Credible plea bargaining with the Jury’s rational conviction decision

Jeong-Yoo Kim ()
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Jeong-Yoo Kim: Kyung Hee University

European Journal of Law and Economics, 2025, vol. 59, issue 3, No 4, 521 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper provides a new explanation of how plea bargaining can credibly screen a guilty defendant and an innocent one in a model with the rational jury’s conviction decision. The main departure from the existing literature is that the defendant is privately informed of the strength of his own evidence as well as his guilt or innocence. We dispense with the assumption that the prosecutor commits to no dismissal and resolves the credibility issue without resorting to mixed strategies. We obtain a separating equilibrium in which only the guilty defendant with weak evidence accepts the plea offer, while all other types of defendant reject it, when the prosecutor is so concerned about type II errors that he makes a high plea offer. Separation is possible mainly due to additional evidence of the prosecutor and the defendant revealed during trial that is likely to be stronger for an innocent type of defendant.

Keywords: Credibility; Plea bargaining; Rational conviction; Separating; Screening; K41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:ejlwec:v:59:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s10657-025-09844-0

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DOI: 10.1007/s10657-025-09844-0

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