Legal News

Do Colorado Prosecutors Have Too Much Incentive to Convict?

By Nathan Koppel

Undoubtedly, there are many prosecutors who are underpaid; public service, after all, can wreak havoc on one’s pocketbook.

But should prosecutors receive bonuses if they score relatively high conviction rates? That’s a plan devised by Colorado district attorney Carol Chambers, as the Denver Post reports here. (HT: Sentencing Law and Policy Blog.)

Under Chambers’s bonus plan, which she implemented last year, assistant district attorneys are eligible to earn an average $1,100 reward if they participate in at least 5 trials during the year and get felony convictions in at least 70% of their trials, according to the Post, which notes that plea bargains don’t count.

Chambers told the newspaper that her bonus system is similar to incentive plans used by private employers.

But some Colorado defense lawyers have voiced concern that the bonus system could possibly encourage prosecutors to pursue trials in lieu of plea bargains to qualify for a bonus. Denver district attorney Mitch Morrisey expressed a slightly different concern to the Post, saying that he worried a rule like Chambers’s could discourage prosecutors from trying hard cases.

Chambers sent an email to her staff last December about the bonus plan, according to the Post. “This is a trial office,” she wrote. “If you are doing the job, you are going to necessarily go to trial. We plea bargain most of our cases so that we can try the others.”

Chambers told the Post that she plans to continue with her bonus system but noted that fiscal constraints could deplete her bonus pool.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 25, 2011 (boomark / email).