All-or-nothing verdict as a screening device

An adversarial model of criminal trial is considered with threeverdict choices—innocent, guilty of moderate crime, andguilty of serious crime. Depending on the parties' access toevidence and initial beliefs in the courtroom about the possiblecrimes, the judge may agree to the defendant's request to eliminatethe verdict of moderate crime from jury deliberation if theprosecution brings the charge of serious crime. Though thisall-or-nothing verdict choice confers the defendant some manipulativepower, it is shown that such verdict choice may also screenout an overstated charge of serious crime. Conditions are derivedunder which screening is effective and powerful enough to generate(ex-ante) efficiency gains.