Grade related changes in young people's reasoning about plea decisions.

Abstract

The present study examined the development of young people's ability to reason about legal issues involved in a plea decision in a criminal matter. Forty-eight subjects in each of grades 5,7, and 9, and 48 young adults participated in a semistructured interview containing four vignettes, each depicting a young person who had committed a criminal offense was charged, and retained a lawyer. Subjects received information regarding the charge and the prosecution's evidence (weak in half of the vignettes and strong in the other half). Subjects were asked to decide what they would plead if they were in the defendant's shoes, and to justify their choices. Contrary to prediction, a majority of even the Grade 5 subjects based their plea decisions on legal rather than moral criteria. Nonetheless, there were significant grade-related changes both in legal reasoning scores and in the use of guilt-based plea justifications. In addition, according to a panel of lawyers, subjects' 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 decision making.