Hostname: page-component-669899f699-qzcqf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-28T05:35:19.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Role of Courtroom Workgroups in Felony Case Dispositions: An Analysis of Workgroup Familiarity and Similarity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Abstract

While pleading guilty has become ubiquitous in criminal trial courts, limited research has focused on the plea process and the factors that influence guilty plea convictions. Numerous theoretical accounts of the plea process highlight the importance of the court actors and their interactions. Based on this research, the current study analyzes the impact of courtroom actor familiarity and similarity on the chosen mode of disposition and the time to disposition. The findings demonstrate that similarity among the actors and familiarity between the prosecutor and judge increase the odds of a plea disposition and reduce the days to disposition. However, familiarity of the defense attorney seems to impede on the informal plea process, such that cases are more likely to proceed to trial when the defense attorney is more familiar with the other actors.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© 2016 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, my dissertation committee, Dr. Thomas Baker, and Dr. Justin Pickett for their comments and feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. I would also like to thank the Public Defender's Office for their help and support.

References

Abrams, David S. (2011) “Is Pleading Really a Bargain?8 J. of Empirical Legal Studies 200–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albonetti, Celesta A. (1986) “Criminality, Prosecutorial Screening, and Uncertainty: Toward a Theory of Discretionary Decision Making in Felony Case Processings,” 24 Criminology 623–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albonetti, Celesta A. (1990) “Race and the Probability of Pleading Guilty,” 6 J. of Quantitative Criminology 315–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albonetti, Celesta A. (1991) “An Integration of Theories to Explain Judicial Discretion,” 38 Social Problems 247–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albonetti, Celesta A. (1999) “The Avoidance of Punishment: A Legal-Bureaucratic Model of Suspended Sentences in Federal White-Collar Cases Prior to Federal Sentencing Guidelines,” 78 Social Forces 303–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alschuler, Albert W. (1968) “The Prosecutor's Role in Plea Bargaining,” 36 Univ. of Chicago Law Rev. 50112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alschuler, Albert W. (1975) “The Defense Attorney's Role in Plea Bargaining,” 84 The Yale Law J. 1179–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alschuler, Albert W. (1976) “The Trial Judge's Role in Plea Bargaining, Part I,” 76 Columbia Law Rev. 1059–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Thomas, et al. (2015) “Shared Race/Ethnicity, Court Procedural Justice, and Self-Regulating Beliefs: A Study of Female Offenders,” 49 Law & Society Rev. 433–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumer, Eric P. (2013) “Reassessing and Redirecting Research on Race and Sentencing,” 30 Justice Q. 231–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bibas, Stephanos (2004) “Plea Bargaining Outside the Shadow of a Trial,” 117 Harvard Law Rev. 2463–547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blumberg, Abraham (1967) “The Practice of Law as Confidence Game: Organizational Cooption of a Profession,” 1 Law & Society Rev. 1540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Britt, Chester L. (2000) “Social Context and Racial Disparities in Punishment Decisions,” 17 Justice Q. 707–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bushway, Shawn D. & Redlich, Allison D. (2012) “Is Plea Bargaining in the “shadow of a trial” a Mirage?28 J. of Quantitative Criminology 437–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bushway, Shawn D. & Forst, Brian (2013) “Studying Discretion in the Processes that Generate Criminal Justice Sanctions,” 30 Justice Q. 199222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, George (1970) “The Decision to Prosecute,” 4 Law & Society Rev. 331–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colvin, Alexander J. S. (2011) “An Empirical Study of Employment Arbitration: Case Outcomes and Processes,” 8 J. of Empirical Legal Studies 123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demuth, Stephen (2003) “Racial and Ethnic Differences in Pretrial Release Decisions and Outcomes: A Comparison of Hispanic, Black, and White Felony Arrestees,” 41 Criminology 873908.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, Jo (1995) “The Organizational Context of Criminal Sentencing,” 100 The American J. of Sociology 1157–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durose, Matthew R., Farole, Donald, & Rosenmerkel, Sean P. Jr. (2009) “Felony Sentences in State Courts, 2006 – Statistical Tables,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1–45.Google Scholar
Eisenstein, James & Jacob, Herbert (1977) Felony Justice: An Organizational Analysis of Criminal Courts. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, Inc.Google Scholar
Eisenstein, James, Flemming, Roy B., & Nardulli, Peter F. (1988) The Contours of Justice: Communities and Their Courts. Boston: Little, Brown & Company Limited.Google Scholar
Enders, Craig K. & Tofighi, Davood (2007) “Centering Predictor Variables in Cross-Sectional Multilevel Models: A New Look at An Old Issue,” 12 Psychological Methods 121–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farrell, Amy, Ward, Geoff, & Rousseau, Danielle (2009) “Race Effects of Representation Among Federal Court Workers: Does Black Workforce Representation Reduce Sentencing Disparities?623 The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 121–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feeley, Malcolm (1973) “Two Models of the Criminal Justice System: An Organizational Perspective,” 7 Law & Society Rev. 407–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flemming, Roy B., Nardulli, Peter F., & Eisenstein, James E. (1992) The Craft of Justice: Politics and Work in Criminal Court Communities. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frenzel, Erika D. & Ball, Jeremy D. (2008) “Effects of Individual Characteristics on Plea Negotiations Under Sentencing Guidelines,” 5 J. of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice 5982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galanter, Marc (1974) “Why the “haves” Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change,” 9 Law & Society Rev. 95160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hailpern, Susan M. & Viintainer, Paul F. (2003) “Odds Ratios and Logistic Regression: Further Examples of their Use and Interpretation,” 3 The Stata J. 213–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, John C. & Jesilow, Paul (2000) “It's Not the Old Ball Game: Three Strikes and the Courtroom Workgroup,” 17 Justice Q. 185203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hessick, F. III Andrew & Saujani, Reshma (2002) “Plea Bargaining and Convicting the Innocent: The Role of the Prosecutor, the Defense Counsel, and the Judge,” 16 BYU J. of Public Law 189242.Google Scholar
Hinds, Pamela J., Carley, Kathleen M., Krackhardt, David, & Wholey, Doug (2000) “Choosing Work Group Members: Balancing Similarity, Competence, and Familiarity,” 81 Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process 226–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hoskins Haynes, Stacy, Ruback, Barry, & Cusick, Gretchen R. (2010) “Courtroom Workgroups and Sentencing: The Effects of Similarity, Proximity, and Stability,” 56 Crime & Delinquency 126–61.Google Scholar
Johnson, Brian (2003) “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Sentencing Departures Across Modes of Conviction,” 41 Criminology 449–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Brian (2005) “Contextual Disparities in Guidelines Departures: Courtroom Social Contexts, Guidelines Compliance, and Extralegal Disparities in Criminal Sentencing,” 43 Criminology 761–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Brian (2006) “The Multilevel Context of Criminal Sentencing: Integrating Judge- and County-Level Influences,” 41 Criminology 259–98.Google Scholar
Johnson, Brian D., et al. (2014) “Understanding Guilty Pleas: The National Science Foundation's Research Coordination Network,” 39 The Criminologist 16.Google Scholar
Johnson, Brian D., Ulmer, Jeffrey T., & Kramer, John H. (2008) “The Social Context of Guidelines Circumvention: The Case of Federal District Courts,” 46 Criminology 737–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Jason S. & Waldfogel, Joel (2002) “Does Repeat Play Elicit Cooperation? Evidence from Federal Civil Litigation,” 31 J. of Legal Studies 3960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Ryan D., Johnson, Kecia, & McGeever, Kelly. (2010) “Demography of the Legal Profession and Racial Disparities in Sentencing,” 44 Law & Society Rev. 132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Gary & Zeng, Langche (2001) “Improving Forecasts of State Failure,” 53 World Politics 623–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Gary & Zeng, Langche (2002) “Estimating Risk and Rate Levels, Ratios and Differences in Case Control Studies,” 21 Statistics in Medicine 1409–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Korn, Edward L. & Graubard, Barry I. (1995) “Examples of differing weighted and unweighted estimates from a sample survey,” 49 The American Statistician 291–5.Google Scholar
Kramer, John H. & Ulmer, Jeffrey T. (2002) “Downward Departures for Serious Violent Offenders: Local Court “corrections” to Pennsylvania's Sentencing Guidelines,” 40 Criminology 897932.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kutateladze, Besiki L., Andiloro, Nancy R., & Johnson, Brian D. (2016) “Opening Pandora's Box: How Does Defendant Race Influence Plea Bargaining?33 Justice Q. 398426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kutateladze, Besiki L., et al. (2014) “Cumulative Disadvantage: Examining Racial and Ethnic Disparity in Prosecution and Sentencing,” 52 Criminology 514–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LaFree, Gary D. (1985). “Adversarial and Nonadversarial Justice: A Comparison of Guilty Pleas and Trials,” 23 Criminology 289312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maruna, Shadd (2010) “Mixed Method Research in Criminology: Why Not Go Both Ways?” in Piquero, A. R. & Weisburd, D., eds., Handbook of Quantitative Criminology. New York: Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.Google Scholar
Mather, Lynn M. (1988) “The Outsider in the Courtroom: An Alternative Role for Defense,” in Cole, G. F., ed., Criminal Justice: Law and Politics. California: Brooks/Cole.Google Scholar
Meyer, Jon'a & Gray, Tara. (1997) “Drunk Drivers in the Courts: Legal and Extra-Legal Factors Affecting Pleas and Sentences,” 25 J. of Criminal Justice 155–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nardulli, Peter F., Eisenstein, James, & Flemming, Roy B. (1988) The Tenor of Justice: Criminal Courts and the Guilty Plea Process. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Packer, Herbert L. (1968) The Limits of the Criminal Sanction. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piehl, Anne M. & Bushway, Shawn D. (2007) “Measuring and Explaining Charge Bargaining,” 23 J. of Quantitative Criminology 105–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollitz Worden, Alissa (1995) “The Judge's Role in Plea Bargaining: An Analysis of Judges’ Agreement with Prosecutors’ Sentencing Recommendations,” 12 Justice Q. 257–78.Google Scholar
Raudenbush, Stephen W. & Bryk, Anthony S. (2002) Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods, 2nd ed. California: Sage Publications, Inc.Google Scholar
Skolnick, Jerome H. (1967) “Social Control in the Adversary System,” 11 The J. of Conflict Resolution 5270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Douglas A. (1986) “The Plea Bargaining Controversy,” 77 The J. of Criminal Law and Criminology 949–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spohn, Cassia (1990) “The Sentencing Decisions of Black and White Judges: Expected and Unexpected Similarities,” 24 Law & Society Rev. 1197–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steffensmeier, Darrell, Ulmer, Jeffrey, & Kramer, John (1998) “The Interaction of Race, Gender, and Age in Criminal Sentencing: The Punishment Cost of Being Young, Black, and Male,” 36 Criminology 763–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, James D. (1967) Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Ulmer, Jeffrey T. (1995) “The Organization and Consequences of Social Pasts in Criminal Courts,” 36 The Sociological Q. 587605.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulmer, Jeffrey T. (1997). Social Worlds of Sentencing: Court Communities Under Sentencing Guidelines. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Ulmer, Jeffrey T. (2012). “Recent Developments and New Directions in Sentencing Research,” 29 Justice Q. 140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulmer, Jeffrey T. & Johnson, Brian (2004) “Sentencing in Context: A Multilevel Analysis,” 42 Criminology 137–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulmer, Jeffrey T., Eisenstein, James, & Johnson, Brian D. (2010) “Trial Penalties in Federal Sentencing: Extra-Guidelines Factors and District Variation,” 27 Justice Q. 560–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulmer, Jeffrey T., Light, Michael T., & Kramer, John (2011) “The “liberation” of Federal Judges’ Discretion in the Wake of the Booker/Fanfan Decision: Is There Increased Disparity and Divergence Between Courts?28 Justice Q. 799837.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulmer, Jeffrey T. & Bradley, Mindy S. (2006) “Variation in Trial Penalties Among Serious Violent Offenders,” 44 Criminology 631–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ward, Geoff, Farrell, Amy, & Rousseau, Danielle (2009) “Does Racial Balance in Workforce Representation Yield Equal Justice? Race Relations of Sentencing in Federal Court Organizations,” 43 Law & Society Rev. 757805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Metcalfe supplementary material
Download undefined(File)
File 93.2 KB