Plea Bargaining Policy and State District Court Caseloads: An Interrupted Time Series Analysis

Abstract

Questions about the relation of court caseloads to plea bargaining practices generate much controversy but little sophisticated empirical research. Here we examine the effects of a 1975 felony plea bargaining ban in the Texas district courts in El Paso. Relying on a quasi-experimental interrupted time series model with annual data for 1968–83, we test the hypothesis that the discontinuance of plea bargaining negatively affects court caseloads, specifically the proportion of cases going to jury trial and the disposition rate. We also examine conviction rate, exploring whether the existence of plea bargaining encourages prosecutors to accept weak cases. We find a considerable increase in the proportion of cases going to jury trial immediately after the ban's implementation and a substantial but gradual decrease in the disposition rate. The jury trial rate contributed substantially to the disposition rate decline. The conviction rate was generally unaffected by the ban, although it became more consistent after the ban. Overall our findings suggest that the ban on explicit plea bargaining did affect the district courts' ability to move the felony docket efficiently.

Ethnicity, legal resources, and felony dispositions in two southwestern jurisdictions

“…Another important difference involves the plea-bargaining policies of the two jurisdictions. Although plea negotiations occurred in Bexar County, the E1 Paso district attorney banned the practice during the mid-1970s (see Holmes, Daudistel, and Taggart 1992); this policy remained in effect throughout the period under consideration here.…”

Trial Penalties in Federal Sentencing: Extra‐Guidelines Factors and District Variation

“…Specifically, scholars have debated the relationship between trial penalties-plea rewards and court caseloads, with some arguing that heavy caseloads drive mode of conviction differences, and others that such differences exist independent of caseload pressure, for example, due to the content of a court community's culture (for reviews, see Brereton & Casper, 1982;Dixon, 1995;Farr, 1984;Holmes, Daudistel, & Taggart, 1992;Meeker & Pontell, 1985;Nardulli et al, 1988;Wooldredge, 1989).…”

Variation in Trial Penalties Among Serious Violent Offenses*

“…Many studies suggest that the size of any plea-trial sentencing differences likely varies by jurisdiction (Brereton and Casper, 1982;Eisenstein and Jacob, 1977;King et al, 2005;Nardulli, Eisenstein, and Flemming, 1988;Ulmer, 1997). Specifically, scholars have debated the relationship between trial penalties-plea rewards and court caseloads, with some arguing that heavy caseloads drive mode of conviction differences, and others that such differences are independent of caseload pressure (for reviews, see Brereton and Casper, 1982;Dixon, 1995;Farr, 1984;Holmes, Daudistel, and Taggart, 1992;Meeker and Pontell, 1985;Nardulli, Eisenstein, and Flemming, 1988;Wooldredge, 1989). Furthermore, trial penalties have been found to be stronger for defendants with more substantial criminal histories (for example, Smith, 1986;Ulmer, 1997), and to be stronger for blacks (Ulmer, 1997).…”