Toward a method for evaluating court actor influences on plea negotiations: A preliminary exploration of public defenders

Abstract

Plea negotiations remain difficult to study, partly because their informality implicates workgroup‐related factors within decision‐making. In quantitative analyses, these factors are impossible to measure using the case‐level data alone. The current study proposes a combined method using survey data and administrative case data as a means of contextualizing the plea process from the standpoint of workgroup members and quantifying workgroup characteristics that can be used as variables in models predicting actual plea outcomes. A preliminary exploration of this kind is conducted with public defenders. The survey data revealed that public defenders thought pleas were necessary to manage caseloads and resources, but also felt the benefits to defendants outweighed the drawbacks. In a descriptive analysis linking survey‐ and case‐level data, the percent of charge reductions among plea cases varied substantively based on both workgroup relationship characteristics and ideologies of the public defenders. Directions for future research adopting this type of approach are discussed.

The Impact of the Defense Attorney on Plea Decision-Making: An Experimental Analysis

“…While there has been some consideration given to how this familiarity and experience of defense attorneys can impact case resolutions (e.g., Metcalfe, 2016Metcalfe, , 2021, it is not explicitly clear how or if these factors weigh into defendant decision-making. Henderson and Shteynberg (2020) found that confidence in plea decision-making is improved when the defense attorney has more expertise.…”

Analysis of the Plea Leniency System and Plea Bargaining System in the Era of Big Data

“…The defendant pleads guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence, and faster proceedings are commonly applied in countries around the world, especially in common law countries with a set of relatively complete and fine plea proceedings [1]- [2]. Among them, the developed plea bargaining system has gradually transformed the criminal trials in the United States from the adversarial type of jury trials to the cooperative type of out-ofcourt negotiations, and the plea bargaining process has generated more than 90% of the criminal cases in the United States [3]- [4]. Plea bargaining has been developed and transplanted, and widely used worldwide, and a plea bargaining system has been formed in some civil law countries in line with their characteristics [5].…”