Courtroom Dynamics, Plea Bargaining, and Sentencing: A Criminal Justice Analysis

Posted on Feb 28, 2025 in Criminology

Chapter 11

Courtroom Workgroup: Formal vs. Informal

  • Local Legal Culture: Norms shared by a court community, focusing on case handling and participant behavior in the judicial process.
  • Influences court operations in three ways:
    • Norms (shared values and expectations) help distinguish between courts. Judges and prosecutors often highlight their unique approaches.
    • Norms dictate how members treat each other. Some courts may discourage strong adversarial defenses, while others expect them.
    • Norms describe case processing, such as the “going rate” for sentencing based on the defendant’s record and other factors. Local legal culture also includes attitudes on plea negotiations, continuances, and public defender eligibility.
  • Workgroup: Individuals interacting in the workplace, sharing goals, and developing norms.
    • Important in analyzing urban courts with multiple courtrooms, numerous lawyers and judges, and heavy caseloads.
    • Formal: When shared norms fail to develop, cases proceed formally, with actors having fewer chances to follow agreed-upon routines.
    • Informal: Many shared expectations and consistent relationships ease the work through cooperation, allowing members to achieve their goals.
    • Each position represents a different organization: the court sends judges, the prosecuting office sends assistant prosecutors, and the public defender’s office sends counsel for indigents.
    • The workgroup relies on probation officers to provide accurate information in presentence reports about the defendant’s prior convictions and family history.

Plea Bargaining

  • Negotiating a settlement, often the most crucial step, as few cases go to trial.
  • Santobello v. New York: Chief Justice Warren Burger ruled that prosecutors must fulfill promises made during plea negotiations.
  • Four reasons why plea bargains are highly desirable:
    • If every case went to trial, governments would need many more courts and judges.
    • Plea bargaining leads to the prompt and largely final disposition of most criminal cases.
    • Plea bargaining reduces the time pretrial detainees spend in jail.
    • Defendants pleading guilty to serious charges can be moved to prisons with programs instead of enduring jail idleness.
    • By disposing of cases more quickly, plea bargaining reduces the time released suspects spend free on bail, better protecting the public.
    • Offenders pleading guilty to serious charges can move more quickly into prison counseling, training, and education programs designed to rehabilitate offenders.
  • Defendants can have their cases completed more quickly, avoiding the uncertainty of a judge and potentially receiving less than the maximum punishment.
  • Prosecutors gain an easy conviction, even with insufficient evidence.
  • Saves time, money, and resources.
  • Helps public defenders cope with large caseloads.
  • Judges avoid time-consuming trials.
  • Tactics of prosecutors and defense:
    • Unspoken rule of openness and candor; outcomes may depend on relationships between prosecutors and attorneys, the defense counsel’s willingness to fight, and the judge’s inclination to get involved.
    • Prosecutor tactic: Multiple offense indictment – especially important in difficult cases where the victim is reluctant to provide information, the value of the stolen item is in question, or evidence may not be reliable. Charging more offenses causes the defendant to plead to a lesser crime.
    • Defense attorneys view: Prosecutors hold the upper hand through their ability to file multiple charges. Even without evidence, the defense attorney must be concerned that a jury might convict the defendant based on limited evidence, especially if the defendant has a prior criminal record.
    • Defense attorneys may threaten a jury trial if concessions are not made, strengthened by pretrial motions requiring a formal response by the prosecutor.
    • Another DA tactic: Rescheduling pretrial activities, hoping witnesses become unavailable, media attention fades, or memories diminish.
    • Both the prosecutor and the DA need cooperation from the defendant and judge.

Legal Issues in Plea Bargaining

  • Boykin v. Alabama: The Supreme Court ruled that defendants must state they made their pleas voluntarily before acceptance by a judge.
    • Judges use standard forms with questions for the defendant to affirm in open court. The defendant must understand the consequences of pleading guilty and confirm the plea is not obtained through pressure or coercion.
    • Can be withdrawn if the defendant shows a “just and fair reason” (US v. Hyde).
  • North Carolina v. Alford: The court allowed a defendant to enter a guilty plea for a lesser sentence, even while maintaining innocence.
  • Ricketts v. Adamson: Defendants must uphold the plea agreement or risk going to trial and receiving a harsher sentence.
  • Bordenkircher v. Hayes: A prosecutor’s warning that failure to agree to a guilty plea would result in a harsher sentence did not violate a defendant’s rights.
  • Plea bargains can present difficult decisions for defendants, especially if the prosecutor insists on a long prison sentence.

Criticisms of Plea Bargaining

  • Two main types:
    • Due process: Plea bargaining is unfair because defendants give up constitutional rights, such as the right to a trial by jury.
    • Sentencing policy: Plea bargaining reduces society’s interest in appropriate punishments for crimes. Urban areas with high caseloads make concessions based on administrative needs, resulting in lighter sentences.
  • Hidden from judicial scrutiny; made early on, so the judge doesn’t know all the facts.
  • Does not happen in a uniform manner.
  • Innocent people may plead guilty, usually those with little education, low social status, mental problems, and a lack of confidence to say no to an attorney. They lack faith in the system’s ability to protect their rights, so they accept a lighter punishment.

Jury/Bench Trials

  • Adversary process: Open battle between opposing lawyers, assumed to be the best way to discover the truth.
  • Around 2% of felony convictions were jury trials; the rest are bench trials – trials conducted by a judge who acts as fact-finder and determines issues of law.
  • Six vital functions of the US criminal justice system:
    • Prevent government oppression by safeguarding citizens against arbitrary law enforcement.
    • Determine whether the accused is guilty based on the evidence presented.
    • Represent diverse community interests so that no single set of values or biases dominates decision-making.
    • Serve as a buffer between the accused and the accuser.
    • Promote knowledge about the criminal justice system by learning about it through jury duty.
    • Symbolize the rule of law and the community foundation that supports the criminal justice system.
  • Williams v. Florida: Upheld the use of small juries.
  • Burch v. Louisiana: Six-member juries must vote unanimously to convict.

The Trial Process

  1. Jury Selection
    • Venire: Potential jury pool.
    • Voir dire: Used to question prospective jurors to screen out those who might be biased.
    • Challenge for cause: Removal of a prospective juror by showing bias. The number of these challenges permitted to attorneys is potentially unlimited.
    • Peremptory challenge: Removal of a prospective juror without giving any reason (12 in mass for life cases/serious ones, usually 4, usually 8-10). If a jury of 6, they get 2.
  2. Opening Statements
    • Prosecutor goes first in mass.
    • Summary of the case, what you think or expect.
    • Not evidence; said after the clerk reads the complaint (indictment or information) detailing the charges.
  3. Presentation of the Prosecution’s Evidence
    • First, real evidence: weapon, records, fingerprints.
    • Then demonstrative evidence (X-rays, photos).
    • Testimony: Oral, witness.
    • Direct evidence: Eye witness, can only testify to what they saw, heard, etc., not their opinion.
    • Circumstantial evidence: Jury must infer a fact from what the witness observed.
    • Expert witnesses get to testify about their opinion.
    • Prosecution rests; possible to rest without calling any witnesses.
  4. Presentation of the Defense
    • Defense is not required to answer the case presented by the prosecution.
    • Strategies:
      • Contrary evidence is introduced to rebut or cast doubt on the state’s case.
      • An alibi is offered.
      • An affirmative defense is presented.
    • Defendant is never required to testify – 5th Amendment.
    • Cross-examination: Questioning by the opposing attorney, trying to get under their skin.
  5. Rebuttal witnesses can be called after the defense rests.
    • Witnesses whose statements discredit or counteract testimony presented on behalf of the defendant.
  6. Closing Arguments
    • When all the evidence is presented, the prosecution and defense both make closing arguments.
    • Defense goes first to show that the prosecution has not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt and that the testimony raised questions but did not provide answers.
  7. Judge’s Instructions to the Jury
    • Jury decides the facts of the case, but the judge determines the law, proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
    • The concept of reasonable doubt: The standard used by a juror to decide if the prosecution has provided enough evidence for conviction to a moral certainty.
  8. Decision by the Jury
    • They can bring all of the evidence introduced in.
    • They cannot bring the police report; the police report is never introduced into evidence.
    • Deadlocked and cannot reach a verdict – hung jury; trial ends, and they can retry.

Appeal

  • Based on a claim that one or more errors of law or procedure were made during the investigation, arrest, or trial process.
  • Appellate court will check to make sure that the trial followed proper procedures.
    • Although a majority of appeals occur after trial convictions, about a quarter result from nontrial proceedings such as guilty pleas and probation revocations.
    • Homicides and other serious crimes against people account for more than 50% of appeals.
    • Most appeals arise from cases in which the sentence is 5 years or less.
    • The issues raised at appeal tend to concern the introduction of evidence, the sufficiency of evidence, and jury instructions.
  • Most appeals don’t succeed, 80%.
  • Habeas corpus: A writ or judicial order requesting the release of a person being detained in a jail, prison, or mental hospital. If a judge finds the person is being held improperly, the writ may be granted, and the person released or granted a new trial.

Chapter 12

Goals of Punishment

  • Retribution: Punishment inflicted on a person who has infringed on the rights of others and so deserves to be penalized. The severity of the sanction should fit the seriousness of the crime. Applies to murder and rape, not so much weed or drug offenses; the community wouldn’t care.
  • Deterrence
    • General deterrence: Punishment of criminals intended to provide an example to the general public and discourage the commission of offenses.
    • Specific deterrence: Punishment inflicted on criminals to discourage them from committing crimes.
  • Incapacitation
    • Depriving an offender of the ability to commit crimes against society, usually by detaining the offender in prison.
    • Look at actions and characteristics and predict their future behavior.
    • Selective incapacitation: Making the best use of expensive and limited prison space by targeting for incarceration those individuals whose detention will do the most to reduce crime in society.
  • Rehabilitation
    • The goal of restoring a convicted offender to a constructive place in society through some form of vocational or educational training or therapy.
    • Reentry into society.
  • Restoration
    • Punishment designed to repair damage done to the victim and society by the offender.
    • When a crime occurs, it breaks trust among citizens and the community.
    • Three-way approach: Involves the victim, offender, and community.
    • Restorative justice circles.
    • Gives the offender the ability to explain themselves and apologize.

Forms of the Criminal Sanction

  • Budget cuts: Governments try to save jail cells for serious offenders.
  • Incarceration: Serious crimes.
    • Imprisonment is the most visible.
    • $30,000 per inmate a year.
    • Three structures:
      • Indeterminate sentences: A period set by a judge that specifies a minimum and maximum time to be served.
        • At the height of rehab punishments.
        • Minimum and maximum time to serve (3-5 years).
        • Once the offender reaches the minimum, they are eligible for parole and may get released prior to the maximum; the parole board determines the actual release date.
      • Determinate sentences: Fixes the term of imprisonment at a specific period.
        • Eligible for good time.
        • Some states emphasize a presumptive sentence: The legislature or a commission sets a minimum and maximum range of months or years. Judges are to fix the length of the sentence within that range, allowing for special circumstances.
      • Mandatory
        • Largely used in the 80s, the war on drugs, racially discriminatory.
        • Automatically get two years for drug distribution within 300-1000 ft of a school zone.
        • The sentence versus actual time served:
          • Good time: Good behavior, reduction of an inmate’s sentence.
          • Earned time: Reduction in a prisoner’s sentence as a reward for participation in educational or other rehab programs.
        • Truth in sentencing
          • Require offenders to serve 85% of their prison sentence before being released on parole.
          • Three goals:
            • Provide the public with more-accurate information about the length of sentences.
            • Reducing crime by keeping offenders in prison for longer periods.
            • Achieving a rational allocation of prison space by prioritizing the incarceration of particular classes of criminals.
              • Less attractive today because many states are.
  • Intermediate sanctions
    • Less severe and less costly.
    • More restrictive than probation: Home confinement, ankle bracelet, boot camps.
    • Focus is on justice reinvestment: Reduce spending on imprisonment, with the money saved being reinvested in alternative sanctions and programs that hold offenders accountable, protect public safety, and reduce the risk of reoffending.
  • Probation
    • Conditional freedom.
    • Have to stay out of trouble, cannot commit any offenses.
    • Drug tests, curfew, maintain employment or stay in school, drug treatment.
    • Probation is a privilege granted to an offender.
    • Serve sentence in the community.
    • Shock probation: A sentence in which the offender is released after a short incarceration and resentenced to probation.
    • Offenders can spend weekends or nights in jail – less expensive, sometimes more effective.
  • Death
    • Death penalty regularly carried out prior to the 60s.
    • Death penalty was deemed unconstitutional 1968-1976.
    • Furman v. Georgia: The Supreme Court ruled the death penalty as cruel and unusual punishment (1972).
    • 1977: The USSC decided it does not violate the 8th Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
    • Use of the death penalty immediately stopped until Gregg v. Georgia.
      • In a death penalty case, bifurcated proceedings: A trial to determine guilt or innocence, then another trial to decide the death penalty or not. Both decided by the same jury.
    • The USSC also determined that the court in that second trial has to take into account aggravating circumstances (how gruesome) as well as mitigating circumstances (mental health issues).
    • McCleskey v. Kemp: Alleged the death penalty was racist against minorities; the court refused to answer.
    • Atkins v. Virginia: Atkins ruled it was unconstitutional – 8th Amendment – for the death penalty on disabled offenders.
    • Roper v. Simmons: No kids.
    • Ring v. Arizona 2002: Must be decided by a jury, not a judge.
    • Baze v. Rees 2008: Use of legal injection, effects prior to death were cruel, decided it did not violate.
    • Issues with the death penalty surround whether it is being administered fairly.
    • Ford v. Wainwright: 8th Amendment – cannot be executed if insane before or after conviction; they must be able to understand.
    • Execution for child rape – Kennedy v. Louisiana – you cannot.
  • Effective counsel
    • Strickland v. Washington: Defendants in capital cases need representation that meets an objective standard of reasonableness.
    • Reasonable probability that the lawyer’s capability would not have changed the outcome anyway.
    • Wiggins v. Smith: Violation when attorneys didn’t include trauma to the defender during childhood, found as a violation of counsel.
  • Death-qualified juries: Should people who are opposed to the death penalty be excluded from a death-qualified jury?
    • Witherspoon v. Illinois: Just because someone is individually opposed to the death penalty does not exclude them from jury duty.
    • Can, however, remove people whose opposition is so strong that it would prevent them from doing their duty.
    • Several impacts:
      • Those selected for the jury tend to be more conviction-prone.
      • Both defenders and prosecutors anticipate a conviction and then a death sentence.
  • Appeals
    • Lengthy appeal process for death penalty cases.
    • Because someone was sentenced to death, they automatically get an appeal.

The Sentencing Process

  • The legislature has already established the penal codes that set the sentences judges can impose.
  • Balancing the scales of justice of violated society and the person who committed the offenses.
  • Judges have significant discretion; can add conditions.
  • Straight sentence: Guilty, probation for one year – considered a straight sentence.
  • In mass – suspended sentence: Guilty, 6-month suspended sentence for one year, still on probation for one year, but now they have a fixed time hanging over their head.
  • Split sentences: A judge could sentence someone to guilty, 6 months, 90 days to serve. Have to serve 90 days, with the remaining 90 days hanging over their heads.
  • Several factors affect the sentencing process:
    • Administrative context of the courts
      • Misdemeanor courts – less than one year, around 90% of criminal cases.
    • Attitudes and values of judges
      • Administrative pressures, influence of community values, conflicting goals of criminal justice.
      • Offender’s blameworthiness (severity, history, role in crime), protection of the community, practical implications of the sentence.
    • Presentence report
      • A report prepared by a probation officer that presents a convicted offender’s background and is used by the judge in selecting an appropriate sentence.
      • Diagnostic evaluation; they are not scientific and often reflect stereotypes.
      • In federal court, it’s written by a pretrial services officer.
  • Sentencing guidelines
    • Mechanism to indicate to judges the expected sanction for certain offenses to reduce sentences.
    • Limit the discretion of judges to reduce disparity in sentences.
    • US v. Booker: The Supreme Court decided the guidelines are a baseline, but judges can deviate from them and take into consideration aggravating and mitigating factors.
  • Who gets the harshest punishments
    • Racial disparities
      • Black and Hispanic men.
      • Cocaine was treated very differently from crack.
      • Ex post facto – any individual sentenced under sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine was automatically reviewed.
    • Wrongful convictions
      • Innocent found guilty by plea or erroneous jury.
      • Huff’s policy recommendations to reduce the likelihood of erroneous convictions:
        • States should enact laws to compensate fairly those who are wrongly convicted – 20 states have.
        • When bio evidence is available for testing, defendants should be able to request and receive such tests. The results should be preserved.
        • Eye witness – mass – addition to jury instructions when an eyewitness testifies and at the end of the trial reminds jurors that it’s not guaranteed.
        • No identification procedure (lineups) unless counsel is present for the suspect/accused.
        • Police interrogations should be recorded (mass has this); if they don’t record, then the defendant is entitled to a jury instruction that it should have been recorded but wasn’t.
        • Criminal justice officials who engage in unethical or illegal conduct contributing to wrongful conviction should be removed from their position and subjected to appropriate sanctions.
        • Criminal case review commissions should be established to review post-appellate claims of wrongful conviction and, when appropriate, refer those cases to the proper courts.

Chapter 13

Reform Movements

  • Cincinnati 1870
  • Elmira Reform
    • First reformatory – institution for young offenders, emphasizing training, a mark system of classification, indeterminate sentences, and parole.
    • Mark system – a system in which offenders receive a certain number of points at the time of sentencing, based on the severity of their crime. Prisoners can reduce their term and gain release by earning marks to reduce these points through labor, good behavior, and educational achievement.
  • Improving conditions for women
    • Separation of female prisoners from men.
    • Keeping with the needs of women.
    • Management of women’s prisons by female staff.
    • These faltered later.

Rehabilitation Model

  • Two main strategies of the progressive movement:
    • Improving conditions in social environments that breed crime.
    • Rehabilitating individual offenders.
  • Rehab model – model of corrections that emphasizes the need to restore a convicted offender to a constructive place in society through some form of vocational or educational training or therapy.
  • Medical model – model of corrections based on the assumption that criminal behavior is caused by biological or psychological conditions that require treatment.
    • Group therapy, behavior modification, counseling.

Community Model

  • 60s and early 70s, civil rights movement, war on poverty, resistance to the Vietnam War. The community model dominated until the late 70s.
  • Community corrections – reintegrate the offender into the community.

Crime Control Model

  • Model of corrections based on the assumption that criminal behavior can be controlled by more use of incarceration and other forms of strict supervision. More punitive, longer sentences, strict supervision of probationers and parolees.
  • Record number of people incarcerated.

Prisons

  • Federal and state correctional institutions that hold offenders sentenced to more than a year. Serious crimes and felonies.

Jails

  • Local facilities for the detention of people awaiting trial and sentenced misdemeanants. Holding facility for social misfits (drug abusers, prostitutes, mentally ill, disturbers of public order).
  • Jail administrators face problems that good management practices cannot always overcome:
    • Perceived role of the jail in local criminal justice.
    • Inmate population.
    • Fiscal problems – jails drain local resources.

Laws of Corrections

  • Prior to the 1960s – hands-off policy – judges should not interfere with the administration of correctional institutions. Judges felt that prisoners and probationers did not have protected rights and that courts should not interfere in the operational agencies dealing with probation, prisons, and parole.
  • Constitutional rights of prisoners
    • Cooper v. Pate: Prisoners are entitled to the protection of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 and may challenge in federal courts the conditions of their confinement. Signaled the end of the hands-off policy; the act imposes civil liability on any state or local official who deprives someone of their constitutional rights. They can sue.
  • 1st Amendment
    • Freedom of speech, press, assembly, petition, and religion. Many restrictions of prison life (access to reading materials, censorship of mail, rules affecting religious practices) have been successfully challenged by prisoners in the courts.
    • Procunier v. Martinez: Censorship of mail was permissible only when officials could demonstrate a compelling government interest in maintaining security. Turner v. Safley: The court upheld a Missouri ban on correspondence between inmates in different institutions as a means of combating gang violence and escape plans.
    • Prevents Congress from making laws regarding religion or prohibiting its exercise.
    • Holt v. Hobbs: The Supreme Court ruled that Arkansas could not prevent a Muslim prisoner from growing a half-inch beard as part of religious practices.
    • Congress enacted two laws that generally require officials to show a compelling justification for denying the free exercise of religion and a law, The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which applies the same protection from federal officials that might limit the free exercise of religion.
  • 4th Amendment
    • Prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but courts have not been active in extending these protections to prisoners.
    • 1984: Hudson v. Palmer – prison officials have the authority to search cells and confiscate any materials found.
  • 8th Amendment
    • Prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
    • Prisoners possess only a limited right to medical care. Estelle v. Gamble – the right is only violated if corrections officials are deliberately indifferent to serious medical needs. Conditions alone may not be judged as cruel and unusual unless accompanied by improper intention on the part of corrections officials.
    • Totality of conditions – federal courts issued rulings based on factors to determine that living conditions in the institution constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
    • Wilson v. Seiter: Prisoners have faced the extra hurdle of proving that corrections officials knew about and were deliberately indifferent to improper conditions and practices.
    • Brown v. Plata: The USSC upheld court decisions ordering California to reduce its prison population because overcrowded conditions had overwhelmed the prison’s ability to provide proper health care and mental health treatment.
  • 14th Amendment – state rights.
  • Due Process in Prison Discipline
    • Minor infractions of prison rules may be punished by discretionary decisions of corrections officials that involve a temporary loss of privileges.
    • Wolff v. McDonnell: The USSC ruled that basic procedural rights must be present when decisions are made about disciplining inmates for serious rule violations. Receive notice of complaint, fair hearing, confront witnesses, get help in preparing for the hearing, and be given a written statement of the decisions. The court stated prisoners do not have a right to cross-examine witnesses, and the evidence presented by the offender shall not be hazardous to institutional safety or correctional goals.
  • Equal protection
    • 1968: The USSC established that racial discrimination may not be official policy within prison walls (Lee v. Washington); segregation can be justified only as a temporary measure during periods when violence between races is imminent.
    • Johnson v. California: The Supreme Court refused to defer to the judgment of California administrators that led to racial segregation in prison cells during the first two months of imprisonment as officials sought to evaluate which new prisoners might be gang members. The court required that officials provide compelling proof of the need to engage in a form of racial segregation that no other state thought necessary to use.
    • Glover v. Johnson: Female inmates in Michigan successfully argued that their equal protection rights were violated because programs and services were not as good as those provided to male inmates.

Probation/Parole

  • Conditions of probation
    • Diminish constitutional rights like free association. Can give public speeches and receive publications thanks to the 1st Amendment. Samson v. California: Tension between the Fourth Amendment and making offenders feel able to reintegrate into the community.
  • Revocation of probation and parole
    • If an offender commits another crime, probation or parole will likely be revoked.
    • Mempa v. Rhay: Probationers have the right to counsel at a combined revocation sentencing hearing before a deferred prison sentence could be imposed.
    • Morrissey v. Brewer: Due process rights require a prompt, informal two-part inquiry before an impartial hearing officer prior to parole revocation. The parolee may present relevant information and confront witnesses. The first step determines whether there is probable cause that a violation has occurred. The second stage is the revocation hearing; the parolee must receive notice of both charges and the evidence that allegedly supports the charges.