This framework offers a sentencing model that goes beyond the legal/extralegal debate by specifying how an interplay between legality and bureaucratic interests intervenes in the relationship between defendant characteristics, case complexity, and sentence outcomes. The research tested the hypothesis that defendants prosecuted for complex white-collar crime cases bring to the negotiation a higher exchange value associated with their guilty plea and that this exchange value is linked with prosecutors' bureaucratic needs to avoid the uncertainty of obtaining a conviction at trial by bargaining for a guilty plea in exchange for a suspended sentence. The data came from presentence investigation reports for 1,503 defendants whose initial sentences in 1976, 1977, and 1978 involved some form of incarceration. These cases occurred in Federal district courts in seven States prior to establishment of the Federal sentencing guidelines. Findings from the structural model indicated the direct and indirect effects of pleading guilty and case complexity on the decision to suspend an incarceration sentence. In addition, findings offered modest support for the hypothesis that the defendant's location in the stratification system translated into advantage at sentencing via a structural link with case complexity and pleading guilty; these formed the core of the legal-bureaucratic model. Figure, table, notes, appended tables, and 43 references (Author abstract modified)