Defense attorney perspectives of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on plea bargaining

What is it about?

To understand whether the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the plea-bargaining process, we surveyed practicing defense attorneys across the United States about their perceptions of whether and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected plea bargaining, particularly for detained clients.

Featured Image

Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash

Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This is the first survey of it's kind to examine how the plea negotiation process has changed since the pandemic started. This is important to know as legal scholars have suggested that the leveraging of charging power by prosecutors makes plea bargaining coercive, compelling defendants to forfeit their trial rights. More recently, some have asked whether the COVID-19 pandemic could exacerbate existing problems with the plea-bargaining process. Limited attorney-client contact, the lack of jury trials, and prolonged pretrial detention could increase coercion in plea bargaining, leading to false guilty pleas.