The Plea Bargaining Blog

Psychology, Public Policy and Law has recently released a special issue on guilty pleas.  The collection of articles, edited by Miko Wilford and Allison Redlich , is an excellent read and examines plea bargaining from various perspectives. My latest article entitled  Freedom Now or a Future Later: Pitting the Lasting Implications of Collateral Consequences Against Pretrial Detention in Decisions to Plead Guilty is contained in the special issue.  This piece considers the impact of innocence, collateral consequences, and pretrial detention on plea decisions.  Full results from the study are contained in the article, but I'll note here one particularly troubling finding:  the rate of innocent individuals who plead guilty tripled in our pretrial detention scenarios .  Below are abstracts and links to each article in the collection.  Special Issue of Psychology, Public Policy and Law : Guilty Pleas Edited by Miko M. Wilford and Allison D. Redli...

The NACDL released an important report last week detailing the impact of the trial penalty, which is the difference between the sentence a defendant receives in return for pleading guilty and the often much larger sentence he or she receives in return for exercising his or her constitutional right to trial.  From the NACDL press release: The ‘trial penalty’ refers to the substantial difference between the sentence offered in a plea offer prior to trial versus the sentence a defendant receives after trial. This penalty is now so severe and pervasive that it has virtually eliminated the constitutional right to a trial. To avoid the penalty, accused persons must surrender many other fundamental rights which are essential to a fair justice system This report is the product of more than two years of careful research and deliberation. In it, NACDL examines sentencing and other data underlying the fact that, after a 50 year decline, fewer than 3% of federal criminal cases result in ...