Doctoral Dissertation Research: RATIONALES UNDERLYING AND SHAPING PLEA DECISION-MAKING

现实情况是，“今天的刑事司法在很大程度上是一个申诉系统，而不是一个审判系统，”大法官安东尼·m·肯尼迪（Anthony M. Kennedy）在2012年的拉弗勒诉库珀案（Lafler v. Cooper）中代表多数人写道。尽管美国刑事司法系统严重依赖辩诉交易，但辩诉交易裁决的性质仍然难以捉摸。尽管有一些有影响力和重要的研究对被告和法院行为者进行了关于认罪决定过程的采访，但这些研究大多是在30到40年前进行的，涉及的是与今天存在的法院系统不同的法院系统。从那时起，关于法院、辩诉交易的程序和流行程度的很多事情都发生了变化。本项目通过与被告、辩护律师和检察官的半结构化访谈来填补这一空白，调查被告如何感知和理解他们在法律体系中面临的选择和必要性。这个项目更广泛的影响是揭示内部（个人特定）和外部（系统特定）的理由如何影响认罪决策，以及被告的理由如何影响检察官的认罪提议和辩护律师对客户的建议，以及他们彼此之间的谈判策略。本研究的重点是从被告、辩护人和检察官的角度对影响认罪决定的因素和基本原理进行三角测量和检验。与被告的访谈将考察他们在认罪的具体案件中的经历和看法，而对辩护律师和检察官的访谈将更广泛地了解他们对一般被告认罪决定的理由的看法，以及这些看法如何影响认罪提议或接受提议的建议。所有的访谈都将是半结构化的，包括平行的假设场景，用于三组之间的比较，并结合开放式和封闭式问题，以确保相似和可比的问题-反应结构。这些开放式的回答将使用归纳和系统的方法进行检查，并将植根于扎根和现象学理论。这将允许观察和记录多种可能的模式、主题和概念，这些模式、主题和概念解释了辩诉交易过程中的可变性。此外，为了使本研究更具普遍性并与几十年前的研究具有可比性，联合首席研究员还将使用过去与认罪决策相关的研究来开发可靠的编码方案，用于编码和分析本研究中的开放式访谈回答。研究结果将作为一系列从业者和学术文章、报告和会议报告传播，描述认罪决策的基本原理、因素和看法。最终，这项研究将允许进一步审查法律决策，律师-客户和辩护人-检察官的关系，以及程序正义，因为它涉及到认罪谈判过程的背景

The reality is that "criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials," as Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in Lafler v. Cooper (2012). Despite this heavy reliance on plea bargaining in the U.S. criminal justice system, the nature of plea bargain decisions remains elusive. Although there has been influential and important research in which defendants and court actors were interviewed about the plea decision process, this research was mostly conducted 30 to 40 years ago about a different court system than the one that exists today. Since then, much about courts and the process and prevalence of plea bargaining has changed. This project begins to fill this gap through semi-structured interviews with defendants, defense attorneys, and prosecutors to investigate how defendants perceive and understand the choices and imperatives with which they are faced as they navigate the legal system. The broader impact of this project is to shed light on how internal (individual-specific) and external (system-specific) rationales affect plea decision-making and how perceptions of defendants' rationales can inform the prosecutor's plea offer and the defense attorney's advice to their clients, as well as their negotiating strategies with one another.The focus of this research is to triangulate and examine the factors affecting, and rationales underlying, the plea decision from the points of view of the defendant, defender, and prosecutor. Whereas interviews with defendants will examine their experiences and perceptions surrounding a specific case in which they pled guilty, defense attorneys and prosecutors will be interviewed more generally about their perceptions of generic defendants' rationales for their plea decisions as well as how those perceptions inform either the plea offer or the advice about accepting the offer. All interviews will be semi-structured, include parallel hypothetical scenarios for comparison between the three groups, and incorporate both open- and closed-ended questions to ensure a similar and comparable question-response structure. These open-ended responses will be examined using an inductive and systematic approach, and will be rooted in grounded and phenomenological theories. This will allow for observation and documentation of multiple possible patterns, themes, and concepts that account for variability in plea bargaining processes. In addition, to make this research more generalizable and comparable with research from several decades ago, the co-principal investigator will also use past research related to plea decision-making to develop a reliable coding scheme with which to code and analyze the open-ended interview responses in this study. Findings will be disseminated as a series of practitioner and scholarly articles, reports, and conference presentations portraying the rationales, factors, and perceptions underlying plea decision-making. Ultimately, this research will allow for further examination into legal decision-making, attorney-client and defender-prosecutor relationships, and procedural justice as it relates to contextualizing the plea negotiation process