Due process
Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Sentences
Marit Rehavi & Sonja Starr
Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using rich data linking federal cases from arrest through to sentencing, we find that initial case and defendant characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain most, but not all, of the large raw racial disparity in federal sentences. Across the sentence distribution, blacks receive sentences that are almost 10% longer than comparable whites arrested for the same crimes. Most of this disparity can be explained by prosecutors' initial charging decisions, particularly the filing of charges carrying mandatory minimum sentences. Ceteris paribus, the odds of black arrestees facing such a charge are 1.75 times higher than those of white arrestees.
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The Chief Justice as Executive: Judicial Conference Committee Appointments
Dawn Chutkow
Journal of Law and Courts, Fall 2014, Pages 301-325
Abstract:
This article is the first comprehensive empirical study of chief justice appointments to the Judicial Conference committees of the US Courts, entities with influence over substantive public and legal policy. Using a newly created database of all judges appointed to serve on Judicial Conference committees between 1986 and 2012, the results indicate that a judge's partisan alignment with the chief justice matters, as do personal characteristics such as race, experience on the bench, and court level. These results support claims that Judicial Conference committee selection, membership, and participation may present a vehicle for advancing the chief justice's individual political and policy interests.
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John Donohue
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article analyzes the 205 death-eligible murders leading to homicide convictions in Connecticut from 1973-2007 to determine if discriminatory and arbitrary factors influenced capital outcomes. A regression analysis controlling for an array of legitimate factors relevant to the crime, defendant, and victim provides overwhelming evidence that minority defendants who kill white victims are capitally charged at substantially higher rates than minority defendants who kill minorities, that geography influences both capital charging and sentencing decisions (with the location of a crime in Waterbury being the single most potent influence on which death-eligible cases will lead to a sentence of death), and that the Connecticut death penalty system has not limited its application to the worst of the worst death-eligible defendants. The work of an expert hired by the State of Connecticut provided emphatic, independent confirmation of these three findings, and found that women who commit death-eligible crimes are less likely than men to be sentenced to death. There is also strong and statistically significant evidence that minority defendants who kill whites are more likely to end up with capital sentences than comparable cases with white defendants. Regression estimates of the effect of both race and geography on death sentencing reveal the disparities can be glaring. Considering the most common type of death-eligible murder - a multiple victim homicide - a white on white murder of average egregiousness outside Waterbury has a .57 percent chance of being sentenced to death, while a minority committing the identical crime on white victims in Waterbury would face a 91.2 percent likelihood. In other words, the minority defendant in Waterbury would be 160 times more likely to get a sustained death sentence than the comparable white defendant in the rest of the state. Among the nine Connecticut defendants to receive sustained death sentences over the study period, only Michael Ross comports with the dictates that "within the category of capital crimes, the death penalty must be reserved for 'the worst of the worst.'" For the eight defendants on death row (after the 2005 execution of Ross), the median number of equally or more egregious death-eligible cases that did not receive death sentences is between 35 and 46 (depending on the egregiousness measure). In light of the prospective abolition of the Connecticut death penalty in April 2012, which eliminated the deterrence rationale for the death penalty, Atkins v. Virginia teaches that unless the Connecticut death penalty regime "measurably contributes to [the goal of retribution], it is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering, and hence an unconstitutional punishment." Apart from Ross, the evidence suggests that the eight others residing on death row were not measurably more culpable than the many who were not capitally sentenced. Moreover, Connecticut imposed sustained death sentences at a rate of 4.4 percent (9 of 205). This rate of death sentencing is among the lowest in the nation and more than two-thirds lower than the 15 percent pre-Furman Georgia rate that was deemed constitutionally problematic in that "freakishly rare" sentences of death are likely to be arbitrary.
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Christine Martin
Race and Justice, April 2014, Pages 152-174
Abstract:
This research examines prosecutorial decision making at the initial charging stage in Chicago homicide cases during the late 1990s. The objectives of this investigation are to determine whether African Americans were prosecuted more severely than similarly situated White and Latino defendants in Chicago homicide cases prior to the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois and to identify the factors that affected how severely prosecutors prosecuted defendants during that time. The study participants are adults who were identified by the Chicago Police Department as suspects in homicide incidents during the years of 1994 and 1995 and whose cases were selected for prosecution. Other relevant factors that may have influenced charging decisions include the defendant-victim relationship, the homicide circumstances, and the number of victims in a particular homicide incident. General linear regression modeling is used to determine the factors that affected how severely prosecutors prosecuted Chicago homicide defendants. Charge severity is measured by the number of charges of Class M felony murder that were filed against a defendant. The results indicate that prior to the moratorium on the death penalty in Chicago, all defendants studied (regardless of the race/ethnicity of their victims) were charged with fewer counts of murder (prosecuted less severely) than African American defendants who were charged with killing White victims. This direct and significant relationship persists even after adding defendant-victim relationship and homicide circumstance interaction terms to the analysis.
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The intersection of race and gender: An examination of sentencing outcomes in North Carolina
Katrina Rebecca Bloch, Rodney Engen & Kylie Parrotta
Criminal Justice Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines the intersection of offenders' race and gender in the sentencing process using data on felony cases sentenced in North Carolina. Analyses examine the likelihood that charges were reduced in severity between initial filing and conviction, the likelihood of imprisonment, and the length of sentence imposed, and test whether race affects punishment similarly for men and women. Results indicate that status characteristics predict both reductions in charge severity and the severity of the final sentence, and that racial disparity is conditional on gender. However, the results are not entirely consistent with predictions derived from the extant literature. Gender significantly predicts case outcomes at each stage, but black men were not uniformly disadvantaged, and black women received the least severe treatment in two out of four analyses. Theoretical implications for the intersection of race and gender in sentencing theories are discussed.
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The Difference "Hate" Makes in Clearing Crime: An Event History Analysis of Incident Factors
Christopher Lyons & Aki Roberts
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, August 2014, Pages 268-289
Abstract:
Studying hate crime clearance rates provides an opportunity to uncover the factors that influence police effectiveness for a relatively new legal category - one that was designed ostensibly to protect minorities, and that may pose unique challenges for police reporting, defining, and investigation. Using multiple years (2005-2010) of data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), we estimate event history models to compare the incident-level predictors and relative probability of arrest for hate and nonbias crimes. As an aggregate category, we find hate crimes are less likely to clear than nonbias crimes. However, the most prototypical hate crimes - White-on-non-White incidents motivated by racial and ethnic bias - are as likely to clear as the most successfully cleared nonbias crimes. Our results suggest that only hate crimes that fit popular constructions of "normal victims and offenders" receive investigative outcomes comparable with otherwise similar nonbias offenses.
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Judicial Bond-Setting Behavior: The Perceived Nature of the Crime May Matter More Than How Serious It Is
Robert Beattey, Taiki Matsuura & Elizabeth Jeglic
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, forthcoming
Abstract:
Whether a criminal defendant will be released on bail or held in jail pretrial is one of the first decisions made in a criminal prosecution. This study examined whether a certain group of defendants is subject to the setting of higher bonds by virtue of the subjectively perceived nature of the offense with which the defendants are charged. We specifically tested whether, despite lower overall rearrest rates, judges are imposing higher bonds on defendants charged with a sex offense than on defendants charged with a nonsex offense of equal statutory offense level. Results showed a statistically significant difference in the bond rates between sex offenders and nonsex offenders, with the mean sex offense bond being set approximately $30,000 higher than the mean nonsex offense bond, despite controlling for level of offense, sex of the defendant, and judge setting the bond amount. Given the high costs of pretrial detention to both the defendant and the state, the utility of empirically based bond setting is discussed.
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An Investigation of Implied Miranda Waivers and Powell Wording in a Mock-Crime Study
Nathan Gillard et al.
Law and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
To guard against coerced self-incrimination, the Supreme Court of the United States outlined in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) what arresting officers must convey to custodial suspects for resulting statements to be admissible into evidence. During the ensuing decades, the Court has continued to grapple with the requisite wording and practical enforcement of these Constitutional rights. In Florida v. Powell (2010), the Court upheld the conviction of a defendant whose Miranda warning affirmed that before questioning he had the right to an attorney, but failed to specify that during questioning he had this right as well. In Berghuis v. Thompkins (2010), the Court ruled that the right to silence must be invoked explicitly, while valid Miranda waivers could be "implied" by a suspect's actions as well as words. The current study employed a mock crime design to assess the practical effects of these 2 rulings on waiver decisions. The wording change enabled by Powell had little effect on Miranda knowledge and reasoning. With regard to Thompkins, the type of waiver profoundly affected subsequent decisions: 13.7% exercised their rights following implied waivers versus 81.1% with explicit waivers. Importantly, the implied waiver condition produced much higher percentages of confessions (17.6% vs. 3.8%) and of admissions about incriminating information (29.4% vs. 9.4%).
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Squealer Dealers: The Market for Information in Federal Drug Trafficking Prosecutions
Andrew Nutting
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Federal data on drug trafficking sentences are used to determine factors that affect market quantities of providing information against other defendants (i.e., defendant probabilities of receiving testimony-related sentence reductions) and market prices of information (i.e., the sizes of such sentence reductions). Women and better-educated defendants experience high demand (higher quantities and prices) for information. Blacks, Hispanics, and non-U.S. citizens experience low demand. Defendants expecting longer sentences have higher supply of information. Conditional on expected sentence, crack dealers, high-level dealers, and dealers with long criminal histories experience low demand, while low-level dealers experience high demand. Women of all races experience high demand for information.
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Lawyer and Nonlawyer Susceptibility to Framing Effects in Out-of-Court Civil Litigation Settlement
Ian Belton, Mary Thomson & Mandeep Dhami
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, September 2014, Pages 578-600
Abstract:
Settling a legal dispute out of court is typically a good result for both parties. However, many disputes do not settle: the presence of cognitive biases, such as those observed through framing manipulations, is thought to be one of the many reasons for settlement failure. The present study used quantitative and qualitative data to compare the impact of a gain- or loss-framed hypothetical civil litigation scenario on settlement decisions made by lawyers and other nonlawyer professionals. A significant effect of framing was found for both groups. As predicted, both nonlawyers and lawyers were much more likely to settle their claim in the gain scenario than in the loss scenario. This finding was supported by the qualitative data: risk-averse comments were more frequent in the gain frame whereas risk-seeking statements were more common in the loss frame. There was also evidence that lawyers may be less affected by framing than nonlawyers, although a smaller difference was observed than in previous studies. In addition, lawyers were more likely than nonlawyers to consider the expected financial value of the litigation in making their decision. We discuss the implications of these results and suggest avenues for future research.
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Tarika Daftary-Kapur et al.
Law and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of pretrial publicity (PTP) on mock juror decision making. Specifically, we examined the influence of quantity and slant of the PTP (proprosecution vs. prodefense), the persistence of PTP effects over time, and whether the PTP effects demonstrated in research laboratories would also occur in more naturalistic settings (generalizability). Using a shadow jury paradigm we examined these effects using a real trial as stimulus. Mock jurors included 115 jury-eligible community members who were naturally exposed to PTP in the venue in which the actual case occurred and 156 who were experimentally exposed. We found mock jurors were significantly influenced by both the slant and quantity of the PTP to which they were exposed, such that those exposed to proprosecution or prodefense PTP tended to render decision in support of the party favored in the PTP, and those exposed to greater quantities of PTP tended to be more biased. Additionally, PTP effects persisted throughout the course of the trial and continued to influence judgments in face of trial evidence and arguments. A finding of no significant difference in the effect of exposure slant between the naturally exposed and experimentally exposed samples provides support for the external validity of laboratory studies examining PTP effects. This research helps address some of the concerns raised by courts with regard to the durability of PTP effects and the application of laboratory findings to real world settings.
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"Midnight Confessions": The Effect of Chronotype Asynchrony on Admissions of Wrongdoing
Kyle Scherr et al.
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, July/August 2014, Pages 321-328
Abstract:
Confession evidence is highly incriminating in court. We examined the interaction between chronotype and time of day on the confession decisions of 60 participants using an experimental paradigm. Pre-identified morning- and evening-type people were randomly assigned to participate in morning or evening sessions. Results supported an interactional asynchrony hypothesis that individuals are more likely to confess during "off-peak" periods (i.e., evening-types in the morning and morning-types in the evening). This interaction was obtained for both high- and low-seriousness transgressions. These results suggest that chronotype asynchrony constitutes a significant risk factor for false confessions and the wrongful convictions that often follow.
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Mollie McGuire & Kathy Pezdek
Legal and Criminological Psychology, forthcoming
Purpose: The cross-race effect can be exaggerated when faces are presented in groups, leading to less accurate eyewitness identifications (Pezdek, O'Brien, & Wasson, 2012, Law Hum. Behav., 36, 488). Our current study examined the effect of entitativity, the degree to which members of a group are perceived as a coherent unit (Campbell, 1958, Behav. Sci., 3, 14), on recognition accuracy for same- and cross-race faces presented in groups.
Methods: White participants viewed 16 slides of 3-face groups (eight White groups, eight Black groups). Prior to viewing the faces they were told that the entitativity of each 3-face group was high ('friends who do things together') or low ('people in line at the bank'). They were then tested on 32 individually presented faces (16 old and 16 new).
Results: When cross-race faces were presented in high rather than low entitativity groups, less accurate face recognition memory resulted. Increasing group entitativity decreased recognition accuracy for cross-race faces but increased recognition accuracy for same-race faces.
Conclusions: The results suggest that the perception of a group negatively impacts eyewitness memory. Contextual factors such as entitativity need to be considered along with other estimator variables when assessing eyewitness identification accuracy.
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On Courts and Pocketbooks: Macroeconomic Judicial Behavior across Methods of Judicial Selection
Douglas Rice
Journal of Law and Courts, Fall 2014, Pages 327-347
Abstract:
Scholars studying judicial behavior have identified a host of factors theoretically and empirically connected to judicial decision making. One recent theory identifies economic conditions - which have implications for the decisions of voters and politicians - as influencing the voting behavior of US Supreme Court justices. Yet the US Supreme Court is a unique judicial institution addressing limited - though indisputably important - economic cases every year. State courts, on the other hand, address a multitude of issues every year with economic ramifications. Building on the rich body of literature examining state courts of last resort, I analyze whether judges, across a variety of methods for judicial selection and retention, respond to temporary changes in the state of the economy. Results indicate that the responses of state supreme court judges to changes in the state of the economy are conditional on the electoral vulnerability of the justice. This research thus offers considerable insight into judicial behavior under different selection mechanisms and the conditional influence of the state of the economy.
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Hypothesis Testing in Attorney-Conducted Voir Dire
Caroline Crocker Otis et al.
Law and Human Behavior, August 2014, Pages 392-404
Abstract:
Attorneys may hold expectations about jurors based on stereotypes about the relationships between demographic characteristics and attitudes. Attorneys test their hypotheses about prospective jurors during voir dire, but it is unclear whether their questioning strategies are likely to produce accurate information from jurors. In 2 studies, attorneys and law students formulated voir dire questions to test a particular hypothesis about the attitudes held by a prospective juror (venireperson) and provided their subsequent inferences about that individual given certain hypothetical responses to the questions. Bayes's theorem was used to compare attorneys' actual conclusions about the venireperson with the conclusions they would reach if correctly using the available information. Attorneys' conclusions were biased by the questions they asked, and in some cases, by the hypothesis that they were asked to test. Compared with normative models derived using Bayes' theorem, attorneys overrelied on venirepersons' responses when drawing conclusions about their attitudes. These findings suggest that even if traditional attorney-conducted voir dire elicited accurate information about prospective jurors' attitudes, attorneys may not use that information to draw normatively accurate conclusions about the attitudes that they hold.
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Knowledge and Death Penalty Opinion: The Marshall Hypotheses Revisited
Gavin Lee, Robert Bohm & Lynn Pazzani
American Journal of Criminal Justice, September 2014, Pages 642-659
Abstract:
This study tests the three hypotheses derived from the written opinion of Justice Thurgood Marshall in Furman v Georgia in 1972. Subjects completed questionnaires at the beginning and the end of the fall a semester. Experimental group subjects were enrolled in a death penalty class, while control group subjects were enrolled in another criminal justice class. The death penalty class was the experimental stimulus. Findings provided strong support for the first and third hypotheses, i.e., subjects were generally lacking in death penalty knowledge before the experimental stimulus, and death penalty proponents who scored "high" on a retribution index did not change their death penalty opinions despite exposure to death penalty knowledge. Marshall's second hypothesis--that death penalty knowledge and death penalty support were inversely related--was not supported by the data. Two unexpected findings were that death penalty proponents who scored "low" on a retribution index also did not change their death penalty opinions after becoming more informed about the subject, and that death penalty knowledge did not alter subjects' initial retributive positions. Suggestions for future research are provided.
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High stakes lies: Police and non-police accuracy in detecting deception
Clea Wright Whelan, Graham Wagstaff & Jacqueline Wheatcroft
Psychology, Crime & Law, forthcoming
Abstract:
To date, the majority of investigations into accuracy in detecting deception has used low-stakes lies as stimulus materials, and findings from these studies suggest that people are generally poor at detecting deception. The research presented here utilised real-life, high-stakes lies as stimulus materials, to investigate the accuracy of police and non-police observers in detecting deception. It was hypothesised that both police and non-police observers would achieve above chance levels of accuracy in detecting deception, that police officers would be more accurate at detecting deception than non-police observers, that confidence in veracity judgements would be positively related to accuracy and that consensus judgements would predict veracity. One hundred and seven observers (70 police officers and 37 non-police participants) watched 36 videos of people lying or telling the truth in an extremely high-stakes, real-life situation. Police observers achieved mean accuracy in detecting deception of 72%, non-police observers achieved 68% mean accuracy, and confidence in veracity judgements was positively related to accuracy. Consensus judgements correctly predicted veracity in 92% of cases.
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Russell Skiba et al.
American Educational Research Journal, August 2014, Pages 640-670
Abstract:
In the context of a national conversation about exclusionary discipline, we conducted a multilevel examination of the relative contributions of infraction, student, and school characteristics to rates of and racial disparities in out-of-school suspension and expulsion. Type of infraction; race, gender, and to a certain extent socioeconomic status at the individual level; and, at the school level, mean school achievement, percentage Black enrollment, and principal perspectives all contributed to the probability of out-of-school suspension or expulsion. For racial disparities, however, school-level variables, including principal perspectives on discipline, appear to be among the strongest predictors. Such a pattern suggests that schools and districts looking to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in discipline would do well to focus on school- and classroom-based interventions.
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Legislating Incentives for Attorney Representation in Civil Rights Litigation
Sean Farhang & Douglas Spencer
Journal of Law and Courts, Fall 2014, Pages 241-271
Abstract:
Congress routinely relies on private lawsuits to enforce its mandates. In this article, we investigate whether, when it does so, the details of the legislation can importantly influence the extent to which the private bar is mobilized to carry out the prosecutorial function. Using an original and novel data set based on review of archived litigation documents for cases filed in the Northern and Eastern Districts of California over the two decades spanning 1981-2000, we examine the effects of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which increased economic damages available to Title VII job discrimination plaintiffs, on their ability to secure counsel. We find that over the course of the decade after passage, the law substantially increased the probability that Title VII plaintiffs would be represented by counsel and that in doing so it reversed a decade-long trend in the opposite direction.