A defendant charged in federal court faces a choice before sentencing: plead guilty, or go to trial. The FY2025 individual-offender data records the outcome either way. For most offense categories, defendants who took their cases to trial received sentences measured in years longer than those who pleaded.
What the data shows
The Commission's individual-offender file includes DISPOSIT, which distinguishes plea from jury trial from bench trial. For each state-and-offense cell with enough cases, the widget records the median sentence under each disposition.
In the drug trafficking cells with enough trial cases to compute a median, the difference between the plea median and the trial median averages roughly 109 months across jurisdictions. That is more than nine years on top of an already significant sentence. In Texas drug trafficking — the largest single cell in the file — the plea median was 87 months and the trial median was 184 months, a difference of 97 months.
Fraud, theft, and embezzlement cases show a narrower gap. Among the cells with enough trial cases, the trial median ran about 36 months higher than the plea median. The sentence starting point is lower, and the gap is proportionally different.
Kidnapping has the widest recorded gap. In the cells where a trial median is computable, the average difference exceeds 190 months. That figure reflects a small number of cells and should be read carefully. It is consistent with kidnapping carrying the highest raw sentences of any offense in the file.
Trial rates
Going to trial is uncommon in federal court. Across all offense categories in the FY2025 widget, the trial rate — the share of cases resolved by jury or bench trial — varies from under 1 percent to roughly 25 percent.
Drug trafficking: 2.1 percent trial rate. For every 50 drug trafficking defendants sentenced in federal court during FY2025, approximately one went to trial.
Murder: 25.2 percent trial rate. This is the highest share of trials among the 30 categories in the November 6, 2026 file. Murder defendants also face among the highest sentences — the median in several jurisdictions exceeds 20 years — which may raise the stakes of the plea-or-trial decision.
Assault: 9.9 percent trial rate. Sex abuse: 8 percent. Robbery: 5.4 percent.
The trial rate does not, by itself, tell you why defendants chose trial. Some defendants may have stronger cases. Some may have more to lose from a plea. Some may have been unable to reach acceptable terms. The data does not contain the reason for the disposition choice.
Guideline ranges and departures
The guidelines calculate a recommended range before the sentencing judge applies adjustments. A below-range sentence requires a stated reason. A plea agreement often includes a government recommendation, which can open the door to a §5K1.1 motion for substantial assistance or to other agreed-on reductions.
When a defendant goes to trial and is convicted, those plea-linked reductions are generally unavailable. The result, in most cases, is a sentence closer to — or above — the calculated guideline range.
The FY2025 data records the guideline position for each cell: the share sentenced within range, the share below (broken into judge-initiated and government-sponsored), and the share above. These are stored fields from the Commission's coding. They are not recomputed here.
What this is not
The difference between a plea median and a trial median in a state-and-offense cell is not a controlled estimate of the trial penalty. It is not adjusted for the strength of the evidence, the defendant's criminal history, the specific conduct charged, or any other factor that affects both the disposition choice and the sentence length. Some of the gap reflects self-selection: defendants who go to trial may differ systematically from those who plead.
The figure is a description of what the data shows. It is not a cause. It does not say what any individual defendant should do, and it is not legal advice.
For the full cell data — plea median, trial median, and their difference — use the explorer and pick an offense. Every cell with enough trial cases shows the trial-minus-plea figure in the detail table.