Plea-Bargaining Law: the Impact of Innocence, Trial Penalty, and Conviction Probability on Plea Outcomes
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Plea-Bargaining Law: the Impact of Innocence, Trial Penalty, and Conviction Probability on Plea Outcomes Miko M. Wilford 1
& Gary
L. Wells 2 & Annabelle Frazier 3
Received: 24 June 2020 / Accepted: 19 August 2020/ # Southern Criminal Justice Association 2020
Abstract Despite the prevalence of guilty pleas, we know relatively little about factors that influence the decision to plead. Replicating and extending Dervan and Edkins’ Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 103, 1-48. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2071397, (2013), we conducted two experiments to examine the effects of guilt status, trial penalty, and conviction likelihood on plea outcomes using an adaptation of a highstakes cheating paradigm. Students were led to believe that they were participating in a study examining team versus individual problem solving. Those randomly assigned to a guilty condition were induced to cheat on an individual problem by a study confederate (in clear violation of the study instructions). All participants were later accused of cheating in the research study, and were offered the analogue of a plea deal in an academic context. Across both experiments, guilty participants were significantly more likely to plead guilty than innocent participants. In Experiment 2, conviction probability affected plea rates only among the innocent. The trial penalty manipulation had no significant effect on plea rates. Reasons for pleading guilty differed between the innocent and the guilty, whereas the plea rejection rationales were similar across the two groups. Overall, this research highlights several avenues for further research aimed at improving the current system of pleas to reduce false guilty pleas. Keywords Behavior . Criminal justice system . Decision making . Law . Psychology
* Miko M. Wilford [email protected]
1
Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 850 Broadway Street, Lowell, MA 01854, USA
2
Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, 901 Stange, 1347 Lago Hall, Ames, IA 50011, USA
3
Department of Psychology, Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, NH 03106, USA
American Journal of Criminal Justice
“… criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials” (Lafler v. Cooper, 2012, p. 11) With the above quote, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged and underscored a shocking trend in criminal prosecution. Prior to the 1980s, approximately 20% of federal criminal convictions were obtained via a courtroom trial process (Oppel 2011). By 2006, this number had dropped to 5% (Ross, 2006), and even more recently, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2015) documented that only 2.6% of federal criminal convictions were the result of trials. Instead, as Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority in Lafler v. Cooper (2012), all except a very small percentage of criminal convictions are obtained within a system of pleas. Scholars have long-posited that the plea system could lead to false guilty pleas, but a number of obstacles have made it difficult to observe such cases
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