NCJ Number
145257
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 17 Issue: 5 Dated: (October 1993) Pages: 537-552
Date Published
1993
Length
16 pages
Annotation
In examining the development of young people's ability to reason about legal issues involved in a plea decision in a criminal matter, this study found that most subjects used legal rather than moral criteria in making their plea decisions.
Abstract
The study involved 48 subjects each in grades 5, 7, and 9, as well as 48 young adults, who participated in semistructured interviews. The interviews contained four vignettes, each depicting a young person who had committed a criminal offense, was charged, and retained a lawyer. Subjects received information about the charge and the prosecution's evidence (weak in two vignettes and strong in two). They were asked to decide what they would plead if they were in the defendant's shoes and to justify their choices. Contrary to prediction, most based their plea decisions on legal rather than on moral criteria. Nonetheless, significant grade-related changes were found both in legal reasoning scores and in the use of guilt-based plea justifications. In addition, according to a panel of lawyers, plea choices were rated as more reasonable when the evidence against the story character was strong and thus congruent with "moral" guilt than when it was weak. This difference diminished with grade as subjects became better able to separate moral from legal issues in their decisionmaking. Directions for further research on the legal reasoning of young people are noted. 17 references, 2 tables, and 1 figure