Decision-Making in Criminal Defense: An Empirical Study of Insanity Pleas and the Impact of Doubted Client Competence

Abstract

* John S. Battle Professor of Law, University of Virginia. This study was supported by the Research Network on Mental Health and the Law of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. We are grateful to Carol Holden, Jennifer Balay, and William Meyer for their roles in gathering the data reported here. ** Professor, Department of Law and Mental Health, Florida Mental Health Institute, University of South Florida. *** Associate Professor of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry and of Law, University of Virginia. **** Doherty Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology and Legal Medicine, University of Virginia. *****Senior Research Scientist, Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy, University of Virginia. 1 There have been several qualitative studies of relationships between criminal defendants and their attorneys, usually in the context of large public defender organizations. See, e.g., MILTON HEUMANN, PLEA BARGAINING (1978); LISA MCINTYRE, THE PUBLIC DEFENDER (1987); Abraham Blumberg, The Practice of Law as Confidence Game: Organizational Cooptation of a Profession, 1 L. & Soc'Y REv. 15 (1967). These studies have highlighted institutional factors that provide incentives for plea bargaining, and that can erode the defense attorney's ethical commitment to the interests or wishes of individual clients. The present study does not arise out of this empirical tradition and does not view the attorney's role from an organizational perspective. Instead, employing a case-centered, quantitative approach, we seek to identify patterns of attorney-client interaction in relation to a particular type of