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Fairness and the Willingness to Accept Plea Bargain Offers

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  • Avishalom Tor
  • Oren Gazal‐Ayal
  • Stephen M. Garcia

Abstract

In contrast with the common assumption in the plea bargaining literature, we show fairness‐related concerns systematically impact defendants' preferences and judgments. In the domain of preferences, innocents are less willing to accept plea offers than guilty defendants and all defendants reject otherwise attractive offers that appear comparatively unfair. We also show that defendants who are uncertain of their culpability exhibit egocentrically‐biased judgments and reject plea offers as if they were innocent. The article concludes by briefly discussing the normative implications of these findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Avishalom Tor & Oren Gazal‐Ayal & Stephen M. Garcia, 2010. "Fairness and the Willingness to Accept Plea Bargain Offers," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(1), pages 97-116, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:empleg:v:7:y:2010:i:1:p:97-116
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1740-1461.2009.01171.x
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    11. Fong, Duncan K H & Bolton, Gary E, 1997. "Analyzing Ultimatum Bargaining: A Bayesian Approach to the Comparison of Two Potency Curves under Shape Constraints," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 15(3), pages 335-344, July.
    12. Pillutla, Madan M. & Murnighan, J. Keith, 1996. "Unfairness, Anger, and Spite: Emotional Rejections of Ultimatum Offers," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 208-224, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Bryan C. McCannon, 2024. "Alaska's ban on sentence bargaining," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(1), pages 110-119, January.
    2. Xu Han & Zengqing Wu & Chuan Xiao, 2023. ""Guinea Pig Trials" Utilizing GPT: A Novel Smart Agent-Based Modeling Approach for Studying Firm Competition and Collusion," Papers 2308.10974, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    3. Tina Søreide & Kasper Vagle, 2022. "Settlements in corporate bribery cases: an illusion of choice?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 261-287, April.
    4. Zengqing Wu & Run Peng & Xu Han & Shuyuan Zheng & Yixin Zhang & Chuan Xiao, 2023. "Smart Agent-Based Modeling: On the Use of Large Language Models in Computer Simulations," Papers 2311.06330, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2023.

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