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Reducing False Guilty Pleas And Wrongful Convictions Through Exoneree Compensation, Murat C. Mungan, Jonathan Klick
Reducing False Guilty Pleas And Wrongful Convictions Through Exoneree Compensation, Murat C. Mungan, Jonathan Klick
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A great concern with plea-bargains is that they may induce innocent individuals to plead guilty to crimes they have not committed. In this article, we identify schemes that reduce the number of innocent-pleas without affecting guilty individuals' plea-bargain incentives. Large compensations for exonerees reduce expected costs associated with wrongful determinations of guilt in trial and thereby reduce the number of innocent-pleas. Any distortions in guilty individuals' incentives to take plea bargains caused by these compensations can be off-set by a small increase in the discounts offered for pleading guilty. Although there are many statutory reform proposals for increasing exoneration compensations, …