Mental Health and Guilty Pleas: How Does Stress Affect the Plea Process for Defendants?

• In Event: What Shapes Guilty Pleas? Sentence, Communication, Culpability, and Stress

Abstract

In recent years, guilty plea research has begun to focus on how criminal defendants decide whether to plead guilty. A few key factors are critical in this choice: perceived likelihood of conviction, guilt, and the value of the plea offer, to name a few. In addition to this, some important individual differences have emerged such as risk perceptions and defendant age; we aim to contribute to this second line of research with the present paper. We use a randomized vignette experiment to investigate the role of life stressors (measured using the Perceived Stress Scale, PSS) in the willingness to accept a plea (WTAP) decision. Using a sample approximating arrest population demographics collected through CloudResearch (N=974), we found that higher PSS scores (indicating higher perceived stress) were associated with higher WTAP, but only for individuals who were offered probation; people in the prison offer condition were unaffected by their perceived stressors. There are several potential theoretical explanations for this, including that perceived stress is more influential for an ambiguous choice such as probation and less so when the choice to avoid prison is more obvious. Policy and practice implications are also discussed.

Authors

• Jacqueline Lee, Boise State University

• Alexander Testa, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston