Law Commons^™

Charge Movement And Theories Of Prosecutors, Ronald F. Wright, Rodney L. Engen

Ronald F. Wright

The charges filed at the start of a criminal case often move down to less serious charges that form the basis for a guilty plea and conviction. In this symposium essay, we build on our earlier work on charge movement based on data from North Carolina. After noting that charges move at different rates for different crimes, we explain the differences among crimes by looking to the structure of the substantive criminal law. Groups of crimes that offer deeper options to the negotiators (such as the many versions of assault) produce more frequent charge movement.

Assuming that the structure of …

The Black Box, Ronald F. Wright, Marc L. Miller

Ronald F. Wright

Classic accounts of prosecutorial discretion, from Herbert Wechsler through the present day, portray charging discretion as the antithesis of law. Scholars express particular concerns about racial and other nefarious grounds for prosecution, while others worry about the increased range of choices available to prosecutors when criminal codes become bloated with new crimes.

The familiar response to this problem features a call for greater external legal regulation. The external limits might come from judges who review prosecutorial charging decisions, or from legislatures reworking the criminal code. These external oversight projects, however, have failed.

This article explores some facets of internal regulation—efforts …