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

现实是，“今天的刑事司法在很大程度上是一个认罪系统，而不是一个审判系统，”法官安东尼M。肯尼迪在2012年的“拉弗勒诉库珀案”（Lafler v.尽管美国刑事司法系统严重依赖辩诉交易，但辩诉交易决定的性质仍然难以捉摸。虽然有一些有影响力和重要的研究，其中被告和法院演员接受采访的认罪决定过程中，这项研究主要是30至40年前进行的不同的法院系统比今天存在的。从那时起，关于法院和辩诉交易的过程和流行程度的许多事情都发生了变化。这个项目开始填补这一空白，通过半结构化的采访与被告，辩护律师，检察官调查被告如何感知和理解的选择和必要性，他们所面临的，因为他们导航的法律的系统。这个项目的更广泛的影响是揭示内部如何（个人特定）和外部（系统特定的）理据影响认罪决策，以及被告的理据的看法如何能够告知检察官的认罪要约和辩护律师对他们的客户的建议，以及他们的谈判策略。本研究的重点是三角测量和检查的影响因素，从被告人、辩护人和检察官的角度来分析认罪决定的基本原理。虽然与被告的访谈将检查他们的经验和看法周围的一个具体的情况下，他们认罪，辩护律师和检察官将接受采访，更一般地了解他们的看法一般被告的理由，他们的认罪决定，以及这些看法如何通知无论是认罪要约或有关接受要约的建议。所有访谈都将是半结构化的，包括平行的假设情景，以便在三个群体之间进行比较，并包括开放式和封闭式问题，以确保问答结构相似和可比。这些开放式的反应将使用归纳和系统的方法进行检查，并将植根于接地和现象学理论。这将允许观察和记录多种可能的模式，主题和概念，解释辩诉交易过程中的变化。此外，为了使这项研究更具有普遍性，并与几十年前的研究相比较，共同主要研究者还将利用过去与认罪决策相关的研究来开发一个可靠的编码方案，用于编码和分析本研究中的开放式访谈回答。调查结果将作为一系列的从业者和学术文章，报告和会议演示文稿，描绘的理由，因素和基本的认罪决策的看法传播。最终，这项研究将允许进一步审查到法律的决策，律师-客户和辩护人-检察官的关系，和程序正义，因为它涉及到上下文的认罪协商过程

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