The Role of Courtroom Workgroups in Felony Case Dispositions: An Analysis of Workgroup Familiarity and Similarity

• Date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12217
• Published date: 01 September 2016

The Role of Courtroom Workgroups in Felony Case

Dispositions: An Analysis of Workgroup Familiarity

and Similarity

Christi Metcalfe

While pleading guilty has become ubiquitous in criminal trial courts, limited

research has focused on the plea process and the factors that influence guilty

plea convictions. Numerous theoretical accounts of the plea process highlight

the importance of the court actors and their interactions. Based on this

research, the current study analyzes the impact of courtroom actor familiarity

and similarity on the chosen mode of disposition and the time to disposition.

The findings demonstrate that similarity among the actors and familiarity

between the prosecutor and judge increase the odds of a plea disposition and

reduce the days to disposition. However, familiarity of the defense attorney

seems to impede on the informal plea process, such that cases are more likely

to proceed to trial when the defense attorney is more familiar with the other

actors.

According to the latest statistics for felony sentences in state

courts, 94 percent of felony convictions are resolved by a guilty

plea (Durose et al. 2009). With so few felony cases proceeding to

trial, it can be argued that we do not have an adversarial system

of justice, as is often assumed. Although pleading guilty has

become ubiquitous, scholars have recognized that there is limited

research about the process that leads to guilty pleas, especially in

comparison to the amount of research devoted to sentencing

(Baumer 2013; Bushway and Forst 2013; Johnson et al. 2014;

Ulmer 2012).

Numerous law review articles have offered insights into the

non-adversarial nature of the criminal court system, and in

almost every account of the plea process, the importance of the

actors and their interactions is emphasized. For instance, Alschu-

ler (1968, 1975, 1976) dedicates a separate article to each actor’s

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, my dissertation committee, Dr.

Thomas Baker, and Dr. Justin Pickett for their comments and feedback on earlier versions

of this manuscript. I would also like to thank the Public Defender’s Office for their help

and support.

Please direct all correspondence to Christi Metcalfe, University of South Carolina,

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Currell College, 1305 Greene Street,

Columbia, SC 29208; e-mail: cmetcalfe@sc.edu.

Law & Society Review, Volume 50, Number 3 (2016)

V

C2016 Law and Society Association. All rights reserved.

637

role in plea bargaining. Bibas (2004), in speculating about the

“shadow of a trial” argument for plea bargaining, notes the

importance of the actors in the chosen mode of disposition and

their incentives to plea. These reviews dovetail with the observa-

tions of Blumberg (1967) and Skolnick (1967) regarding the

cooperative relations among courtroom actors, and the later

work by Eisenstein, Jacob, Flemming, and Nardulli concerning

courtroom workgroups (Eisenstein and Jacob 1977; Eisenstein

et al. 1988; Flemming et al. 1992; Nardulli et al. 1988). Together,

this research makes several propositions regarding the organiza-

tional structure of criminal trial courts and the actors within

them that can potentially explain the predominance of guilty

pleas in the criminal court system.

Despite this fairly large body of research connecting court-

room workgroups to informal case processing methods, there are

few quantitative assessments of courtroom workgroup interaction

and none of these assessments predict the chosen mode of dispo-

sition. To this end, the current study explores the extent to which

courtroom actor interactions are related to guilty plea convic-

tions. Several components of the courtroom workgroup, includ-

ing the familiarity and similarity between the actors, are focused

on in an effort to capture the level of interaction between the

actors in a given case. It is proposed that increased familiarity

and similarity between the actors should facilitate cooperation by

increasing the likelihood of a guilty plea disposition and decreas-

ing the time to disposition. This study is the first to develop a

measure of familiarity, or repeat interaction, in the context of

criminal trial cases and is unique in the sense that all three actors

are known for each case in the dataset.

The Criminal Court Organization and Its Actors

From an outsider’s perspective, criminal trial courts possess a

culture that thrives on the constitutional values of due process,

justice, and fairness. In accordance with these values, the actors

within the criminal court system seek to attain certain ideological

goals respective to their positions. For example, judges attempt

to be fair and impartial decision makers, prosecutors strive to

keep criminals off the streets, and defense attorneys try to pro-

vide the best defense for their clients while safeguarding the

rights to which their clients are entitled. Considering their unique

roles and goals, it is expected that the interactions between attor-

neys would be adversarial, with judges as mediators between the

two. However, Blumberg (1967) and Skolnick (1967), in their

seminal articles, recognized the strong tendency toward

638 Courtroom Workgroups in Felony Case Dispositions

cooperation among the actors in the criminal court system, and

as Blumberg (1967: 19) stated, the inclination to abandon their

“ideological and professional commitments” to service the

“higher claims of the court organization.”

These “higher claims” are the bureaucratic priorities and

administrative concerns of the court as an organization (Blum-

berg 1967). Criminal courts, and all organizations for that matter,

are troubled by uncertainties and inefficiencies in the workplace,

and work toward the organizational goals of reducing uncertain-

ties and increasing efficiency (Thompson 1967). As Albonetti

(1986) recognizes, there is little control over the criminalization

process in the court system, particularly when a case proceeds to

trial. In a trial, the verdict is left to an unpredictable jury. Also,

trials require substantial investments of time and effort that

impede on the efficiency of case processing (Eisenstein and Jacob

1977). The desire to reduce uncertainty, especially among prose-

cutors and judges, and efficiently process cases leads to the devel-

opment of norms and routines in case processing (Albonetti

1986, 1991; Eisenstein and Jacob 1977). One of these norms is

resolving cases by pleas of guilt (Albonetti 1999; Blumberg 1967;

Cole 1970; Skolnick 1967; Packer 1968).

The actors in the system also have their own incentives to

resolve a large number of their cases through the plea process.

Prosecutors want to reduce their workloads, ensure convictions,

and maintain their public image (Bibas 2004; Hessick, III and

Saujani 2002). As Albonetti (1999) recognizes, pleading guilty

works in the benefit of the government because it offers a way to

convict without the uncertainty of a trial. Similar to prosecutors,

public defenders are burdened by large caseloads. They often

feel pressure from prosecutors and judges to moves cases quickly

to resolution and can fear judicial reprisals against clients for tak-

ing cases to trial (Alschuler 1975; Bibas 2004; Hessick, III and

Saujani 2002). Privately retained counsel has the added financial

incentive as well. Finally, judges are concerned about maintaining

their reputation (especially if they are elected), reducing their

caseload, and minimizing the number of cases that can get over-

turned on appeal (Alschuler 1976; Hessick, III and Saujani

2002). Together, the pressures of the organizational goals and the

incentive structures induce cooperation among the actors that is

expected to lead to informal methods of case processing (Bibas

2004; Blumberg 1967; Feeley 1973; Skolnick 1967).

It is argued by some that the reliance on plea negotiations—

while beneficial to the court organization, and at times, to the

defendant—can create disadvantages in sentencing among those

defendants who proceed to trial. There has been some evidence

to suggest that defendants are penalized for going to trial by

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