Satisfaction, Legitimacy, and Guilty Pleas: How Perceptions and Attorneys Affect Defendant Decision-Making

“Reject the Offer”: The Asymmetric Impact of Defense Attorneys’ Plea Recommendations

“…Studies using a variety of methodologies have found that defense attorney recommendation influences defendant plea decisions (Henderson & Levett, 2018; Henderson & Shteynberg, 2020; Lee et al, 2020). Using a modified cheating paradigm, Henderson and Levett (2018) found that attorney recommendation had a larger effect on innocent individuals’ decisions than on guilty individuals.…”

“…Taken together, the effect of attorney recommendation on innocent and guilty individuals’ willingness to plead guilty is mixed, but importantly, this prior research has used a variety of methodologies and attorney statements (e.g., overt recommendations versus evaluations of the offer). For example, Lee and colleagues (2020) found that the attorney had a stronger influence on guilty participants, whereas Henderson and Levett (2018) found the effect to be stronger for innocent participants. But Lee and colleagues used a vignette and manipulated the attorney’s evaluation of the plea offer (similar to Redlich & Shteynberg, 2016), whereas Henderson and Levett employed a high-stakes deception and manipulated the attorney’s overt offer (similar to Henderson & Shteynberg, 2020).…”

“…Bordens (1984) included a “firmness of decision” scale, ranging from “a decision that you’re unsure about” to “a decision that you feel confident about” (11-point scale), but it arguably measured decision confidence more than decision firmness. More recently, Lee and colleagues (2020) introduced an even more sensitive method of measuring influences on plea outcomes; specifically, they measured and examined relative differences in willingness to accept a plea (WTAP) at two time points–both before and after hearing the attorney’s evaluations of the offer (i.e., whether the plea offer was “good,” “bad,” or “average”).…”

“…Capturing changes in WTAP provides a more sensitive measure of defense attorney influence that could be missed or masked in a dichotomous decision outcome. To date, Lee and colleagues (2020) are the only researchers to include this scalar WTAP measure, but their research focused on the attorney’s evaluation of the offer, which allows for alternative explanations of their findings. For instance, participant-defendants told that the attorney believed the offer was “good,” could have interpreted that to mean a “great” or “better” offer could be forthcoming.…”

“…For instance, participant-defendants told that the attorney believed the offer was “good,” could have interpreted that to mean a “great” or “better” offer could be forthcoming. In fact, Lee and colleagues (2020) included a number of other manipulations and variables related to attorneys and plea decisions to further explore the theoretical mechanisms that might underlie their results (e.g., defendants’ satisfaction with their attorney). In Study 2, we also chose to use this more sensitive WTAP measure.…”