Take home message: Most Tender of Plea forms are written in language that the average defender client would have significant difficulty reading. Many also do not contain information that defendants need to know prior to entering a plea.
Full report: A. Redlich & C. Bonventre (2015). “Content and Comprehensibility of Juvenile and Adult Tender-of-Plea Forms: Implications for Knowing, Intelligent, and Voluntary Guilty Pleas,” in Law and Human Behavior, 39(2), pp.162-76.
Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25528381. If you have trouble accessing the report Andy Davies may be able to help.
Sample: 208 Tender of Plea forms, from various states and counties. Forms were gathered non-systematically, and jurisdictions in the sample proved to be more urban, poor, and have larger minority populations than the national average.
The Details: These authors gathered 256 Tender of Plea forms from around the nation (reduced to 208 after duplicates were excluded) and assessed the reading ability required to understand each. On average the forms were written at a 9th grade reading level, though a 12th grade reading level would be required for ‘100% comprehension’. The average reading level of a criminal defendant is 6th grade. Just 4.3% of the forms analyzed could have been understood by a person with a reading ability at this level.
The authors analyzed adult and juvenile tender of plea forms separately, and found no difference in the reading levels required, though the adult forms were significantly longer.
The content of the forms were also assessed on whether they contained all that pleading defendants need to know (e.g. that their plea is voluntary, that in pleading they are giving up certain rights, that their plea must be knowing and intelligent, that it may involve collateral consequences, and other issues). The authors painstakingly went through the content of each form, capturing all the ways these matters were addressed, and in doing so revealed that many forms actually neglected to address one or more issues at all (see table below).
Full report: A. Redlich & C. Bonventre (2015). “Content and Comprehensibility of Juvenile and Adult Tender-of-Plea Forms: Implications for Knowing, Intelligent, and Voluntary Guilty Pleas,” in Law and Human Behavior, 39(2), pp.162-76.
Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25528381. If you have trouble accessing the report Andy Davies may be able to help.
Sample: 208 Tender of Plea forms, from various states and counties. Forms were gathered non-systematically, and jurisdictions in the sample proved to be more urban, poor, and have larger minority populations than the national average.
The Details: These authors gathered 256 Tender of Plea forms from around the nation (reduced to 208 after duplicates were excluded) and assessed the reading ability required to understand each. On average the forms were written at a 9th grade reading level, though a 12th grade reading level would be required for ‘100% comprehension’. The average reading level of a criminal defendant is 6th grade. Just 4.3% of the forms analyzed could have been understood by a person with a reading ability at this level.
The authors analyzed adult and juvenile tender of plea forms separately, and found no difference in the reading levels required, though the adult forms were significantly longer.
The content of the forms were also assessed on whether they contained all that pleading defendants need to know (e.g. that their plea is voluntary, that in pleading they are giving up certain rights, that their plea must be knowing and intelligent, that it may involve collateral consequences, and other issues). The authors painstakingly went through the content of each form, capturing all the ways these matters were addressed, and in doing so revealed that many forms actually neglected to address one or more issues at all (see table below).
Issue |
% forms not mentioning |
|---|---|
The plea of guilty is voluntary |
17.3% |
Rights are being given up |
3.4% |
The plea decision should be knowing and intelligent |
3.4% |
Collateral consequences may result from the plea |
26.9% |
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