The Effect of Plea Discount on Mock Defendant's Rating of Probability of Conviction and Plea Decisions
Presentation Type
Poster
Faculty Advisor
Tina Zottoli
Access Type
Event
Start Date
26-4-2024 12:45 PM
End Date
26-4-2024 1:44 PM
Description
Although factual guilt is the strongest predictor of guilty pleas, in the real world and in the laboratory, innocent defendants do plead guilty. Even though false guilty pleas serve to undermine the legitimacy of the criminal justice system, plea bargaining in general is essential to the functioning of the system as it stands. It is important to understand the factors that influence a defendant's decision to plead guilty, so that we might identify ways that we can minimize false guilty pleas. We examined whether the size of the plea discount itself might affect defendants’ perceptions of conviction at trial, after accounting for other factors such as case evidence and potential trial sentence. Participants were recruited via SONA, a student research pool. A Qualtrics survey was used and plea discounts were manipulated using vignettes. Half of the sample was asked to estimate conviction probability after seeing case information but before seeing the plea offer; the other half was asked after seeing the offer. Results suggest plea discount affects perceived probability of conviction (POC). The larger discount was associated with a lower rating of perceived POC effect. Tentatively, the effect of the plea discount may be conveying information to defendants but the ways that information affects defendants may depend on initial beliefs about conviction risk– which are generally lower for innocent defendants than for guilty. If these results hold then they may have implications for furthering research into how we might minimize adverse outcomes for the wrongfully accused.
The Effect of Plea Discount on Mock Defendant's Rating of Probability of Conviction and Plea Decisions
Although factual guilt is the strongest predictor of guilty pleas, in the real world and in the laboratory, innocent defendants do plead guilty. Even though false guilty pleas serve to undermine the legitimacy of the criminal justice system, plea bargaining in general is essential to the functioning of the system as it stands. It is important to understand the factors that influence a defendant's decision to plead guilty, so that we might identify ways that we can minimize false guilty pleas. We examined whether the size of the plea discount itself might affect defendants’ perceptions of conviction at trial, after accounting for other factors such as case evidence and potential trial sentence. Participants were recruited via SONA, a student research pool. A Qualtrics survey was used and plea discounts were manipulated using vignettes. Half of the sample was asked to estimate conviction probability after seeing case information but before seeing the plea offer; the other half was asked after seeing the offer. Results suggest plea discount affects perceived probability of conviction (POC). The larger discount was associated with a lower rating of perceived POC effect. Tentatively, the effect of the plea discount may be conveying information to defendants but the ways that information affects defendants may depend on initial beliefs about conviction risk– which are generally lower for innocent defendants than for guilty. If these results hold then they may have implications for furthering research into how we might minimize adverse outcomes for the wrongfully accused.