WSJ Article Discusses Prof. Dervan's Research

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The Wall Street Journal has an excellent feature article today about plea bargaining in the federal criminal justice system. 
In mid June, under a deal with federal prosecutors, Kenneth Kassab was on the verge of pleading guilty to illegally transporting thousands of pounds of explosives when he changed his mind. A week later, he was acquitted by a federal jury. 
Though Mr. Kassab maintained his innocence, he said in an interview that he had been prepared to plead guilty to avoid the risk of possibly decades in prison...


The entire WSJ article can be accessed here.

Along with the feature piece, the Wall Street Journal wrote a second insert article regarding the new plea bargaining study from myself and Professor Vanessa Edkins previously mentioned on this blog - see here.
Two university professors last year did an experiment to explore one of the more controversial questions of criminal law: How often do innocent defendants plead guilty to crimes to avoid the risk of greater punishment if they fight and lose?
 

The entire WSJ article regarding the plea bargaining study is here.  You can also access a draft copy of the research article, which will appear in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology early next year, here.

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