Prosecutorial Resources, Plea Bargaining, and the Decision to Go to Trial

This article examines the strategic interaction between a defendantand a prosecutor during the plea bargaining process. A four-stagegame of incomplete information is developed where the defendant'sguilt or innocence is private information but the amount ofresources available to the prosecutor is common knowledge. Thebasic result of the article is that equilibrium is semiseparating;the plea offer is accepted by a proportion of the guilty defendantsand is rejected by all of the innocent defendants and the remainingguilty defendants. In this model an increase in the resourcesavailable to the prosecutor increases the proportion of guiltydefendants who accept plea offers. Although the prosecutor isunable to generate complete separation of the guilty and innocentdefendants through the plea bargaining process, prosecutorialresources are beneficial from a societal standpoint.