Reference no: EM134038983

Question

More than 95% of criminal convictions in the United States are secured by guilty pleas. Our current understanding of the "deals" that lead so many to plead guilty is often tied to the shadow-of-the-trial (SoT) model, which posits that plea outcomes rely solely on the penalty discrepancy they offer (represented as: [trial conviction probability 3 trial sentence] - plea sentence). This study compared the power of the SoT model to predict plea outcomes with two expanded models. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that the SoT model's power to predict whether defendants will accept a plea offer could be improved by expanding the model. The first expanded model added a main effect of guilt status, presuming that regardless of pen- alty discrepancy, the guilty will be more likely to accept plea offers than the innocent. The second expanded model added an interactive effect of guilt status with penalty discrepancy: although greater dis- crepancies would increase both true and false guilty pleas, the magnitude of the effect would be greater among the innocent.