Public Defender Plea Decision Making

• In Event: Offending Decisions in Social and Legal Context:

Abstract

Well over 90 percent of convictions result from a guilty plea in a plea bargaining process. This process is less understood today than it was in the 1980s. Recent scholars have attempted to produce online vignettes with relevant case information in order to unpack courtroom actor decision making processes. However, it is difficult to infer process and specific mechanisms from these inquiries. Therefore, many scholars have called for novel data collection methods in the context of plea bargaining. The current study provides preliminary results from such an inquiry utilizing a novel web-based data collection platform, Beyond Vignettes, that enables the collection of a decision-making process in addition to eventual decisions. Public defenders in New York were presented with a mock case docket of four defendants charged with armed robbery. The defendant names imparted racial and socioeconomic context clues. The public defenders then had to navigate the cases within the interface in order to obtain case evidence strength. The instrument captures their decision making process through the evidence measures allowing for evaluation of both their plea decisions on the cases as well as the process leading up to the plea decision. Preliminary findings and implications for theory are discussed.

Author

• Theodore Wilson, University at Albany, SUNY