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Gwen Filosa, Woman Changes Guilty Plea in Killing, TIMES-PICAYUNE (New Orleans), May 4, 2004, at B-1 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting a murder victim's mother after the alleged killer changed her guilty plea); see also Carol Demare, Victim at Peace with Boxley Plea Deal, TIMES UNION (Albany), Dec. 24, 2003, at B1 (quoting the sexual assault victim of a politically powerful defendant as saying, "[a]ctually, I was relieved that a plea bargain could be reached," and noting that she was "extremely nervous" about testifying). Thomasi McDonald, Parents Accept Wreck Penalty, NEWS & OBSERVER (Raleigh), July 2, 2004, at BI (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting a manslaughter victim's father, who was responding to the killer's acceptance of a plea bargain); see also Demare, supra note 1, at B1 (quoting the victim as saying, "I felt most importantly that Boxley be held accountable for what he did and [the plea] took care of that").

INTRODUCTION When it comes to plea bargaining, we have created a false dilemma. The dilemma grows out of the central reality of criminal adjudication in the United States. The vast majority of criminal cases are resolved through guilty pleas rather than trials. 1 Most of those guilty pleas result from negotiations between prosecution and defense. 2 Scholars, judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and politicians have offered only two basic responses to the fact that guilt is mostly resolved through negotiated guilty pleas: They take it or they leave it. Some take the system more or less as it is. They accept negotiated pleas in the ordinary course of events, either because such a system produces good results or because it is inevitable. 3 They might identify some exceptional cases that create an intolerable risk of convicting innocent defendants, or unusual cases where there are special reasons to doubt the knowing and voluntary nature of the defendant's plea. These special cases might call for some regulation. 4 But the mine run of cases, in this view, must be resolved with a heavy dose of plea bargains and a sprinkling of trials. 5 1. In the federal system, the proportion of convictions obtained through pleas of guilty or nolo contendere has reached 95%, and has been climbing steadily for over 30 years. In the state systems, guilty pleas accounted for 94% of felony convictions in 1998. See

INTRODUCTION When it comes to plea bargaining, we have created a false dilemma. The dilemma grows out of the central reality of criminal adjudication in the United States. The vast majority of criminal cases are resolved through guilty pleas rather than trials. 1 Most of those guilty pleas result from negotiations between prosecution and defense. 2 Scholars, judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and politicians have offered only two basic responses to the fact that guilt is mostly resolved through negotiated guilty pleas: They take it or they leave it. Some take the system more or less as it is. They accept negotiated pleas in the ordinary course of events, either because such a system produces good results or because it is inevitable. 3 They might identify some exceptional cases that create an intolerable risk of convicting innocent defendants, or unusual cases where there are special reasons to doubt the knowing and voluntary nature of the defendant's plea. These special cases might call for some regulation. 4 But the mine run of cases, in this view, must be resolved with a heavy dose of plea bargains and a sprinkling of trials. 5 1. In the federal system, the proportion of convictions obtained through pleas of guilty or nolo contendere has reached 95%, and has been climbing steadily for over 30 years. In the state systems, guilty pleas accounted for 94% of felony convictions in 1998. See

In this article we rethink the connection between prosecutorial experience and conviction psychology that undergirds much of the academic literature about wrongful convictions. The conviction psychology account of prosecutorial behavior asserts that prosecutorial susceptibility to cognitive biases deepens over time, thereby increasing the risk that prosecutors will become involved in wrongful convictions the longer they stay in the profession. Our interviews with more than 200 state prosecutors call into question the basis for this asserted correlation between prosecutorial experience and risk of misconduct. The prosecutors we met consistently reported that, all else equal, prosecutors tend to become more balanced, rather than more adversarial, over time. Hence, the prosecutors who present the greatest risk of producing a wrongful conviction are those who are either inexperienced or resistant to the normal maturation process. For this reason, we suggest that wrongful conviction researchers and database designers pay closer attention to the variables associated with prosecutorial experience and resistance that might affect the development of prosecutorial maturity and the consequent risk of wrongful convictions.