NCJ Number
186002
Date Published
1998
Length
19 pages
Annotation
Plea bargaining is the most common practice in the criminal justice system and encompasses multiple episodes of negotiating behavior and a wide range of formal litigation proceedings.
Abstract
A great deal of research has focused on the settlement of criminal cases through guilty pleas. Most of the research portrays plea bargaining primarily as a single episode of negotiating behavior, and scant attention is paid to the facts that many criminal cases are not immediately plea bargained, that attorneys often negotiate plea bargains several times on behalf of a single client, and that plea bargaining may at times actually parallel the adversarial proceedings of trial. By focusing on findings generated through ethnographic research on a private, non-profit corporation of court-appointed defense attorneys, the author examines plea bargaining as part of the defense attorney's recursive consideration of whether a case should be settled immediately or proceed further. Plea bargaining is seen to encompass not only multiple episodes of negotiating behavior but also a wide range of formal litigation proceedings. As such, distinctions made between plea bargaining and taking a case to trial are considered to be relatively minor. The author concludes the decision-making process in plea bargaining consists of three types of activities--assessing the offer for a guilty plea, negotiating the terms of a plea bargain, and counseling the defendant and deciding on a course of action. 46 references and 1 table