Guilty plea hearings in juvenile and criminal court.

Objective: In guilty plea hearings, judges must determine whether defendants' plea decisions were made knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily. Little is known, however, about how plea hearings unfold, especially in juvenile court, where hearings are generally closed to the public. In this study, we had the unique opportunity to systematically observe plea hearings in juvenile and criminal court.

Juror sensitivity to false confession risk factors: Dispositional vs. situational attributions for a confession.

Research on jurors' perceptions of confession evidence suggests that jurors may not be sensitive to factors that can influence the reliability of a confession. Jurors' decisions tend not to be influenced by situational pressures to confess, which suggests that jurors commit the correspondence bias when evaluating a confession. One method to potentially increase sensitivity and counteract the correspondence bias is by highlighting a motivation other than guilt for the defendant's confession.