Winning and Losing at the Federal District Courts

The federal criminal courts are unique compared to the rest of the justice system. Cases in these courts pit a government backed prosecutor with an informational and first-moving advantage, against an often-disadvantaged defendant in an adversarial system that ultimately determines who wins and who loses. This asymmetry in criminal cases at the federal district courts presents a situation in which we can understand how courtroom actors matter for the justice process, and specifically if and how attorneys’ strategies differ and ultimately influence outcomes for their clients. This dissertation project builds on an existing data collection project that captures motion filings and decisions in federal district court cases, to better understand the attorneys at play throughout the criminal justice process. In the first empirical chapter, I focus on the role of attorneys in shaping the progression of a case from first filing to disposition, exploring if who attorneys are in terms of quality and characteristics affects the motions they file in a case. In the second empirical chapter, I consider if what the attorneys do, the motions they file, affect the outcome of the case with an ordinal measure of case outcomes, related to the number and severity of charges, that more closely resembles the resolution of cases at the federal trial courts. The final empirical chapter incorporates insights from the previous chapters to look ahead to the movement from a case from the trial courts to the appeals courts using a formal model of the decision to appeal. In this way, the project centers on three questions: does who attorneys are affect what they do; does what attorneys do affect the outcome of the case; and does the subjective procedural and substantive outcome of the case affect the decision to appeal?