in predicting plea decisions, with a focus on the discounts in England and Wales. Participants (N=3,375) made plea decisions in vignettes that varied discount type offered, probability of conviction, and guilt between-subjects. Participants also answered questions about considerations that were important to them when making plea decisions. Results provide support for predictions, specifically at higher levels of probability of conviction, by showing that a discount resulting in a categorically different sentence type (probation rather than custody) encouraged both 'guilty' and 'innocent' participants to plead guilty, but that a discount resulting only in a shorter sentence of the same type (a 1/3 reduction in sentence-length) only encouraged 'guilty' participants to plead guilty. Participant reports of the considerations important to them when pleading suggest that the categorical discount reduced the importance of factual guilt or innocence in the decision-making of innocent defendants. Findings suggest that utilising plea discounts that vary sentences quantitatively but not categorically is important in maximising the extent to which plea discounts appeal to guilty but not innocent defendants.
Bargaining for Freedom: A Person-by-Situation Approach to Studying Plea-Bargain Decision-Making
2021
University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. 2021. Major: Psychology. Advisors: Eugene Borgida, Mark Snyder. 1 computer file (PDF); 381 pages.Discounting scholars have studied decisions about monetary rewards, or gains, and found that the probability and delay of the receipt of those gains influence their subjective value. Plea-bargain decisions inherently contain the features of probability and delay in the decision context: Trial’s outcome is uncertain while the plea offer’s outcome is certain, and trial is delayed while the plea offer is relatively immediate. This dissertation’s four studies apply discounting paradigms to plea-bargain decision-making and find that probability of trial conviction and delay until trial influence decision-making. Additionally, Studies 3 and 4 highlight how other situational features, Factual Innocence and Attorney Advice, influence plea decisions. Overall, the person-by-situation approach from personality and social psychology adopted by this dissert...
Sentencing and Plea Bargaining: Guilty Pleas Versus Trial Verdicts
Criminology and Criminal Justice, Criminal Courts and Prosecutors (ed. Michael Tonry), 2016
In the daily work of criminal justice, the relationship between plea decision-making and sentencing is important. Meanwhile in the academic and policy literatures, it is one of the most controversial. This essay appraises the international empirical literature and the moral arguments surrounding this plea-dependent (guilty/not guilty) “sentence differential.” Sentence differential is the morally neutral term used here to denote practices variously termed as “sentence discount,” “trial tax/penalty,” “guilty plea discount/reduction,” and “sentence bargain/negotiation.” Section II analyzes whether the sentence differential undermines the presumption of innocence. Section III investigates whether the sentence differential violates legal equality. Section IV assesses the three main justifications for the differential. Section V scrutinizes measurement of the sentence differential. Section VI proposes an agenda for future research, including the need for deeper research into the experiences of and interpretations by defendants of the justice process.
The Effect of Punishment Severity on Plea Bargaining
Journal of Law and Economics, 2012
This study examines whether criminal suspects facing more severe punishments are more likely to go to trial. Sample selection makes it difficult to obtain valid proxies for severity; for instance, I expect severity to be positively related to the prosecutor's decision to indict, to indict in federal court (versus state court), and to try the suspect. Theoretical and empirical findings indicate that in samples containing only indicted, convicted, or tried suspects, reasonable proxies for severity may be negatively related to actual severity. The assignment of defendants to judges randomizes the severity of punishment in a manner that is unrelated to sample selection. Thus, by examining the effect of these assignments, I find that a 10-month increase in prison sentences raises trial rates by 1 percentage point.
An Explicit Test of Plea Bargaining in the “Shadow of the Trial”
Criminology, 2014
Bargaining in the "shadow of the trial," which hinges on the expectations of trial outcomes, is the primary theory used by noncriminologists to explain variation in the plea discount given to defendants who plead guilty. This study develops a formal mathematical representation of the theory and then presents an empirical test of the theory using an innovative online survey with responses to a hypothetical case from 1,585 prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges. The key outcomes are the probability that the defendant will be convicted at trial, the sentence for the defendant if convicted, and the best plea that the respondent would accept or offer. Variation in the outcomes is created through experimental variation in the information presented to the respondents. Structural regression models are estimated to fit the formal theoretical models, and the instrumental variables method is used to correct for measurement error in the estimate for probability of conviction. The data support the basic shadow model, with minor modifications, for only prosecutors and defense attorneys. Controlling for the characteristics of the individual actors and their jurisdictions adds explanatory value to the model, although these control variables did not affect the key coefficients from the shadow model.
Plea Bargaining and the Miscarriage of Justice
Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2019
Objectives We examine whether, on average, plea bargaining encourages guilty pleas among defendants who are factually innocent. Methods We develop a formal theory of plea bargaining in which defendants take into account the possibility of false convictions or acquittals when making plea-bargain decisions. We use an incidentally truncated bivariate probit model to test the theory, which predicts that if innocent defendants plead guilty, the correlation (ρ) between the unobserved heterogeneity regarding selection into trial and regarding conviction at trial should be sufficiently positive. The method does not require knowledge of whether individual defendants are factually guilty or innocent. Since ρ is also predicted to vary directly with the unobserved toughness of prosecutors, we develop a decomposition theorem to distinguish between the effects of defendants and prosecutors in plea bargain decisions. Results Using data on 2012 criminal cases decided in Israeli courts from 2010 to 2011, we find that ρ is large and positive. Hence, defendants who did not plea bargain were positively selected in terms of conviction. This means that defendants who accepted plea bargains had smaller counterfactual conviction probabilities than observationally similar defendants who went to trial. Conclusions The results indicate that, on average, factually innocent defendants in Israel during this period took plea bargains instead of going to trial. This contradicts "innocence effect" theory, which predicts that factually innocent defendants, on average, reject plea bargains. Our findings are important for research on shadow trial theory, since they show that selection into plea bargains cannot be ignored when inferring counterfactual trial outcomes for plea bargainers.
The Impact of Trial Penalty and Evidence Strength on Plea Deal Decision-Making
2017
Despite its popular use in the U.S. legal system, research on plea bargaining and the factors that affect plea bargain decision-making is limited. Although it has been argued that plea bargaining is necessary to the efficiency of the courts (Williams-Fisher, 2005), critics of the practice argue that offers of leniency relative to the threat of the trial penalty may be coercive, so much so that even innocent defendants can be compelled to plead guilty (Bibas, 2004; Givelber, 1996). Others have argued that defendants are at a disadvantage in the negotiations because they are rarely privy to the evidence held by the prosecutor (Meyn, 2014). This study found that trial penalty, evidence strength, and guilt all had an impact on the likelihood to accept the plea. Furthermore, it sheds light on the different ways that guilty and innocent participants make plea deal decisions. IMPACT OF TRIAL PENALTY AND EVIDENCE STRENGTH 2 MONTCLAIR STATE UNIVERSITY The Impact of Trial Penalty and Evidence...
Shining a Light on the Shadow-Of-Trial Model: A Bridge between Discounting and Plea Bargaining
2017
Phillip Bivens, accused of raping and killing a woman in Mississippi in 1979, was confronted with this choice: take the bargain of life in prison, or go to trial and face the death penalty.2 After three decades in prison, Bivens was exonerated in 2010 by DNA tests conducted by the Innocence Project in New Orleans.3 Why would Bivens, who was factually innocent, plead guilty to a crime he did not commit and forgo his constitutional right to a trial? How can this be explained? Bivens’s choice may be deemed rational because his choice was between life, albeit life in prison, and death. But what about defendants confronted with life in prison or twenty years in prison—why would an innocent defendant plead guilty then?