Legal Motion
Banishing justice: Extradition limits in the United States
David Bierie & Kristen Budd
Criminology & Public Policy, November 2021, Pages 595-619
Abstract:
Arrest warrants are an important and pervasive aspect of crime and justice in the United States. There are nearly three million arrest warrants active on any given day, of which several hundred thousand were issued for serious violent crimes (SVCs) such as aggravated assault, robbery, forcible sexual assault, and homicide. In more than a third of those SVC warrants, however, extradition is conditionally waived such that an offender can avoid arrest by leaving town; they can elect banishment over prosecution. Studying extradition limits among these serious offenses presents an opportunity to illuminate both a challenge to public safety and justice, as well as forces underlying discretionary decision making by police. To that end, we study all arrest warrants issued in the United States for SVCs between 2017 and 2019. We model banishment rates at the county-level within a multivariate negative binomial framework. Analyses showed banishment varied as a function of policing capacity, firearm use in crimes, racial composition, and voting behavior during the 2016 presidential election.
Does the Bar Exam Protect the Public?
Kyle Rozema
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, December 2021, Pages 801-848
Abstract:
I study the effects of requiring lawyers to pass the bar exam on whether they are later publicly disciplined for misconduct. In the 1980s, by abolishing what is known as a diploma privilege, four states began to require graduates from all law schools to pass the bar exam. My research design exploits these events to estimate the effect of the bar passage requirement on the share of lawyers publicly sanctioned by state discipline bodies. I find that during the first decade of their careers lawyers licensed without a bar passage requirement are publicly sanctioned at similar rates to lawyers licensed after passing a bar exam. Small differences do begin to emerge after a decade, however, and larger though still modest differences form after two decades.
Stock Ownership of Federal Judges and its Impact on Corporations
April Knill, Joseph "Fred" Kindelsperger & Alexei Ovtchinnikov
Florida State University Working Paper, October 2021
Abstract:
This paper investigates whether and how litigant peer stock ownership by federal district judges affects characteristics of case outcomes for large corporate litigants. We find that industry-peer stock ownership by district judges is associated with the following outcomes for corporate litigants named in their assigned cases: 1) an increased likelihood of judgments for the corporate litigants, 2) a decrease in the amount received by the parties suing these corporate litigants, and 3) a decrease in the length of the litigation proceedings. The random assignment of district judges to cases provides exogenous variation in the judge stock ownership. We further identify the association outlined in our base results by examining appellate court reversals of district judgments, a triple difference analysis isolating large-stake investments, and outcomes in case types that should impact industries either cooperatively or competitively. Our results survive a falsification test as well as a battery of robustness tests. Our findings underscore the importance of mandates governing judge stock ownership, and more broadly, judge conflicts of interest.
“I haven't come a long way, and I'm not a baby”: Task assignment and diversity of the Supreme Court bar
John Szmer, Erin Kaheny & Tammy Sarver
Social Science Quarterly, November 2021, Pages 2907-2929
Methods:
After quantitatively describing participation by female attorneys in Supreme Court litigation, we use logistic regression and fractional logit, respectively, to identify factors that influence the degree to which women deliver oral arguments and participate in writing litigant briefs.
Results:
Descriptively, we find that male attorneys present more oral arguments than female attorneys, and most litigant briefs are written by male-dominated teams. In fact, more than a third of the briefs are only signed by men. In multivariate analyses of Supreme Court oral arguments and briefs, we find that women are more likely to argue and sign briefs on issues in which they are stereotypically perceived as more competent (women's issues) and less likely to participate in issue areas where they are perceived to be less competent, like economic issues. Similarly, women are less likely to orally argue in complex cases.
An Experimental Exploration of Reasonable Doubt
Jason Anthony Aimone et al.
Baylor University Working Paper, September 2021
Abstract:
The definition of reasonable doubt presented in jury instructions varies considerably across states. We use a controlled experiment to analyze the relationship between the definition of reasonable doubt and juror decisions. In our novel (preregistered) experiment, we vary the definition of reasonable doubt between subjects and elicit the level of evidence required for subjects to convict a defendant. We analyze juror decisions under two state definitions that are markedly different (Wisconsin and West Virginia) and analyze juror decisions when reasonable doubt is not explicitly defined. We find similar behavior in each treatment. We ran three additional treatments to determine why behavior does not seem to vary across definitions. Our data is consistent with subjects having pre-conceived notions of reasonable doubt that are not affected by jury instructions.
The Effect of Own-Gender Jurors on Conviction Rates
Mark Hoekstra & Brittany Street
Journal of Law and Economics, August 2021, Pages 513-537
Abstract:
Despite concerns about gender bias in general and jurors’ gender in particular, little is known about the effect of jurors’ gender on conviction rates. We identify the effect of own-gender jurors by exploiting random variation in the assignment to and ordering of jury pools in two large Florida counties. Results indicate that own-gender jurors are significantly less likely to convict on drug charges, though we find no evidence of effects for other charges. Estimates indicate that adding one own-gender juror (∼1.6 standard deviations) results in a 30-percentage-point reduction in conviction rates on drug charges, which is highly significant even after adjusting for multiple comparisons. These findings highlight how drawing an opposite-gender jury can impose significant costs on defendants and demonstrate that own-gender bias can occur even in settings where the importance of being impartial is actively pressed on participants.
Pain, suffering, and jury awards: A study of the cost of wrongful convictions
Mark Cohen
Criminology & Public Policy, November 2021, Pages 691-727
Abstract:
This paper estimates the cost of wrongful convictions based on analysis of jury awards and settlements for individuals who were wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. Key variables of interest are number of days spent in prison, days on probation, and demographics of wrongfully convicted and their families. The average “cost” of a wrongful conviction is estimated to be $6.1 million, or $1334 per day of incarceration, while the marginal cost decreases over time: initial incarceration is valued at over $50,000 for the first day; year one is valued at $1.5 million ($4000/day), while the marginal cost of the 10th year is estimated to be approximately $350,000 ($950/day).
Sound and credibility in the virtual court: Low audio quality leads to less favorable evaluations of witnesses and lower weighting of evidence
Elena Bild et al.
Law and Human Behavior, October 2021, Pages 481-495
Method:
Across three experiments (total N = 593), participants listened to audio clips of witnesses describing an event, one presented in high-quality audio and one presented in low-quality audio.
Results:
When people heard witnesses present evidence in low-quality audio, they rated the witnesses as less credible, reliable, and trustworthy (Experiment 1, d = 0.32; Experiment 3, d = 0.55); had poorer memory for key facts presented by the witness (Experiment 2, d = 0.44); and weighted witness evidence less in final guilt judgments (Experiment 3, ηp² = .05).
Racial Disparities in Lifer Parole Outcomes: The Hidden Role of Professional Evaluations
Kathryne Young & Jessica Pearlman
Law & Social Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
One in seven people in prison in the US is serving a life sentence, and most of these people will eventually be eligible for discretionary parole release. Yet parole hearings are notoriously understudied. With only a handful of exceptions, few researchers have considered the ways in which race shapes decision-makers’ perception of parole candidates. We use a data set created from over seven hundred California lifer parole hearing transcripts to examine the factors that predict parole commissioners’ decisions. We find significant racial disparities in outcomes, with Black parole candidates less likely to receive parole grants than white parole candidates, and test two possible indirect mechanisms. First, we find that racial disparity is unassociated with differences in rehabilitative efforts of Black versus white parole candidates, suggesting that differential levels of self-rehabilitation are not responsible for the disparity. Second, we test the hypothesis that racial disparity owes to commissioners’ reliance on other professionals’ determinations: psychological assessments, behavioral judgments, and prosecutors’ recommendations. We find that reliance on these evaluations accounts for a significant portion of the observed racial disparity. These results suggest that inclusion of professional assessments is not race-neutral and may create a veneer of objectivity that masks racial inequality.
Crime blindness: The impact of inattentional blindness on eyewitness awareness, memory, and identification
Alia Wulff & Ira Hyman
Applied Cognitive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People do not constantly watch for accidents and crimes. With their attention focused elsewhere, potential witnesses may fail to notice a crime and experience inattentional blindness. We investigated the impact of inattentional blindness on eyewitness awareness and memory. Participants watched a video in which a theft occurs. We manipulated the attentional focus of the participants-some watched for the crime, others simply watched the video, and some counted the number of people wearing white shirts. Participants counting white shirts and those simply watching more often experienced inattentional blindness for the crime and failed to identify the culprit than those watching for the theft. Participants, particularly those watching for the theft, often falsely identified an innocent bystander, displaying a potential unconscious transference effect. Attention plays a critical role in eyewitness awareness and memory. Eyewitness researchers should investigate situations in which people are not explicitly watching for a crime or accident.
Can neuroimaging prove pain and suffering?: The influence of pain assessment techniques on legal judgments of physical versus emotional pain
Hannah Phalen, Jessica Salerno & Nick Schweitzer
Law and Human Behavior, October 2021, Pages 393-412
Method:
In two experiments, we tested how pain assessment techniques influence perceptions of pain severity and monetary compensation differently for physical or emotional pain. Using a within-subjects design, participants (Experiment 1, N = 411, 59% male, 80% White) read 6 vignettes that described a person’s chronic physical or emotional pain, evaluated using a clinical assessment, neuropsychological assessment, or neuroimaging assessment. We conceptually replicated Experiment 1 in a legal context (Experiment 2, N = 353, 42% male; 80% White) and tested whether the neuroimaging effect was due to knowing that the pain was assessed by neuroimaging or also required the inclusion of a neuroimage.
Results:
When pain was assessed using neuroimaging (vs. non-neuroimaging assessments), participants rated the pain as more severe and gave larger monetary awards. When a person alleged physical (vs. emotional) pain, participants rated the pain as more severe and gave larger monetary awards. We conceptually replicated these findings in Experiment 2 and found that the neuroimaging effect was due to hearing about neuroimaging assessment and did not necessitate the inclusion of a neuroimage.
Assessing the Influence of Amici on Supreme Court Decision Making
Ronald Mann & Michael Fronk
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, December 2021, Pages 700-741
Abstract:
The authors analyze a dataset of indicators of the influence of amicus filings on the decisions of the United States Supreme Court from October Term 2013 through October Term 2018), examining the effect of filings on the prevailing party, on citations to amicus filings, and on sources drawn from amicus filings. The dataset includes 386 cases, 4500 amicus filings, and 22,000 citations in Supreme Court decisions. In some ways, the paper updates scholarship from the turn of the century, when amicus filings were much less prevalent, but it also breaks new ground with the data about citations to amicus filings and sources drawn from amicus filings. The principal findings are (1) the effect of amicus filings on the decision is much more even than it was at the turn of the century, when it was concentrated on bottom-side filings; and (2) the effects of filings are much more noticeable for amicus filers less directly motivated by monetary considerations (academics, think tanks, and the like) and less noticeable for those more directly motivated by monetary considerations (trade associations and businesses).
Aesthetic Preferences and Policy Preferences as Determinants of U.S. Supreme Court Writing Style
Jeffrey Budziak & Daniel Lempert
Journal of Law and Courts, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent literature on writing style in U.S. Supreme Court opinions has focused on style as a means of furthering justices’ policy goals. In particular, an opinion’s clarity is proposed to make the implementation of the announced policy more likely. We give a formal argument that the observed distribution of opinion clarity is not easily reconcilable with justices who are striving to write clearly in service of policy implementation related goals; this is true even if there are case-level costs that sometimes make writing clearly more difficult. We propose that justices having aesthetic preferences - essentially, stylistic preferences over opinion language that are unrelated to policy implementation - that they weight heavily could explain the observed distribution of opinion clarity. Our analysis of some 4500 majority opinions 1955-2008 is largely consistent with our theoretical argument.
Evidence strength (insufficiently) affects police officers’ decisions to place a suspect in a lineup
Jacqueline Katzman & Margaret Bull Kovera
Law and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Method:
Police officers (N = 279; age range = 24-70; 86% male) read a hypothetical crime scenario, adopting the role of the lead investigator. The scenarios varied in how closely the suspect was connected to the crime (evidentiary connection: weak vs. strong). Before reading the crime scenarios, half of the participants received education about the relationship between the base rate of guilt among suspects placed in lineups and the prevalence of mistaken identifications (education: present vs. absent). Officers indicated whether they would conduct an identification procedure with a witness based on the evidence they currently had against the suspect.
Results:
Education did not sensitize officers to the strength of the evidence connecting the suspect to the crime under investigation, but officers were sensitive to variations in evidentiary connection without benefit of the educational intervention. However, a majority of officers were willing to subject a suspect to an identification procedure even when there was no evidence connecting the suspect to the crime.