NCJ Number
125781
Date Published
1990
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This study tests the hypothesis that newspaper coverage of a criminal homicide case influences whether prosecutors engage in plea bargaining in a given case and that the more extensive the newspaper coverage of a case, the less likely the prosecutor's office is to negotiate in the case.
Abstract
The study focused on prosecutors in Milwaukee County, Wis. Data were obtained on every nonvehicular homicide case presented to the district attorney's office for possible prosecution during the 18-month period between January 1, 1981, and June 30, 1982. The cases of 90 homicide defendants were included in the study. To determine how the cases were processed, every available document on each case was scrutinized. The independent variable was the level of newspaper interest in the case, and the dependent variable was the behavior of the prosecutor's office in the case. Discriminant analysis supported the hypothesis; press behavior, more specifically the average length of stories about a case, was the strongest predictor of whether prosecutors engaged in plea negotiations. 1 table, 19 references.