1. This figure was obtained by a count of articles in an extensive bibliography of plea bargaining compiled by Matheny (1979). The percentage also tallies with one cited by Miller, McDonald, and Cramer (1978: iii), although the two-thirds figure pertains to publications appearing in the decade prior to their study (1968–1978).
2. The figures cited in this paragraph vary from study to study (e.g., Feeley, 1979b; Mather, 1974; Neubauer, 1974; Rosett and Cressey, 1976), and depend upon jurisdictional reporting practices and whether felonies only, felonies and misdemeanors, or misdemeanors only are included in the count.
3. Many of these studies (and related ones) are reviewed, and their findings summarized, in Danet (1980b: 519–541).
4. Maynard (1983) reviews and critiques three books on trial discourse that concern speech styles (O’Barr, 1982), storytelling (Bennett and Feldman, 1981), and accusation sequences (Atkinson and Drew, 1979).
5. The results of the experiments on “narrative” and “fragmented” style testimony were not uniform and are thus difficult to interpret. For example, subjects rated males who spoke in a narrative style more highly than males who did not, but there were no significant differences in response to females who spoke narratively and females who talked in a fragmented style. Subjects evaluated males’ fragmented style negatively, O’Barr argues, because they figured that it reflected lawyer control over, and disapproval of, the witness’ testimony. On the other hand, if women provided fragmented answers to lawyers’ questions, subjects would expect this to be a female trait and would not view it negatively. This assumption seems reasonable except that it is inconsistent with the results of the previous experiment in which the use of “powerless” speech even by females negatively affected respondents’ ratings.