Psychology Lecture Series presents Prof. Miko Wilford, Oct. 24

The psychology department welcomes Professor Miko Wilford as the first speaker in its 2025-2026 lecture series: The Psychology of Law. She will present on "America’s System of Pleas Sets a High Price On Trial." 

In 1877, an American judge objected to the concept of plea-bargaining, comparing it to “a direct sale of justice” (Wright v. Rindskopf). In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court opined “that criminal justice today is… a system of pleas”, and compared standard post-trial sentences to the sticker price for cars (Lafler v. Cooper). Although the perspectives expressed in these statements differ dramatically, both opinions compare plea negotiations to other commercial transactions. Unfortunately, the State is no mere salesperson. The State has innumerable resources at its disposal to drive a “hard” bargain. While this reality disadvantages most defendants, the prevalence of plea bargaining provides another avenue for the rich and powerful to leverage their resources to get the best “deals”. Without reform, plea negotiations will continue to tip the scales toward the few with their hands on the lever. Thankfully, guilty plea research, relying on increasingly immersive and engaging methods, has started to flourish. Psycho-legal scientists are well-equipped to better our system of pleas—maintaining judicial efficiency while preserving the rights of the accused and preventing false guilty pleas.

Wilford is an associate professor of psychology at Iowa State University. She conducts research aimed at improving real-world policies and procedures, particularly in legal and educational domains. More specifically, her work seeks to answer questions such as: Why do innocent people plead guilty to crimes they did not commit? How can we preserve eyewitnesses’ memories? What impacts students’ perceptions of learning? Etc. Her work addressing these questions has been published in a number of high-impact, peer-reviewed journals, including Law and Human Behavior, Psychological Science, Psychology, Public Policy and Law, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. Her body of research also earned her recognition as an Association for Psychological Science Rising Star in 2020.

Much of her recent work has been particularly focused on illuminating issues with today’s criminal justice system, particularly its shift away from trials in favor of plea bargaining. She received a National Science Foundation CAREER grant to complete a multi-phase project that aims to further examine the factors that lead both adult and juvenile defendants to accept plea offers, especially when they are actually innocent. This grant also allowed Wilford to further improve a computer simulation of legal procedures that can be used for both research and education purposes. These improvements included the creation of a researcher console designed to allow any interested scholar modify their own version of this computer simulation to investigate their own research questions (see https://pleajustice.org/).

This event may be used to satisfy the Lecture Reflection Requirement in PSYC206 and PSYC493/494.