Mandatory Sentencing and the Abolition of Plea Bargaining: The Michigan Felony Firearm Statute

Abstract

Increasing concern about the substantial discretion accorded prosecutors in plea negotiations and judges in sentencing decisions has led to a number of proposals to curtail both. In this paper, we assess the consequences of an attempt, simultaneously, to abolish plea bargaining and introduce mandatory sentencing. The Wayne County (Detroit) Prosecutor prohibited his subordinates from plea bargaining in any case in which a recently enacted state statute warranted a mandatory sentence. This statute imposed an additional two-year prison term if a defendant possessed a firearm while committing a felony. Using qualitative data collected from interviews with judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, and quantitative disposition data for the six-month periods before and after the law went into effect, we describe the effects of the new statute on dispositions in Detroit. Though there is some evidence that the law and the prohibition on plea bargaining may have selectively increased severity of sentences for certain classes of defendants, for the most part disposition patterns did not appear to have been altered dramatically. In many serious cases, sentences for the primary felony were adjusted downward to take into account the additional two-year penalty; in “equity” cases, in which defendants had not previously received prison time, other mechanisms, such as abbreviated bench trials, were often employed to circumvent the mandatory sentencing provision.

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