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Some Determinants of the Method of Case Disposition: Decision-Making by Public Defenders in Los Angeles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Lynn M. Mather
Lynn M. Mather*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
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Only a small fraction of the criminal cases in the United States are decided by adversary trial processes. The vast majority are settled by guilty pleas; many of these pleas occur after some form of plea bargaining — either explicit negotiations over the entry of a guilty plea in exchange for a reduced charge or a lenient sentence, or tacit bargaining, as when the defendant pleads guilty in anticipation of lenient sentencing. The most frequently cited reason for plea bargaining is administrative expediency or “its utility in disposing of large numbers of cases in a quick and simple way” (Enker, 1967: 112). While caseload pressures are doubtlessly important, they may be overemphasized in the current literature.' Frequently both the prosecutor and the defendant want to avoid a full jury trial because of the risk and uncertainty involved. The prosecutor is under administrative and/or political pressure not to lose his case; a negotiated plea of guilty, even if on a reduced charge, is a sure conviction, while conviction by trial is never certain. The defendant's risk at trial is that his sentence on conviction may be much stiffer than if he had pleaded guilty.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Winter 1974 , pp. 187 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

Author's Note: This article is a revised version of a paper, “To Plead Guilty or Go To Trial?” presented at the 1972 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. I wish to thank Martin Shapiro, Laura Nader and Nelson Kasfir for their helpful comments, and the attorneys, judges and court staff in Los Angeles for their cooperation and assistance.

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