IN DEFENSE OF CRIMINAL DEFENSE EXPENDITURES AND PLEA BARGAINING

Given the continuing controversy over defendants' buying justice throu gh defense expenditures, this paper shows that disparities in criminal defense expenditures can insure that it is the guilty and not the inn ocent who will be punished. Our model allows defense and prosecution e xpenditures to be simultaneously determined. We show that criminal def ense expenditures result in lower expected penalties for the innocent at trial and that they help ensure that plea bargaining efficiently sc reens defendants even when differential risk aversion is present. Fina lly, we examine how differences in defendant's wealth and the use of p ublic defenders affect the legal system's ability to differentiate the innocent from the guilty. (C) 1996 by Elsevier Science Inc.