Explore Rice

11/15/2005

Local job market may affect whether you plead out or go to trial

The local job market may affect whether a case goes to trial or is plea bargained, new research shows. "Some lawyers who seek jobs with the federal prosecutor's office do so in order to gain trial experience they later can parlay in the private sector," says Rice University economist Richard Boylan.†"As a result, it's often districts where the private sector offers high salaries that assistant U.S. attorneys are more likely to try defendants involved in drug trafficking rather than discuss a plea."

----------

How justice is applied in criminal cases, such as drug trafficking, can depend on a number of factors, including the severity of the crime, the costs involved in going to trial and oftentimes the defendant's gender and race. New evidence obtained by university economists suggests that some U.S. attorneys' decisions to take these cases to trial versus negotiating a plea also are influenced by the local labor market.

"Some lawyers who seek jobs with the federal prosecutor's office do so in order to gain trial experience they later can parlay in the private sector," explains Rice University economist Richard Boylan.

"As a result, it's often districts where the private sector offers high salaries that assistant U.S. attorneys are more likely to try defendants involved in drug trafficking rather than discuss a plea."

Conversely, Boylan and his colleague Cheryl Long from Colgate University found that in districts where private salaries are lower, the likelihood of a plea is higher.

This raises questions as to the fairness accorded to defendants charged with drug-related crimes in regions of the country where lawyers' salaries in private firms are high, Boylan says. Consequently, defendants in districts where lawyers' salaries in the private sector are high compared to other districts may receive longer prison sentences because federal prosecutors in those districts may not consider any reasonable pleas.

"They may prefer to gain the experience of going to trial," reiterates Boylan.

These regional differences are significant, claim Boylan and Long, because most lawyers who join a private firm immediately after leaving government remain in the same district where they served as assistant U.S. attorneys. Among the 264 individuals for whom they had such information, the researchers found that 67 percent remained in the same district and 85 percent within the same state, further supporting their contention that the local labor market is a key factor in whether a district's plea rate in higher or lower.

In a report published in the October issue of the Journal of Law and Economics titled "Salaries, Plea Rates, and the Career Objectives of Federal Prosecutors," Boylan and Long predict how the level of private salaries affects the composition, human capital accumulation and turnover rate of assistant U.S. attorneys.  

Boylan and his colleague based their findings on a review of all federal drug-related cases prosecuted between 1994 and 1998. The data used for the study was limited to 8,769 cases in which the defendants were suspected of drug trafficking and evidence seized during the arrest was documented. They also documented the career paths of more than 1,000 private practice lawyers who had prior experience as federal prosecutors.

"Assistant U.S. attorneys get more trial experience than do lawyers in private practice, particularly in the top law firms where the senior partners try most of the cases," Boylan explains.

"As we found, many federal prosecutors seek government employment in regions where private lawyers are paid high salaries to gain trial experience that will help acquire jobs in those higher-paid labor markets."

Boylan also notes that districts where private salaries are high tend to attract lawyers of higher ability as well. "Essentially," he says, " districts that offer attractive opportunities for lawyers in the private sector enable the prosecutors' offices in those districts to attract more qualified attorneys."

An associate professor of economics, Boylan has written extensively about bureaucracy and public policy and law and economics. His research on sentencing guidelines and whether they influence the composition of federal judges has been reported in the Journal of Legal Studies, and his studies of salaries, turnover and performance in the federal criminal justice system has been published in the Journal of Law and Economics.

Boylan received his undergraduate degree with honors from Pitzer College and his master's and Ph.D. degrees from the California Institute of Technology.

For more information on this research, contact Boylan at rboylan@rice.edu or B.J. Almond in the Office of Media Relations at balmond@rice.edu .