Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law
Publication Date
Fall 2014
ISSN
1546-7619
Page Number
153
Keywords
criminal law, plea bargaining, public defender
Disciplines
Criminal Law | Law
Abstract
The first part of this Essay explores the authors' findings, which do not fit as neatly into mainstream thinking about indigent defense representation as the authors suggest. The study's dramatic findings appear to stem from a counterintuitive form of professional competence: aptitude at convincing one's client to plead guilty.6 As discussed below, skill at obtaining a client's waiver of his constitutional right to a jury trial is not the traditional model of effective representation. If modem defense attorney competence primarily manifests in this manner, the implications for indigent defense and criminal justice generally are more revolutionary than the study's authors suggest. Indeed, one of the most interesting aspects of the study is its synergy with recent Supreme Court case law that boldly extends ineffective assistance of counsel claims to America's grotesque plea bargaining regime. Part II of this Essay switches focus to the extraordinary empirical methods employed to unearth the findings discussed in Part 1. The study's authors wield powerful econometric analysis in a manner that is likely foreign to most criminal justice scholars and policymakers-the target of their efforts. This is only the latest in a long line of quantitative studies of attorney difference, but it may be the first to deploy an "instrumental variable" approach, the "most powerful weapon" in the econometric "arsenal of statistical tools."' This sophisticated statistical technique introduces a number of caveats into the analysis, but, if successful in this context, calls into question the vast body of quantitative studies of attorney competence that rely on "traditional regression methods." The ultimate resolution of that methodological debate is beyond the scope of this Essay (and the abilities of its author). Nevertheless, it is critical for criminal justice scholars and policymakers to engage with empirical methods if they are to translate the fruits of those methods into policy prescriptions. As empiricists apply increasingly sophisticated tools to the extraordinarily complex criminal justice system, gaining insight into the advantages and shortcomings of various methodological approaches can be just as important for non-empirically trained criminal justice observers as any particular study's substantive contributions.
Recommended Citation
Jeffrey Bellin,
Attorney Competence in an Age of Plea Bargaining and Econometrics, 12 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. 153
(2014)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/1670