The Role of Dismissal in the American Criminal Court: Court Theories Revisited

Abstract

This is an inquiry into the role of dismissal in criminal adjudication, a neglected area of study in the modern criminal court literature. The article presents a historical review of the relevant literature that underscores the prevalence of dismissal as a principal criminal case disposition in American courts. Moving into an explorative direction, the essay examines the utility for understanding dismissal of several theoretical perspectives that more generally have been proposed to explain criminal adjudication and court operations. These are: (a) the public safety perspective, in which dismissals are explained by defendants’ risk attributes; (b) the courtroom-as-workgroup perspective, in which dismissals are the product of the organization of the courtroom workgroups; (c) the process-as-punishment perspective, in which dismissals represent the outcome of a process which itself represents the punishment; (d) and the legal or due process perspective, in which legal, procedural-based explanations account for dismissals. Review of available empirical support reveals that as applied to the dismissal phenomenon accepted court theories are in need of empirical testing, and the article provides several directions for future investigations that would help establish their validity. The implications for justice goals of the common dismissal result in criminal adjudication through the prisms of these four perspectives are considered.