Prosecutor Elections, Mistakes, and Appeals

McCannon, Bryan C.

doi:10.1111/jels.12024

Cited by 61 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…These results relate to the previous literature on extralegal influences in judicial outcomes (Danziger et al, 2011;Eren & Mocan, 2018;Chen & Philippe, 2017;McCannon, 2013;Bandyopadhyay & McCannon, 2014). This result points to a potentially disturbing reality within the criminal justice system.…”

Section: Regional Analysissupporting

confidence: 83%

Three Essays in Law and Economics

Bonneau¹

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This dissertation investigates three relevant topics in law and economics literature. The first chapter explores the effectiveness of a crime prevention policy in Detroit, Project Green Light. The second chapter empirically evaluates the dominant theory of plea bargaining in economics, using police officer deaths as plausibly exogenous variation to the sentencing process. The final chapter examines the impact of new public prison openings in the state of Florida. The first chapter, "Does Increased Surveillance Deter or Displace Crime? An Evaluation of Detroit's Project Green Light" considers the direct and indirect effects of Detroit's Project Green Light. This initiative began in 2016 and was aimed at reducing crime around high-risk businesses. The approach to combating crime is through the installation of CCTV camera systems with a direct feed into a real-time crime center for rapid notification of crimes. Additionally, all calls from these participating businesses were designated priority 1, the highest designation for the police department, with the intention of decreasing response times to these suspected crimes. To evaluate this program, geo-located crime and calls for service data are utilized. Additionally, the effects were considered at the business-block level, as well as throughout traditional buffer zones. Reductions in crime can be found in the business block that housed the green light, with a potential diffusion of benefits to their immediate neighbors. Using calls for service produces mixed results and suggest that there may be an increase in proactive policing within these areas. Lastly, response times do appear to decrease significantly. In the second chapter, "Bargaining in the Shadow of the Trial? Deaths of Law Enforcement Officials and the Plea Bargaining Process" Dr. Bryan McCannon and I empirically test the dominant theory of plea bargaining in the economics literature. This theory is difficult to test, however, due to the endogeneity of reforms and the private information that may be driving the bargaining process. We contribute by using plausibly exogenous variation using deaths of law enforcement officials on a data set of all felonies processed from 2004-2017 within the state of Florida. We argue that deaths of law enforcement officials are salient to the potential voter base, thus increasing the probability of conviction at trial, funneling back into the plea bargaining process through harsher plea bargained sentence agreements. If this is the case, it would be evidence in support that plea bargaining occurs in the shadow of the trial. This is found. Considering only cases that were already in process at the time of a death, and located within the same county as the death, we find a 13% increase in plea bargaining sentences on average. Numerous alternative specifications were conducted to evaluate heterogeneous effects, in which we find more salient (gunfire deaths, expansive newspaper coverage, and public dedications) produce stronger effects. Lastly, to verify this occurs through the...

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Section: Regional Analysissupporting

confidence: 83%

Three Essays in Law and Economics

Bonneau¹

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“…Let us quote three papers. McCannon (2013) shows that when the prosecutor is running for reelection, the probability of wrongful convictions increases significantly. Therefore, future electoral prospects affect prosecutors' decisions.…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Presumption of Innocence and Deterrence

Obidzinski¹,

Oytana²

2020

JITE

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This paper deals with the presumption of innocence and the law enforcer's incentives to exert investigative effort. Our main result is that, even if the presumption of guilt maximizes deterrence for a given effort by the law enforcer, divergent objectives between the law enforcer (who maximizes the probability of a conviction weighted by the magnitude of the sanction and the type of the citizen) and the public decision-maker (who minimizes social costs) may lead the latter to prefer the presumption of innocence. Indeed, the presumption of innocence may induce the law enforcer to increase investigative efforts thereby improving deterrence. As a consequence, if the law enforcer's effort is relatively efficient compared with its cost, and if the external harm from the crime is high enough, considering the law enforcer's effort as an endogenous variable tilts the balance in favor of the presumption of innocence. Therefore, under some conditions, the presumption of innocence does not interfere with deterrence.

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“…Boylan (2005) finds that the length of prison sentences obtained is positivelyrelated to the career paths of U.S. attorneys. McCannon (2013) and Bandyopadhyay and McCannon (2014) find evidence that prosecutors up for reelection seek to increase the number of convictions at trial; when it is an election year, this involves pursuing weaker cases, which leads to more reversals on appeal.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence Suppression by Prosecutors: Violations of the Brady Rule

Daughety

Reinganum

2018

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization

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We develop a model of individual prosecutors (and teams of prosecutors) and show how, in equilibrium, team-formation can lead to increased incentives to suppress evidence (relative to those faced by a lone prosecutor). Our model assumes that each individual prosecutor trades off a desire for career advancement (by winning a case) and a disutility for knowingly convicting an innocent defendant by suppressing exculpatory evidence. We assume a population of prosecutors that is heterogeneous with respect to this disutility, and each individual's disutility rate is their own private information. A convicted defendant may later discover the exculpatory information; a judge will then void the conviction and may order an investigation. If the prosecutor is found to have violated the defendant's Brady rights (to exculpatory evidence), this results in a penalty for the prosecutor. The payoff from winning a case is a public good (among the team members) while any penalties are private bads. The anticipated game between the prosecutors and the reviewing judge is the main focus of this paper. The decision to investigate a sole prosecutor, or a team of prosecutors, is determined endogenously. We show that the equilibrium assignment of roles within the team involves concentration of authority about suppressing/disclosing evidence. We further consider the effect of office culture, and informal sanctions within a prosecution team, on evidence suppression.

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Prosecutor Elections, Mistakes, and Appeals

Cited by 61 publications

References 22 publications

Three Essays in Law and Economics

Three Essays in Law and Economics

Presumption of Innocence and Deterrence

Evidence Suppression by Prosecutors: Violations of the Brady Rule

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