IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/joecth/v57y2014i1p59-88.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Plea bargaining: on the selection of jury trials

Author

Listed:
  • SangMok Lee

Abstract

We consider a model of the criminal court process, focusing on plea bargaining. A plea bargain provides unequal incentives to go to trial because innocent defendants are more willing to plead not guilty. We show that the court process implements the preferences of the person or group who is most concerned about wrongful conviction. If a prosecutor is more concerned about wrongful conviction than the jury, the prosecutor can shape the defendant pool at trial so that jurors act according to prosecutor’s preferences against judicial mistakes. Our model also connects insights from strategic jury models that usually omit plea bargaining with the actual criminal court process where most cases are resolved through plea bargaining. As an example, we show that the inferiority of the unanimity rule established in Feddersen and Pesendorfer (Am Polit Sci Rev 92(1):23–35, 1998 ) persists in spite of the addition of plea bargaining. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Suggested Citation

  • SangMok Lee, 2014. "Plea bargaining: on the selection of jury trials," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 57(1), pages 59-88, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joecth:v:57:y:2014:i:1:p:59-88
    DOI: 10.1007/s00199-014-0801-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00199-014-0801-7
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00199-014-0801-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Reinganum, Jennifer F, 1988. "Plea Bargaining and Prosecutorial Discretion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 713-728, September.
    2. Feddersen, Timothy & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1998. "Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts under Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(1), pages 23-35, March.
    3. In-Koo Cho & David M. Kreps, 1987. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 179-221.
    4. Roman Inderst, 2003. "Alternating-offer bargaining over menus under incomplete information," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 22(2), pages 419-429, September.
    5. George L. Priest & Benjamin Klein, 1984. "The Selection of Disputes for Litigation," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(1), pages 1-56, January.
    6. David Bjerk, 2007. "Guilt Shall Not Escape or Innocence Suffer? The Limits of Plea Bargaining When Defendant Guilt is Uncertain," American Law and Economics Review, Oxford University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 305-329.
    7. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
    8. Cooter, Robert D & Rubinfeld, Daniel L, 1989. "Economic Analysis of Legal Disputes and Their Resolution," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 1067-1097, September.
    9. Grossman, Gene M & Katz, Michael L, 1983. "Plea Bargaining and Social Welfare," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(4), pages 749-757, September.
    10. Gerardi, Dino & Yariv, Leeat, 2007. "Deliberative voting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 317-338, May.
    11. Mehmet Bac, 2000. "Signaling bargaining power: Strategic delay versus restricted offers," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 16(1), pages 227-237.
    12. Lutz-Alexander Busch & Ignatius J. Horstmann, 1999. "Signaling via an agenda in multi-issue bargaining with incomplete information," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 13(3), pages 561-575.
    13. Baker, Scott & Mezzetti, Claudio, 2001. "Prosecutorial Resources, Plea Bargaining, and the Decision to Go to Trial," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(1), pages 149-167, April.
    14. Feddersen, Timothy J & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1996. "The Swing Voter's Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 408-424, June.
    15. David Austen-Smith & Timothy Feddersen, 2005. "Deliberation and Voting Rules," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: David Austen-Smith & John Duggan (ed.), Social Choice and Strategic Decisions, pages 269-316, Springer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David Bjerk, 2021. "Socially Optimal Plea Bargaining With Costly Trials And Bayesian Juries," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(1), pages 263-279, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. SIDDHARTHA BANDYOPADHYAY & BRYAN C. McCANNON, 2015. "Prosecutorial Retention: Signaling by Trial," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 17(2), pages 219-256, April.
    2. Lewis, Tracy R & Poitevin, Michel, 1997. "Disclosure of Information in Regulatory Proceedings," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 50-73, April.
    3. Jacob K. Goeree & Leeat Yariv, 2009. "An experimental study of jury deliberation," IEW - Working Papers 438, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    4. Sourav Bhattacharya, 2006. "Preference Monotonicity and Information Aggregation in Elections," Working Paper 325, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Dec 2008.
    5. Christmann, Robin, 2018. "Prosecution and Conviction under Hindsight Bias in Adversary Legal Systems," MPRA Paper 84870, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Bryan C McCannon, 2010. "Re-election Concerns and the Failure of Plea Bargaining," Discussion Papers 10-28, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    7. Luke Garrod & Bruce Lyons, 2016. "Early Settlement in European Merger Control," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(1), pages 27-63, March.
    8. Schwarz Mordechai E., 2012. "Subgame Perfect Plea Bargaining in Biform Judicial Contests," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 297-330, September.
    9. Jeong-Yoo Kim, 2010. "Credible plea bargaining," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 279-293, June.
    10. Konstantinos Ioannidis & Theo Offerman & Randolph Sloof, 2020. "Lie detection: A strategic analysis of the Verifiability Approach," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 20-029/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    11. Patrick Hummel, 2012. "Deliberation in large juries with diverse preferences," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(3), pages 595-608, March.
    12. Andrew F. Daughety & Jennifer F. Reinganum, 2016. "Selecting among Acquitted Defendants: Procedural Choice versus Selective Compensation," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 172(1), pages 113-133, March.
    13. McCannon, Bryan C., 2010. "Homicide trials in Classical Athens," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 46-51, March.
    14. Mark T. Le Quement & Isabel Marcin, 2016. "Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2016_05, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, revised Oct 2016.
    15. Mongrain, Steeve & Roberts, Joanne, 2009. "Plea bargaining with budgetary constraints," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 8-12, March.
    16. Kawamura, Kohei & Vlaseros, Vasileios, 2017. "Expert information and majority decisions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 77-88.
    17. Iaryczower, Matias & Lewis, Garrett & Shum, Matthew, 2013. "To elect or to appoint? Bias, information, and responsiveness of bureaucrats and politicians," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 230-244.
    18. Alessandro Ispano & Péter Vida, 2020. "Custodial Interrogations," THEMA Working Papers 2020-05, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    19. Bryan C. McCannon & Joylynn Pruitt, 2018. "Taking on the boss: Informative contests in prosecutor elections," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 20(5), pages 657-671, October.
    20. Sylvain Bourjade & Patrick Rey & Paul Seabright, 2009. "Private Antitrust Enforcement In The Presence Of Pre‐Trial Bargaining," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(3), pages 372-409, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Plea bargaining; Strategic voting; Collective choice; Jury trial; C72; D71; K41;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:joecth:v:57:y:2014:i:1:p:59-88. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.