Whose fault? Defendant perceptions of their own blameworthiness and guilty plea decisions

ABSTRACT

With the present paper, we seek to understand how defendants form of perceptions blameworthiness and to assess how these perceptions affect willingness to accept a plea offer. With an online vignette survey (N = 659), we randomized 1) guilt and 2) riskiness of victim behavior in a vehicular manslaughter case. We also asked respondents to rate the blameworthiness of themselves and their victims. First, results indicate that guilty respondents were more likely to accept a plea than those who were innocent. Second, those in the low-risk victim behavior condition viewed themselves as more blameworthy. Third, people who view themselves as more blameworthy, or their victims as less blameworthy, are more likely to take a plea offer. Lastly, the effects of guilt, victim behavior, and perceptions of victim blameworthiness are also at least partially mediated by perceptions of self-blame. Overall, victim behavior was a key predictor of self-blameworthiness, which was then a critical predictor of WTAP. Results also suggest that respondents viewed blame as a zero-sum game and made decisions about whether to accept a plea based on whether they think they were at fault in the situation.

KEYWORDS:

• Guilty plea
• culpability
• victim behavior
• willingness to accept a plea

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We acknowledge that legal culpability is indeed crucial for conviction and sentencing. The concept of mental state or mens rea is used to separate different degrees of offenses and to determine sentencing severity (Cramer et al. 2013). For example, the actus reus of killing another person is the same for both first-degree murder and manslaughter, but first-degree murder’s mens rea involves more culpability and intention and is thus punished much more harshly.

2. Additional information is available online at www.qualtrics.com

3. One item used in prior literature (Lee, Jaynes, and Ropp 2021), ‘courts make decisions based on opinions, rather than facts’ (reverse coded), was excluded from the scale because it had a low factor loading (.21).

4. Power analysis (conducted using G*power, ANOVA: Fixed effects, special, main effects and interactions) indicates that our sample size (n = 659) is sufficient to detect an effect size of .11 for an alpha of 0.05, at a power of 0.80.

5. Given that our blameworthiness measures (scaled 1–10) are not necessarily a ratio measure and rather resemble count outcomes, we also tested the sensitivity of our findings using negative binomial models. Findings are substantively consistent across modeling strategies.

6. For example, no model VIFs exceed 3.21 (tolerance of 0.31), where the typical threshold of concern is a VIF greater than 10 and a tolerance lower than .10. Appendix B provides a correlation matrix.

7. Although this result is not shown, sensitivity tests find no interaction between guilt and victim behavior within this model. Full results available upon request.

8. Victim behavior would likely be more relevant in a civil case where monetary damages are assessed proportionally under a theory of comparative negligence. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/comparative_negligence

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Boise State University, School of Public Service, Research Committee.

Notes on contributors

Jacqueline G. Lee

Jacqueline G. Lee is an Associate Professor at Boise State University. She earned her PhD from the University of Maryland and has also earned a J.D. from the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include courts and sentencing, guilty pleas, the female experience of violence, offending, and punishment, and the integration of social science and legal research.

Chae M. Jaynes

Chae M. Jaynes is an Associate Professor at the University of South Florida (USF). She is also a Leadership Team member for the Center for Justice Research and Policy at USF. She earned her PhD from the University of Maryland. Her research interests include decision-making within several aspects of the criminal justice system, including the courts, as well as labor-related decisions.

Silas Patterson

Silas Patterson is a Doctoral student in the Department of Criminology at the University of South Florida. He holds a master’s in criminal justice (M.A., Boise State University). His research interests include policing, public perceptions, police culture, and police technology.