Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-2023
Abstract
This Article synthesizes emerging empirical, doctrinal, and interdisciplinary research demonstrating how coercive plea bargaining practices produce false guilty pleas and false testimony, thereby generating a distinct and often overlooked class of victims within the criminal justice system. Drawing on exoneration data, laboratory-based plea decision studies, and case analyses—including documented wrongful convictions—the authors show that sentencing differentials, mandatory minimum statutes, pretrial detention, attorney advice, and systemic resource constraints can overbear the will of defendants, including the innocent. Contrary to longstanding judicial assumptions that guilty pleas are inherently reliable when entered with counsel, the Article demonstrates that structural incentives embedded in modern plea bargaining significantly increase the risk of wrongful self-condemnation and false accusations against others.
Reframing defendants who falsely plead guilty—and those harmed by resulting false testimony—as “victims of plea bargaining,” the Article expands conventional understandings of victimhood in criminal procedure. It concludes by highlighting reform proposals advanced by the American Bar Association Plea Bargain Task Force, including measures to reduce sentencing disparities, limit coercive leverage, strengthen oversight, and mitigate the systemic pressures that drive coerced pleas. The Article situates these reforms within a broader project aimed at confronting the hidden human costs of a criminal justice system dominated by negotiated dispositions.
Recommended Citation
Lucian E. Dervan et al, Victims of Coercive Plea Bargaining: Defendants Who Give False Testimony for False Pleas, 72 Am. U. L. Rev. 1919 (August 2023).
