Guilty Plea Research Articles

Hyping Hypnosis: The Myth That Made Capturing the Friedmans Persuasive

ABSTRACT Those promoting the idea of “false memory syndrome” often invoke the specter of hypnosis to discredit those making accusations of sexual abuse and anyone they might have spoken to for investigative or therapeutic purposes. Capturing the Friedmans demonstrates that accusations of hypnosis have strong rhetorical value, even when they are not true. The film, classified as a documentary, tells the story of a family that is shattered when the father and son both plead guilty to sexually abusing boys in the after-school classes in their basement. Using tropes about hypnosis and misrepresenting the actual facts in the case, the movie persuaded many people that Jesse Friedman was actually innocent. A detailed Conviction Integrity Review that was prompted by the movie demonstrates that the conviction was sound, and that the movie is suspect.

Laypersons’ misconceptions as a barrier to understanding plea bargaining’s innocence problem

ABSTRACT Although the vast majority of criminal cases in Canada and the United States are resolved through plea bargaining, research suggests that the public generally disapproves of this practice. Public disapproval toward plea bargaining may reflect the public’s erroneous belief that all defendants who accept a plea are guilty and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. At this time, it is unclear whether the public is aware of the fact that innocent defendants also accept plea bargains. We administered an exploratory survey to examine undergraduate students’ (N = 237) and community members’ (N = 259) perceptions of the situational and dispositional factors that are associated with false guilty pleas and exposure to crime/law media programmes. Results demonstrated that both students and community members underestimated the degree to which certain situational (e.g. attorney influence, saving money) and dispositional (e.g. age, compliance) factors can influence innocent defendants’ decisions to plead guilty. Results also demonstrated that greater exposure to crime/law media programmes may help to increase public awareness about false guilty pleas.

Miranda v. Arizona and Duties to Police for Criminal Suspects in Criminal Justice under the Constitution of United States of America

The United States Criminal Justice System and court structure are two separate court systems, one at the federal level and another at the state level. In criminal proceedings, many courtrooms principally convict either by trial or by guilty plea, and many result in dismissing cases. It is necessary to examine the scope of the crime problems that criminal courts face and the organizational context as well as the policies in which they operate. The Fourth Amendment rights in particular, limits to searches and seizures are important procedures in the ongoing prosecution of crimes in America. The right of the people to remain secure in persons and properties against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated. The police have the power to search and seize, but individuals are protected against unreasonable police intrusion. The Fifth Amendment Miranda rights protect any person from custodial interrogation by the police. It is required that all arrestees be given their Miranda warnings and if they are invoked they must be scrupulously honoured.

ОКРЕМІ АСПЕКТИ ЕТИКО-ПРАВОВИХ ВИМОГ ПРАВНИЧОЇ ДОПОМОГИ У КРИМІНАЛЬНОМУ ПРОВАДЖЕННІ НА ПІДСТАВІ УГОДИ ПРО ВИЗНАННЯ ВИНУВАТОСТІ

The article analyzes the main minimum guarantees of the implementation of the principle of ensuring the right to defense and legal assistance to a person accused of committing a criminal offense, formulated in international legal acts and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. The degree of implementation of the specified guarantees into domestic legislation has been clarified. The essence and significance of the defense counsel's participation in criminal proceedings on the basis of a plea agreement, which is a guarantee of ensuring not only the rights and legitimate interests of the suspect, the accused, but also the legality of the application of this procedure, and in general, the legality of the criminal proceedings themselves, the administration of justice, which involves making a fair decision. The specifics of providing legal assistance in this category of proceedings are outlined, which consist in clarifying by the defense counsel the voluntariness of the guilty plea, the will of the suspect, the accused to enter into such an agreement, the clarification of his procedural rights, the nature of each accusation, in respect of which he pleads guilty, the type of punishment and other measures that will be applied to him, and the legal consequences of concluding and approving a plea agreement. The need to explain all the consequences of concluding and approving an agreement (direct and indirect), which is a mandatory component of professional, qualified legal assistance, the provision of which requires the improvement of the current legislation, which consists in the normative consolidation of the lawyer's duty before concluding an agreement on recognition, is substantiated culpability to explain the indirect consequences of its approval by the court.

I Never

What protections should a person of diminished capacity accused of murder have? Should intangibles be given consideration, or only facts? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, John is found by police on the side of the road pulling a knife from a woman’s chest. He is arrested, put in jail, and awaits trial. His attorney insists that he plead guilty, but John asserts his innocence and refuses to cave to pressure. Mandy, the Sherriff’s wife, brings him meals and is struck by his religious faith. She brings a reporter to talk to him to publish his side of the story. This brings an additional investigation from outside lawyers and brings to light additional information. The story ends with John going before the Grand Jury and telling his side of the story.

Alternative Dispute Resolution: The Opportunities and Challenges of COVID-19 for the Plea-Bargaining Model

In Uganda, the plea bargaining model has primarily been used as a form of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, prisons across the country grappled with congestion and long pre-trial detentions. The outbreak of COVID-19 augmented these challenges. However, several opportunities, such as the automation of courts through the establishment of an electronic case management information system, online trials, and the reduction of cases without enormous costs, were gained. At the same time, COVID-19 exacerbated the risk of innocent accused entering guilty pleas, especially for offences triable in magistrates’ courts because trials take long. Moreover, Uganda’s criminal justice system is retributive and more concerned with inflicting punishment and suffering on the accused than rehabilitating them. The state is the primary victim of the criminal offence. In contrast, the people harmed by the offence are mere witnesses. Nevertheless, plea bargaining was often conducted in the absence of or without the involvement of the victims of crime. The victims’ rights remained significantly neglected, increasing the lack of trust in the courts. This article examines these issues by discussing plea bargaining as an instance of ADR. The article also explores the opportunities and challenges arising from plea bargaining conducted during the COVID-19 locksdowns by discussing the lived experiences of the accused, victims, and magistrates.

Supplemental Material for Guilty Plea Hearings in Juvenile and Criminal Court

Supplemental Material for Guilty Plea Hearings in Juvenile and Criminal Court

Innocence in the shadow of COVID-19: Plea decision making during a pandemic.

Over 95% of criminal convictions in the United States are the result of guilty pleas. Consequently, it is critical that we ensure the process of pleading guilty is as free of coercion as possible. Yet, research has indicated that incarcerating defendants to await trial could have an undue influence on their decision to plead guilty. The current research employed a novel computer simulation to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on plea decision making among the innocent and the guilty when faced with potential pretrial detention. While presenting COVID-related information to participants increased both true and false guilty pleas, further analyses indicated that concerns about COVID-19 weighed more heavily on the innocent than the guilty. These findings illustrate the negative impact a pandemic could have in combination with a system of pleas that often allows prosecutors to provide defendants with just one guaranteed respite from jail-a guilty plea. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Political Economy of Corporate Bribery: SNC-Lavalin Group as a Case Study

In 2013, the World Bank suspended financing for the construction of the Padma Multi-Purpose Bridge in Bangladesh following allegations of massive payoffs from SNC-Lavalin Group (Canada) to several Bangladeshi officials and politicians. This resulted in the arrest of a major SNC-Lavalin employee in Switzerland, who pled guilty and co-operated with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Canada. This article examines the intricacies of the corruption allegations against SNC-Lavalin in Canada. There are suggestions of a toxic corporate culture historically noted by Sutherland (1949, 1983). As well, a criminal action was commenced against the corporation, which lead to extensive political fallout and a guilty plea. Both the outcome of this prosecution and its theoretical implications raise important questions about on the role of structural pressures and “holes” in global capital markets. Here, we invoke Quinney’s (2002) analysis of capital, Chambliss’ (1994) notion of law and markets, and Merton’s (1957) theory of organizational strain.

Hayton, D. W. Conservative Revolutionary: The Lives of Lewis Namier.

Hayton, D. W. <i>Conservative Revolutionary: The Lives of Lewis Namier</i>.

The Likelihood of Early Guilty Pleas Following Digitally Recorded Victim Statements for Family Violence.

This study follows 4715 Family Harm cases for which charges are laid (from around 15,000 events from 2018-2020). Comparisons are made between cases where a digitally recorded victim video statement (VVS) is taken to those who (1) make a written statement, (2) refuse to make any statement and (3) present at the public counter and make a written statement. Findings indicate that VVS increases the rates of an early guilty plea by 95% (OR = 1.95, LCL = 1.34, UCL = 2.7) compared to those who decline a VVS and have a written statement. No difference is observed for those presenting to report an event at a public counter. A more modest effect is observed comparing those who refuse a statement altogether (OR = 1.28, LCL = 1.03, UCL = 1.60). A VVS is nearly twice as likely to lead to an early guilty plea. It is reasoned that there is a poor rate of guilty pleas for written statements, rather than an elevation in rates for VVS. Age and gender are unrelated to the elevated rate of pleading guilty to a VVS. Event seriousness is inversely related to pleading guilty, whereas having many prior convictions or being remanded increases the likelihood of the guilty plea.

Behavioral Economics in Plea-Bargain Decision-Making: Beyond the Shadow-of-Trial Model

AbstractLegal scholars have long assumed that plea bargains are contracts negotiated between rational actors who adhere to the dictates of the normative shadow-of-trial model. The two key features that rational actors presumably haggle over in the shadow of trial are the criminal charge (and associated sentence) and the probability of trial conviction. The behavioral economics theory ofdiscounting, however, offers a theoretical foundation for testing the shadow-of-trial model. This article summarizes findings from experimental discounting studies in behavioral economics and psychological science – showing that these paradigms can be successfully applied to the plea-bargaining decision context wherein the likelihood of trial is uncertain and delayed, and the plea bargain is relatively certain and immediate. We suggest that the implications of applying discounting to plea bargaining are three-fold: (1) empirical evidence suggests that the shadow-of-trial model is too narrow; (2) the discounting of non-monetary losses may involve slightly different psychological processes than contexts involving monetary outcomes; and (3) probability of conviction and delay until trial constitute situational features that elicit guilty pleas despite a defendant’s factual innocence.

Revolutionary Criminal Punishments: Treason, Mercy, and the American Revolution

Abstract This article focuses on the exceptional mildness of criminal punishments for alleged traitors in the wake of the American Revolution. American leaders were disinclined to inflict the death penalty on loyalists who supported British rule in the revolutionary war or on insurgents in the Shays, Whiskey, and Fries rebellions shortly after independence. In fact, the Founding Fathers and other first-generation officials commonly showed remarkable mercy. Numerous “traitors” readily rehabilitated themselves by recognizing their faults, swearing an oath of allegiance to the new American republic, and promising to refrain from further wrongdoing. These revolutionary punishments were a striking prefiguration of modern penal practices: guilty pleas, probation sentences, and rehabilitation policies aiming to reintegrate wrongdoers into society. While American revolutionary punishments comprised stark racial inequities and did not constitute a lost utopia, they were particularly mild for the period. In contrast, the contemporary French Revolution led to wide-scale executions of purported traitors. Besides shedding light on historic events that criminal justice scholars have neglected, the article’s findings are relevant to ongoing debates about American exceptionalism and the peculiar harshness of modern American justice, including originalist and non-originalist interpretations of the Eighth Amendment. The rise of mass incarceration in the United States and its retention of the death penalty can foster cultural essentialism about how American culture traditionally lacks humanistic sensibilities. In reality, the revolutionary criminal punishments of the late eighteenth century demonstrate how America was once a trailblazer in embracing humane conceptions of justice.

Prosecutorial Discretion, Justice, and Compassion: Reestablishing Balance in our Legal System

The criminal justice system, wherein nearly all cases are resolved through a guilty plea, is tenuously balanced on prosecutorial discretion in the context of the plea-bargaining process. This shift in the balance of power away from judges and juries is particularly troubling given the lack of formal legal safeguards afforded to defendants engaging in plea bargaining rather than going to trial. The main issue is not prosecutorial discretion per se or even overzealous prosecutors, but the lack of oversight of the plea-bargaining process and the imbalance of power itself, which threatens the legitimacy and stability of the criminal justice system. This article argues for the importance of prosecutorial discretion as a potentially valuable tool, analyzes how and why it creates potential for abuse, and provides suggestions for recreating a balance of power. Overall, the analysis shifts away from blaming the personal characteristics of overzealous prosecutors for the imbalance and focuses on systemic, forward looking administrative and legislative solutions aimed at taking plea bargaining out of the shadows. The article concludes with specific suggestions for recreating a balance of power, by addressing issues arising from unequal access to information throughout the plea-bargaining process and recentering a defendant’s constitutional rights within the justice system.

Factors Contributing to Guilty Plea Wrongful Convictions: A Quantitative Analysis of Australian Appellate Court Judgments

Criminal defendants can face significant pressures to plead guilty, but wrongful conviction scholarship has largely overlooked the study of guilty pleas. This study content analyzed 139 Australian appellate court judgments in which a guilty plea conviction was overturned, investigating the types of errors involved in these convictions, and the stage of the criminal justice process at which the errors occurred. The findings revealed that errors occurred during the police investigation, pretrial preparations, and formal court procedures, with the most frequent errors involving incorrect or inappropriate charges, inadequate legal representation, and the courts erroneously accepting a guilty plea. The findings raise important implications regarding the adequacy of safeguards to ensure guilty pleas are appropriate or factually and legally accurate.

The Plea Bargaining System as a Criminalization Model Under the Law Number 19 Year of 2016 on Electronic Information and Transaction Act and the Dignified Justice

&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of economic analysis of law theory, the increasing number of criminal convictions would indicate that the Indonesian criminal Code and regulations have not been effective in reducing the rate of crimes. By combining a preliminary hearing, hearing of cases through a special route and the application of the principle of bargaining for sentence in the plea bargaining system, a new mechanism may be formulated in the Indonesia criminal justice proceedings. This criminal justice approach employs the dignified justice principle (&lt;em&gt;teori keadilan bermartabat&lt;/em&gt;) approach, whereby, the trial of cases using a preliminary hearing as a special route under a sole judge that is intended for an accused who pleads guilty and bargains for a sentence. Accordingly, this research attempts to explore the use of the principles of the plea bargaining system as a criminal justice model under the Law Number 19 year of 2016 on the Electronic Information and Transaction Act (“EIT Act”). Equally important, this research employs the juridical-normative method, statute, case, and conceptual approaches in order to obtain a comprehensive result. &lt;/p&gt;

Measuring Innocence

What is the rate of wrongful conviction? This question may be implicit in Blackstone’s ratio: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” Scholarship designed to provide an empirical answer, however, emerged only with the rise of the “innocence movement” in the United States. This article does not provide another study estimating the rate of wrongful felony conviction either for a specified sample, such as death sentences within a specified time period, or for an entire jurisdiction. Instead, we evaluate the rate question itself and assess its importance to innocence scholarship and action. We first trace the question’s intellectual lineage, and its historical and ideological roots among innocence believers and innocence skeptics. We then describe and evaluate all or most of the published studies attempting to estimate the wrongful conviction rate. Next, we discuss a reoccurring limitation of this published work, namely, its failure to account for or its unsubstantiated assumptions about guilty pleas and misdemeanor convictions among innocent defendants. Finally, we question the continued importance of the rate question in light of the modern innocence movement and its growing accomplishments.

Sentence reductions for a guilty plea: The impact of the revised guideline on rates of pleas and ‘cracked trials’

In 2017, the Sentencing Council introduced a revised guideline for plea-based sentence reductions. The revisions were designed to provide greater certainty and to accelerate the timing of guilty pleas. Late pleas resulting in ‘cracked trials’ have long been a problem in the court system. The guideline was not intended to change the rate of defendants who plead guilty, but rather to increase the percentage of pleas entered early in the criminal process. This brief article reports findings from an analysis of data from the Crown Court before and after the introduction of the revised sentencing guideline. Findings reveal that the overall guilty plea remained stable over the period 2014–2019. The guideline appears to have had no effect on the timing of guilty pleas entered, and in fact the percentage of ‘cracked’ trials rose in the post-guideline period.

Features of legal regulation of the institute inquiry in the legislation of Ukraine and foreign countries

Features of legal regulation of the institute inquiry in the legislation of Ukraine and foreign countries

Advocacy and the Innocent Client

Much of our knowledge about wrongful convictions is derived from known exonerations, which typically involve serious violent offences and lengthy sentences. These represent only a small proportion of offences prosecuted in Canada each year, and little is known about how often innocent defendants may be wrongfully convicted of less serious offences. Recent discussions have begun to focus on the problem of false guilty pleas, in which defendants choose to plead guilty to a lesser offence to avoid the time and cost required to defend their innocence. The majority of our knowledge of the factors contributing to wrongful convictions is based on American scholarship, with less empirical research exploring wrongful convictions within the Canadian context. The present research surveyed Canadian criminal defence lawyers about their experiences representing innocent clients, including their perspective on the underlying causes of wrongful convictions in Canada and their recommendations for reform to the criminal justice system. Nearly two-thirds of defence counsel in this study reported that they had represented at least one client who was convicted despite credible claims of innocence. Many reported that they regularly see innocent clients choose to enter a strategic false guilty plea, perceiving no meaningful or realistic alternative. Counsel described a system designed to elicit a guilty plea, with lengthy pre-trial delays, routine denial of bail, inadequate funding of Legal Aid, costly defence options, padded charges, and false evidence ploys. This research expands our knowledge of wrongful convictions in Canada, their hidden prevalence, and systemic problems that increase the likelihood of their occurrence.