ABSTRACT
The vast majority of criminal convictions in the United States are the result of a plea bargain, with 97 to 99% of convictions resulting from guilty pleas (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010; Kaban & Quinlan, 2004). It has been well established that defendants receive a discount for pleading guilty, and while criminologists have tended to use perspectives such as focal concerns theory to explain variation in plea discounts, legal scholars have focused more on the “bargaining in the shadow of the trial” model to explain such variation. The “shadow of the trial” theory argues that decisions to offer, accept, or reject pleas derive from the perceived probable outcome of a trial (Bibas, 2004). This implies that evidence strength should drive plea decisions insofar as strong evidentiary cases lead to trial convictions (Bushway, Redlich, & Norris, 2014). However, it has been debated whether strength of evidence is in fact the sole driver of convictions; other factors such as defendant characteristics and offense type have been found to impact the plea bargain a defendant receives (King et al., 2005; Rhodes, 1979; Ulmer & Bradley, 2006). This chapter will: (1) review the legal and empirical literature on the shadow model and research on other factors that could also drive plea bargaining; (2) explore some of these factors though new data obtained from systematic observations of plea hearings and interviews with defendants; and (3) provide future research directions to continue improving the shadow model’s ability to further our understanding of this system of pleas.
