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

博士论文研究：抗辩决策的基本原理和塑造

• 批准号: 1625527
• 负责人: Alissa Worden
• 金额: $ 1.14万
• 依托单位: SUNY at Albany
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-06-15 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1625527&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; RATIONALES; UNDERLYING

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

现实情况是，正如安东尼·M·肯尼迪大法官在《拉弗勒诉库珀案》（Lafler v. Cooper，2012）中为多数派所写的那样，“当今的刑事司法在很大程度上是一种辩诉制度，而不是审判制度”。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。尽管已经有一些有影响力且重要的研究，其中就认罪决定过程采访了被告和法院行为人，但这项研究主要是在 30 至 40 年前针对与当今不同的法院系统进行的。从那时起，有关法院以及辩诉交易的程序和流行程度的许多方面都发生了变化。该项目开始通过对被告、辩护律师和检察官进行半结构化访谈来填补这一空白，以调查被告如何看待和理解他们在法律体系中所面临的选择和必要条件。该项目更广泛的影响是阐明内部（特定于个人）和外部（特定于系统）理由如何影响认罪决策，以及对被告理由的看法如何影响检察官的认罪提议和辩护律师对其委托人的建议，以及他们彼此之间的谈判策略。这项研究的重点是三角测量和检查影响认罪决定的因素和背后的理由。 被告人、辩护人、检察官的观点。与被告的面谈将考察他们对认罪的具体案件的经历和看法，而辩护律师和检察官将接受更广泛的面谈，了解他们对一般被告认罪决定理由的看法，以及这些看法如何影响认罪提议或接受提议的建议。所有访谈都将是半结构化的，包括用于在三组之间进行比较的平行假设场景，并纳入开放式和封闭式问题，以确保类似和可比较的问题回答结构。这些开放式反应将使用归纳和系统的方法进行审查，并将植根于扎根的现象学理论。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，为了使这项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利用过去与认罪决策相关的研究来开发可靠的编码方案，用于对本研究中的开放式访谈回答进行编码和分析。研究结果将作为一系列从业者和学术文章、报告和会议演示文稿进行传播，描述抗辩决策背后的理由、因素和看法。最终，这项研究将有助于进一步审查法律决策、律师与委托人、辩护人与检察官之间的关系，以及与辩诉谈判过程背景相关的程序正义