Elements that affect plea bargaining's influence upon sentence severity

Abstract

This study draws together the voluminous body of essays, books, and empirical research on plea bargaining and sentence severity. The vast majority of these works have dealt with prosecutorial discretion, guilty plea standards, and at best cursory looks at the role of the defense attorney. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of defense attorney and defendant characteristics, and case strength in relation to sentence outcome as a result of plea bargaining. After reviewing the literature concerning the above-mentioned areas, seven major hypotheses were formed with several sub-hypotheses regarding the possible influence on the plea officer and final sentencing. A questionnaire was devised and seventy attorneys in a four-county area were interviewed concerning their last five felony cases which have pled guilty and been sentenced in the Court of Common Pleas. After the attorneys were interviewed, each attorney was rated by the interviewer in several areas such as: demeanor, quality of furnishings, law books, law school and caseload. The attorneys interviewed were then rated by the county prosecutor according to the reputation of the law school, trial skills, and honesty. After this was done in each county, the data were coded and analyzed.

Basically, several of the hypotheses have been supported, while the other others have been found to be not significant. Those found to be significant, dealt with the defendant's characteristics, both legal and "extra-legal," in the areas of the plea offer and sentence severity. The defense attorney characteristics were found to influence a small part of the plea offer a defendant receives from the county prosecutor. Strength of the case was not found to be significantly associated with generosity of the plea offer. This study makes recommendations concerning other possible areas of influence upon plea bargaining/sentence severity such as: the judge taking part in the plea bargaining process.