Judicial Reports: Plea Vise
By John Ennis
Posted 10-13-06
This week’s lead story Plea Policy No Bargain, examines the Queens District Attorney’s novel approach to plea bargaining. LexMetrics took the opportunity to look at this issue from a numerical point of view.
First, an examination of New York City as a whole. In 2005, NYC disposed of 25,145 felonies. Here is how they were classified (the source for all data in this column was the Office of Court Administration):
Guilty Pleas 20,586 81.8%
Jury Verdicts 1,163 4.6%
Bench Verdicts 147 0.6%
Dismissals 2,625 10.4%
Other 624 2.5%
Obviously, the criminal justice system relies heavily on plea bargaining to keep it running with any degree of efficiency. Trials (jury and non-jury) account for only one in 20 felony dispositions.
We next looked at how Queens might be different. The D.A. in that borough will not plea bargain below the most serious charge unless the defendant waives his Constitutional right to a speedy trial at the time of his arraignment. Ninety-five percent of defendants in Queens sign this waiver. Does this affect dispositions in Queens as compared to the rest of the city? If you remove Queens (which had 4,725 felony dispositions last year) and compare that borough to the other four, differences do emerge:
Queens Other Four Boroughs
Guilty Pleas 86.4% 80.8%
Jury Verdicts 4.3% 4.7%
Bench Verdicts 0.9% 0.5%
Dismissals 7.2% 11.2%
Other 1.1% 2.8%
Stated another way, here is the percentage of felonies not disposed of by a guilty plea:
Queens 13.6%
Other four boroughs 19.2%
Almost the entire difference here is in the frequency with which cases are dismissed. Defense attorneys in Queens have complained about one significant consequence of the D.A.’s policy: When defendants waive their speedy trial rights, the D.A. has no burden to seek a timely grand jury indictment. Before a grand jury indictment, defendants and their attorneys have scant access to the prosecution's evidence. Hence, they are often plea bargaining at a huge informational disadvantage. These numbers support this point. The other boroughs dismiss cases 56% more often than Queens does.
In short, many Queens defendants are pleading guilty to cases that would otherwise be dismissed if they were procedurally advancing through the system at the same pace as the other boroughs. Prosecution spin: fewer guilty prisoners are getting out on technicalities. Defense spin: innocent people are being coerced into guilty pleas because they fear there is more evidence against them than there actually is.
The D.A.’s policy might also affect the outcome of trials. Queens’ defendants go to trial with nearly the same frequency as defendants in the other boroughs:
Queens Other Four Boroughs
Percentage of dispositions
that went to trial 5.5% 5.7%
Not all trials end in a verdict, and when Queens’ defendants go to trial, they plea less frequently (it looks like the D.A. might be keeping his stance about plea bargaining post-indictment):
Queens Other Four Boroughs
Trials commenced 261 1173
Verdicts Reached 247 1063
Percentage of Trials
not ending in a verdict: 5.4% 9.4%
Defendants in Queens might have a motivation not to plea mid-trial if Queens juries acquit more often than the outer boroughs. And, they do - but at a rate that’s statistically insignificant:
Queens Other Four Boroughs
Acquittal rate by juries 33% 32%
So, Queens’ defendants go to trial just as often as other defendants, but plea significantly less mid-trial. LexMetrics does not know if these defendants are more likely to have not waived their speedy trial rights, and as a consequence, are getting worse plea offers, while disproportionately dominating the pool of defendants at trial. But, it seems to be a factor.
Posted by Ennis on October 13, 2006 08:35 AM to Judicial Reports