The psychology of defendant plea decision making.

Every day, thousands of defendants, prosecutors, and defense attorneys must make guilty plea decisions, such as whether to accept a plea offer or proceed to trial. Most defendants opt to plead guilty; approximately 95% of state and federal convictions result from guilty pleas. In light of a newly emerging body of research and recent Supreme Court decisions on guilty pleas, this article asks and answers 2 questions: First, who pleads guilty and why? We describe the characteristics of those who are more or less likely to plead guilty, and examine the reasons why individuals plead guilty instead of proceeding to trial, exploring the cognitive, social influence, and developmental factors that underlie decision making. Second, are defendants' plea decisions valid, in that the decisions are made knowingly, intelligently, voluntarily, and with a factual basis of guilt? That is, do defendants who plead guilty understand and appreciate the conditions and consequences of their pleas, as required by law? Are innocent people induced to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit? We conclude with suggestions to move the field of plea research forward. (PsycINFO Database Record

Neuroprediction, Violence, and the Law: Setting the Stage.

In this paper, our goal is to (a) survey some of the legal contexts within which violence risk assessment already plays a prominent role, (b) explore whether developments in neuroscience could potentially be used to improve our ability to predict violence, and (c) discuss whether neuropredictive models of violence create any unique legal or moral problems above and beyond the well worn problems already associated with prediction more generally. In "Violence Risk Assessment and the Law", we briefly examine the role currently played by predictions of violence in three high stakes legal contexts: capital sentencing ("Violence Risk Assessment and Capital Sentencing"), civil commitment hearings ("Violence Risk Assessment and Civil Commitment"), and "sexual predator" statutes ("Violence Risk Assessment and Sexual Predator Statutes"). In "Clinical vs. Actuarial Violence Risk Assessment", we briefly examine the distinction between traditional clinical methods of predicting violence and more recently developed actuarial methods, exemplified by the Classification of Violence Risk (COVR) software created by John Monahan and colleagues as part of the MacArthur Study of Mental Disorder and Violence [1]. In "The Neural Correlates of Psychopathy", we explore what neuroscience currently tells us about the neural correlates of violence, using the recent neuroscientific research on psychopathy as our focus. We also discuss some recent advances in both data collection ("Cutting-Edge Data Collection: Genetically Informed Neuroimaging") and data analysis ("Cutting-Edge Data Analysis: Pattern Classification") that we believe will play an important role when it comes to future neuroscientific research on violence. In "The Potential Promise of Neuroprediction", we discuss whether neuroscience could potentially be used to improve our ability to predict future violence. Finally, in "The Potential Perils of Neuroprediction", we explore some potential evidentiary ("Evidentiary Issues"), constitutional ("Constitutional Issues"), and moral ("Moral Issues") issues that may arise in the context of the neuroprediction of violence.