Plea Bargaining Decisions in U.S. District Courts: Testing for Variations across Prosecutors

• In Event: Understanding Guilty Pleas: New and Innovative Research on Federal Plea Bargaining

Abstract

Sentencing scholars have produced a large body of research focusing on individual, case, and contextual predictors of sentence outcomes. This research concludes that legally relevant factors are the primary predictors of sentence severity, but that extralegal offender characteristics also play a role; it also concludes that sentence outcomes and sentencing disparity vary by social context. Largely missing from this body of research is work that examines the important decisions that precede imposition of the sentence and that, in many ways, are as consequential as the sentencing decision itself. We address this gap in the literature by focusing on plea bargaining decisions in three U.S. District Courts. Using a unique dataset that identifies the U.S. Attorney to whom the case was assigned and a hierarchical linear modeling strategy, we identify the factors that predict plea bargaining decisions in these federal courts and we test for inter-prosecutor disparity in these decisions. We also determine whether prosecutors weigh offender and case characteristics differently in making decisions to reduce charges in exchange for a guilty plea and we estimate the effects of plea bargains on sentence severity.

Authors

• Cassia Spohn, Arizona State University

• Byungbae Kim, Arizona State University

• Steven Belenko, Temple University

• KiDeuk Kim, Urban Institute