Showing papers by "Stephanos Bibas published in 2004"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the various structural forces that warp the bargaining process of criminal and civil bargainers, including overconfidence, denial, discounting, risk preferences, loss aversion, framing, and anchoring.
Abstract: Plea-bargaining literature predicts that parties strike plea bargains in the shadows of expected trial outcomes. In other words, parties forecast the expected sentence after trial, discount it by the probability of acquittal, and offer some proportional discount. This oversimplified model ignores how structural distortions skew bargaining outcomes, causing them to diverge from trial outcomes. Part I of this Article explores the various structural forces that warp plea bargains. Agency costs, attorney compensation and workloads, resources, sentencing and bail rules, and information deficits all skew bargaining. In addition, psychological biases and heuristics warp judgments. Part II applies recent research from behavioral law and economics and cognitive psychology to critique plea bargaining. Overconfidence, denial, discounting, risk preferences, loss aversion, framing, and anchoring all affect bargaining decisions. Skilled lawyers can partly counteract some of these problems, but they can also overcompensate. The oversimplified shadow-of-trial model of plea bargaining needs to be supplemented by a structural-psychological perspective. On this perspective, uncertainty, money, self-interest, and demographic variation greatly influence plea bargains. Part III explores how to respond to the various structural and psychological influences that warp plea bargains. Reforming systems of defense counsel, bail rules, and the structure of sentencing rules, and increasing use of mediators and judges in bargaining could ameliorate some of these influences. Other problems, such as demographic variations in psychology, are very difficult to correct. These influences cast light on how civil and criminal bargaining differ in important respects.
196 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: Criminal procedure should encourage and use remorse and apology to serve these substantive values at every stage, from before arrest through charging to pleas and sentences as discussed by the authors, and break down the artificial separation between substantive values and criminal procedure by harnessing procedure to serve the criminal law's substantive moral goals.
Abstract: Criminal procedure largely ignores remorse and apology or, at most, uses them as proxies for an individual defendant's badness. The field is preoccupied with procedural values such as efficiency, accuracy, and procedural fairness, to the exclusion of the criminal law's substantive moral values. Likewise, most legal scholars either ignore remorse and apology or squeeze them into the individual badness model, neglecting the broader roles that they can play in reconciling and educating offenders and healing victims and communities.The narrow focus on individual badness slights the broader value of remorse and apology and misses a crucial point. Crime is more than just individual wrongdoing; it harms social relationships. Currently, remorse and apology serve only as poor gauges of how much deterrence and retribution individual offenders need. Ideally, these tools would play much larger roles in mending the social, relational harms from crime. Remorse and apology are valuable ways to heal wounded relationships, vindicate victims, and educate, reconcile, and reintegrate offenders into the community.Criminal procedure should encourage and use remorse and apology to serve these substantive values at every stage, from before arrest through charging to pleas and sentences. The broader aim is twofold: to recognize the social dimension of criminal wrongdoing and punishment, and to break down the artificial separation between substantive values and criminal procedure by harnessing procedure to serve the criminal law's substantive moral goals.
76 citations
TL;DR: Criminal procedure should encourage and use remorse and apology to serve these substantive values at every stage, from before arrest through charging to pleas and sentences as mentioned in this paper, and break down the artificial separation between substantive values and criminal procedure by harnessing procedure to serve the criminal law's substantive moral goals.
Abstract: Criminal procedure largely ignores remorse and apology or, at most, uses them as proxies for an individual defendant's badness. The field is preoccupied with procedural values such as efficiency, accuracy, and procedural fairness, to the exclusion of the criminal law's substantive moral values. Likewise, most legal scholars either ignore remorse and apology or squeeze them into the individual badness model, neglecting the broader roles that they can play in reconciling and educating offenders and healing victims and communities.The narrow focus on individual badness slights the broader value of remorse and apology and misses a crucial point. Crime is more than just individual wrongdoing; it harms social relationships. Currently, remorse and apology serve only as poor gauges of how much deterrence and retribution individual offenders need. Ideally, these tools would play much larger roles in mending the social, relational harms from crime. Remorse and apology are valuable ways to heal wounded relationships, vindicate victims, and educate, reconcile, and reintegrate offenders into the community.Criminal procedure should encourage and use remorse and apology to serve these substantive values at every stage, from before arrest through charging to pleas and sentences. The broader aim is twofold: to recognize the social dimension of criminal wrongdoing and punishment, and to break down the artificial separation between substantive values and criminal procedure by harnessing procedure to serve the criminal law's substantive moral goals.
61 citations
TL;DR: In 2003, Congress passed the PROTECT bill (popularly known as the Amber Alert), which creates a national notification system for child kidnappings as mentioned in this paper, and the House-Senate Conference Committee narrowed the amendment, limiting many of its changes to child pornography and child sex cases.
Abstract: Congress has come close to a drive-by rewrite of sentencing law, and a sentencing revolution may still be in the works. On April 10, 2003, Congress passed the PROTECT bill (popularly known as Amber Alert), which creates a national notification system for child kidnappings. On March 26, while the bill was pending, the House of Representatives passed the Feeney Amendment to the bill.' The original amendment was an unprecedented attempt by Congress to rewrite the Sentencing Guidelines by itself without the input or expertise of the Sentencing Commission. The House-Senate Conference Committee narrowed the amendment, limiting many of its changes to child pornography and child sex cases. The revised amendment nonetheless changes the Sentencing Guidelines substantially, and it instructs the Sentencing Commission to make many more changes within the next six months. The likely result is many fewer Guideline departures, less judicial discretion, and more prosecutorial control. The losers are defendants and judges, and the winners are prosecutors. Prosecutorial leverage to plea bargain will be at an all-time high, resulting in fewer trials, more bargains, and higher sentences. Judges used to check prosecutorial harshness, but now they are increasingly powerless unless prosecutors deign to grant leniency.
9 citations
TL;DR: Strickland v. Washington tries to guarantee criminal defendants effective assistance of counsel by individually reviewing each defense lawyer's performance after the fact as discussed by the authors. But despite much terrible lawyering, courts rarely reverse convictions.
Abstract: Strickland v. Washington tries to guarantee criminal defendants effective assistance of counsel by individually reviewing each defense lawyer's performance after-the-fact. Despite much terrible lawyering, courts rarely reverse convictions. Why? Behavioral psychology provides a key insight: Judges have difficulty reviewing individual lawyers' performance in hindsight. While the Supreme Court and some commentators have worried about the dangers of Monday-morning quarterbacking and 20/20 hindsight, they have overlooked the greater danger that in retrospect, convictions appear inevitable. Psychologists call this the inevitability or confirmatory bias. Strickland's vagueness and its refusal to lay down more specific guidelines for counsel exacerbate this problem by leaving plenty of room for the inevitability bias. The poor records surrounding guilty pleas further exacerbate the problem. The better solution is to move from case-by-case retrospective review to prospective efforts to improve indigent-defender systems, whether through structural-reform litigation or legislative change.
7 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In Blakely v. Washington (2004), the Supreme Court held that any fact that raises the maximum sentence that a judge may impose by law must be found by a jury, not a judge, beyond a reasonable doubt as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In Blakely v. Washington (2004), the Supreme Court held that any fact that raises the maximum sentence that a judge may impose by law must be found by a jury, not a judge, beyond a reasonable doubt. Blakely raises far more questions than it resolves. In this limited space, I address five clusters of issues. Part I discusses how far Blakely is likely to go, and in particular whether it reaches the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Part II addresses a host of transitional issues, especially what is left of the Federal Guidelines if Blakely applies to them. Part III discusses possible Blakely fixes or patches. Part IV considers briefly how plea bargaining might look different in a post-Blakely world. Finally, Part V muses on some of the fascinating jurisprudential issues raised by Blakely, such as the tension between formalism and pragmatism and the role of 18th-century history in our 21st-century world.
7 citations
TL;DR: In Blakely v. Washington (2004), the Supreme Court held that any fact that raises the maximum sentence that a judge may impose by law must be found by a jury, not a judge, beyond a reasonable doubt as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In Blakely v. Washington (2004), the Supreme Court held that any fact that raises the maximum sentence that a judge may impose by law must be found by a jury, not a judge, beyond a reasonable doubt. Blakely raises far more questions than it resolves. In this limited space, I address five clusters of issues. Part I discusses how far Blakely is likely to go, and in particular whether it reaches the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Part II addresses a host of transitional issues, especially what is left of the Federal Guidelines if Blakely applies to them. Part III discusses possible Blakely fixes or patches. Part IV considers briefly how plea bargaining might look different in a post-Blakely world. Finally, Part V muses on some of the fascinating jurisprudential issues raised by Blakely, such as the tension between formalism and pragmatism and the role of 18th-century history in our 21st-century world.
6 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine how the Supreme Court's majority and dissent could look at Blakely in such radically different ways and conclude that Blakely is a mindless formalism, just another hoop for legislatures to jump through or to evade.
Abstract: This essay, originally presented at the Stanford Law School symposium The Future of American Sentencing: A National Roundtable on Blakely, examines how the Supreme Court's majority and dissent could look at Blakely in such radically different ways. As the majority sees it, Blakely is a fundamental, ringing vindication of the substantive right to jury trial. On this view, Blakely should be fully retroactive to habeas and for Ex Post Facto purposes. But the dissent's view was so different that the two sides were speaking past each other. On that view, Blakely is a mindless formalism, just another hoop for legislatures to jump through or to evade. Though I have been the leading critic of the Apprendi/Blakely line of cases, I must give the Supreme Court credit for forcing us to confront and bridge the artificial divide between substantive criminal law and criminal procedure. What is a crime - is it whatever the legislature labels as a crime? And why have a distinct sentencing phase, after the guilt phase and run by a different factfinder using looser procedures? Do these artificial divisions distract us from the moral import and message that our criminal justice system should be sending? Apprendi and Blakely asked the right questions but gave the wrong answers. A better approach, I argue, would use not the Fifth and Sixth Amendments but the Eighth Amendment to regulate statutory and guideline penalties equally.
1 citations