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ABSTRACT
Since the majority of criminal cases end in a guilty pleas, there is growing research on issues related to the plea process, including ways in which the court determines the validity of guilty pleas. Ideally, plea validity evaluations would be consistent across courts and jurisdictions. However, prior research on felony plea hearings suggests that key elements of plea validity may not always be present, indicating there is variation in how courts assess plea validity. The current study examines potential variations in judicial plea colloquies by systematically observing plea hearings (n = 593) in a suburban circuit court. Information on the length of the hearing and the types of questions asked during the judicial colloquies was compared for the 520 (87.7%) defendants who pled to felony charges versus the 73 (12.3%) defendants who pled down to misdemeanor-only charges. Results show plea hearings for misdemeanor-only defendants were significantly shorter and, as a result, included significantly fewer questions compared to felony defendants. This indicates that misdemeanor-only plea cases may be rushed through the court process and that these defendants may not be provided the same information about the consequences of their pleas as felony defendants, posing a threat to the validity of these pleas.
Acknowledgements
This work was generously supported by National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice. We would also like to thank the collaborating court where the observations took place. We are extremely grateful to the individuals who welcomed our research in their courthouse and courtrooms and to those who answered our many questions during our data collection period. The opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, or the collaborating court.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Misdemeanor appeals can also be heard in circuit court; however, these misdemeanor appeals cases were originally disposed of in general district court (i.e. the lower court). These appeal cases are not included in the plea hearings examined here.
2 Since the direct questions/statements that dealt specifically with the validity item (e.g. knowing and intelligent decision, free and voluntary decision, and pleading guilty because guilty) were looked at individually, they were not included in these measures.
3 Significant differences between judges within felony hearings and within misdemeanor-only hearings also emerged. However, since the focus of this paper is on the differences between felony and misdemeanor-only hearings, these findings are not presented here but are available upon request.
4 Again, because our focus is on differences between misdemeanor-only and felony hearings, we do not report on the effects of judge and the interactions between judge and crime severity. However, these analyses are available upon request.