Plea bargaining, the method by which 80 percent of felonies and 95 percent of misdemeanors are settled, is seldom included in court records, thus denying researchers a primary source of data for studying sentencing. This research used tape-recorded plea bargaining conversations involving prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges, in which defendants and their offense-related and offender-related statuses were discussed. The recorded material derived from 53 negotiated cases of petty theft, drunk driving, fighting in public, loitering, and other misdemeanors over a 3-month period in a California municipal court. Descriptions of defendants given during the negotiations were analyzed. The defendant descriptors appeared in relation to other descriptions and 'facts' of a case in a contextual manner. They were used by the defense or prosecution to justify a position regarding the sentence and generally reflected commonsense reasoning mechanisms of the participants. This 'gestalt' model of decisionmaking encompasses how the meaning of each of the separate attributes is defined by its relation to other matters in the negotiation, including additions, descriptions, and activity being contemplated. In contrast the factors presupposed by statistical models are mere demographic identities requiring a standard of formal rationality to measure how well the courts administer justice. The standard displayed in plea bargaining is substantive rationality, which treats people as individuals and tailors decisions to fit with the known features of their biographies. Footnotes and over 50 references are given.