On the advice of counsel
An Exploratory Study of the Pricing of Legal Services
Vikram Maheshri & Clifford Winston
International Review of Law and Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Consumers and firms spend some $200 billion annually on legal services, but little is known about the factors that influence lawyers' prices for those services. In this paper, we explore the determinants of the variation in lawyers' pricing to shed light on competition among lawyers and to comment on whether entry barriers to legal practice that restrict competition are justified because they protect consumers who may have imperfect information about potential legal service providers. We do not find evidence in support of this premise.
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Backlash and Legitimation: Macro Political Responses to Supreme Court Decisions
Joseph Daniel Ura
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article is a first attempt to develop and assess the competing predictions of the thermostatic model of public opinion and legitimation theory for the responses of public mood to Supreme Court decisions. While the thermostatic model predicts a negative relationship between the ideological direction of Supreme Court decisions and changes in public mood, legitimation theory predicts that changes in mood should be positively associated with the ideological content of the Court's actions. I assess these rival expectations by modeling the dynamic relationship between mood and cumulative judicial liberalism. The model estimates indicate a complex interaction between the Court and the mass public characterized by short-term backlash against Supreme Court decisions in mood followed by long-run movement toward the ideological positions taken by the Court. The results emphasize the legitimacy of the Court in American politics and point to a unique role for the Court in shaping public opinion.
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Social Norms Versus Social Responsibility: Punishing Transgressions Under Conflicting Obligations
Francesca Gino, Celia Moore & Lamar Pierce
Harvard Working Paper, June 2013
Abstract:
This paper combines experimental and field data to examine how those with discretion over punishment respond when confronted with social norms of leniency. Specifically, we test how individuals who have a responsibility to punish transgressions behave when confronted with the social norm of preferential treatment on people's birthdays. We first establish the existence of this social norm using a scenario study. We then show that individuals behave in the opposite way than that suggested by the social norm: they punish transgressors more severely on their birthdays, both in the realm of actual drunk driving enforcement and in an experimental lab setting where participants were given the responsibility to punish. An additional experiment provides evidence that this effect is driven by psychological reactance rather than by overcompensation for potential bias. We discuss both the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
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Katlyn Farnum & Margaret Stevenson
Psychology, Crime & Law, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigated the influence of a juvenile defendant's socioeconomic status (SES) on mock jurors' perceptions of a juvenile tried in adult court. As predicted, participants convicted the low SES juvenile defendant of felony murder significantly more than the middle or high SES juvenile defendant. Yet, participants also rated the low SES juvenile as less mature than the middle or high SES juvenile - a belief that past research shows predicts leniency in verdicts (i.e., not guilty judgments). Finally, stereotypes about the criminality of low SES juvenile defendants, not a lack of perceived similarity, partially mediated the effect of SES on guilt.
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The Effectiveness of Public Defenders in Four Florida Counties
Marian Williams
Journal of Criminal Justice, July-August 2013, Pages 205-212
Purpose: The present study utilizes data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics to examine the effectiveness of public defenders in Florida to assess whether the case outcomes of defendants with public defenders are similar to the case outcomes of defendants with retained attorneys, controlling for legally-relevant variables.
Methods: The present study utilizes both logistic and OLS regression analysis to examine differences between attorneys for seven different case outcomes.
Results: Results indicate that defendants with public defenders are more likely to be detained pretrial, more likely to be convicted, and less likely to have their cases dismissed. The results dispute previous research which found few, if any, differences between public defenders and retained counsel.
Conclusion: Results suggest that, at least in the counties examined, defendants with public defenders suffer from a lack of quality counsel.
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Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Waiver to Adult Court
Joe Brown & Jon Sorensen
Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, Summer 2013, Pages 181-195
Abstract:
This study sought to examine the decision-making process by which juvenile courts determine whether to certify juveniles to adult criminal court or retain them in juvenile court. Specifically, the study sought to determine whether race, ethnicity, and gender influenced decision making when legally relevant case attributes were controlled. Data came from the largest urban jurisdiction in Texas. The results indicated that minority youth and males were more likely to be transferred to adult criminal court than White juveniles and females. A Black or Hispanic youth was approximately 3 times as likely as a White youth to receive a transfer to adult court, net of legally relevant case criteria. Males were nearly 7 times as likely as females to be transferred.
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Race and Ethnicity Effects in Federal Sentencing: A Propensity Score Analysis
Travis Franklin
Justice Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research has examined the role of race and ethnicity in the punishment of offenders. Narrative and meta-analytic reviews have indicated that race/ethnicity influences key sentencing outcomes, at least under certain conditions. This research relies almost exclusively on regression-based analyses for determining race and ethnicity effects. While this technique is useful, recent statistical advances may provide more accurate race/ethnicity estimates. The current study employs propensity score analysis to compare punishment outcomes across White, Black, and Hispanic offenders sentenced in US federal courts during the years 2006 through 2008. Results suggest that (a) during the in/out decision the effect of minority status is frequently smaller than that estimated by regression modeling and (b) during the sentence length decision the effect of minority status is frequently larger than that estimated by regression modeling. Consequently, the modeling strategy may produce different conclusions regarding the presence of race- and ethnic-based disparity in sentencing outcomes.
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Quality Over Quantity: Amici Influence and Judicial Decision Making
Janet Box-Steffensmeier, Dino Christenson & Matthew Hitt
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Interest groups often make their preferences known on cases before the U.S. Supreme Court via amicus curiae briefs. In evaluating the case and related arguments, we posit that judges take into account more than just the number of supporters for the liberal and conservative positions. Specifically, judges' decisions may also reflect the relative power of the groups. We use network position to measure interest group power in U.S. Supreme Court cases from 1946 to 2001. We find that the effect of interest group power is minimal in times of heavily advantaged cases. However, when the two sides of a case are approximately equal in the number of briefs, such power is a valuable signal to judges. We also show that justice ideology moderates the effect of liberal interest group power. The results corroborate previous findings on the influence of amicus curiae briefs and add a nuanced understanding of the conditions under which the quality and reputation of interest groups matter, not just the quantity.
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Claire Lim
American Economic Review, June 2013, Pages 1360-1397
Abstract:
We study how two selection systems for public officials, appointment and election, affect policy outcomes, focusing on state court judges and their criminal sentencing decisions. First, under appointment, policy congruence with voter preferences is attained through selecting judges with homogeneous preferences. In contrast, under election, judges face strong reelection incentives, while selection on preferences is weak. Second, the effectiveness of election in attaining policy congruence critically depends on payoffs from the job, which implies that the effectiveness of election may vary substantially across public offices. Third, reelection incentives may discourage judges with significant human capital from holding office.
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Linda Camp Keith, Jennifer Holmes & Banks Miller
Law & Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
In seeking to understand the variation in asylum grant rates by immigration judges (IJs), we apply a variation of the attitudinal model that we modify by incorporating a cognitive model of decision making, arguing that some pieces of information before IJs are treated objectively while others are treated subjectively. This model allows us to account for informational cues that influence decisions while assessing the impact of national interests and human rights conditions. We find that IJ policy predispositions play a dominant role, and that liberal IJs respond to applicant characteristics differently than conservatives, but also that the law constrains decision making.
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An Undergraduate Option for Legal Education
John McGinnis & Russell Mangas
International Review of Law and Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prospective lawyers should have the option of taking the bar exam upon completing an undergraduate major in law and serving a year's apprenticeship. This undergraduate option would substantially decrease the cost of legal education and thus in the long run reduce the costs of legal services, particularly to poor and middle class. It would also decrease the deadweight loss from unnecessarily prolonged education and reduce the number of lawyers made unhappy by debt. Experience abroad suggests that this option would not unduly diminish the quality of lawyers. The undergraduate option would also provide other substantial benefits. For instance, it would increase the diversity in the legal profession and offer a greater variety of career choices for lawyers.
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Danny Osborne & Paul Davies
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, July 2013, Pages 488-504
Abstract:
Mistaken identifications are the primary cause of wrongful convictions. Though studies have examined when these errors are likely to occur, none have specified whom these errors are most likely to affect. We address this oversight by arguing that the type of crime committed affects whom eyewitnesses misidentify. Study 1 demonstrated that people have stereotypes about a perpetrator's appearance that vary by the crime committed. Study 2 showed that these stereotypes affect identifications in a stereotype-consistent manner - participants who believed they saw a target accused of a stereotypically Black crime remembered him as being higher on perceived stereotypicality (viz., having more Afrocentric features) than did participants who believed they saw a target accused of a stereotypically White crime. This finding was replicated in Study 3 using a different pair of crimes. These studies demonstrate that the type of crime committed systematically affects whom eyewitnesses mistakenly identify.
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On the power of secondary confession evidence
Stacy Ann Wetmore, Jeffrey Neuschatz & Scott Gronlund
Psychology, Crime & Law, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research on primary confessions has demonstrated that it is a powerful form of evidence. The goal of the current research was to investigate whether secondary confessions - the suspect confesses to another individual who in turn then reports the confession to the police - could be as persuasive. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants read a murder trial containing an eyewitness identification, a secondary confession, and character testimony, and made midtrial assessments of the evidence. Results indicated that the secondary confession was evaluated as the most incriminating. In Experiment 3, participants read summaries of four criminal trials, each of which contained a primary confession, a secondary confession, eyewitness identification, or none of the above. The two confession conditions produced significantly higher conviction rates. Our findings suggest that secondary confessions are another powerful and potentially dangerous form of evidence.
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Acute Anxiety Impairs Accuracy in Identifying Photographed Faces
Angela Attwood et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigated whether acutely induced anxiety modifies the ability to match photographed faces. Establishing the extent to which anxiety affects face-matching accuracy is important because of the relevance of face-matching performance to critical security-related applications. Participants (N = 28) completed the Glasgow Face Matching Test twice, once during a 20-min inhalation of medical air and once during a similar inhalation of air enriched with 7.5% CO2, which is a validated method for inducing acute anxiety. Anxiety degraded performance, but only with respect to hits, not false alarms. This finding provides further support for the dissociation between the ability to accurately identify a genuine match between faces and the ability to identify the lack of a match. Problems with the accuracy of facial identification are not resolved even when viewers are presented with a good photographic image of a face, and identification inaccuracy may be heightened when viewers are experiencing acute anxiety.
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Suzanne Kaasa et al.
Behavioral Sciences & the Law, forthcoming
Abstract:
False sexual abuse allegations have spurred research on suggestibility, on the assumption that leading questions may produce false accusations. Most researchers, however, have not measured the likelihood that those who respond to suggestive questioning will take the next step and make a formal (false) accusation. The present study incorporates both aspects of abuse investigations: suggestibility (i.e., responsiveness to questions in a leading interview) and false accusations (i.e., signing a formal complaint against an innocent suspect). Participants (N = 129) were observed in a laboratory session and then interviewed twice about their experiences by an interviewer who suggested that the laboratory assistant had behaved inappropriately. Although only 17% of the participants were suggestible, 39% agreed to sign the complaint. Suggestible participants were significantly more likely to make a false accusation than were non-suggestible participants. However, because of the low rate of suggestibility, most false accusations were made by non-suggestible participants. Implications for the legal system are discussed.
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Mary Hughes et al.
Psychology, Crime & Law, Summer 2013, Pages 549-564
Abstract:
Comprehension of the police caution is extremely poor across a variety of populations and jurisdictions and is particularly impaired in vulnerable populations. This has significant consequences for the admissibility of evidence in court. We investigated whether providing individuals with a written version of the caution would improve comprehension in the general population. Sixty participants (30 with low educational attainment and 30 with high educational attainment) were randomly allocated to one of three groups (Verbal presentation; Written presentation; Verbal and Written presentation). Comprehension in the three groups was evaluated using Cooke and Philip's (1998) Scottish Comprehension of Caution Instrument. Results showed that despite 95% of participants claiming to fully understand the sample caution, only 5% of individuals in the verbal presentation group demonstrated full understanding, compared to 40% and 35% in the written and combined verbal and written groups respectively. This highlights both that individuals' self-reports of understanding are higher than actual comprehension and that providing a written version of the caution may improve comprehension in the general population.
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Gender-bias hate crimes: What constitutes a hate crime from a potential juror's perspective?
Karyn Plumm & Cheryl Terrance
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, July 2013, Pages 1468-1479
Abstract:
The current study explored hate crime in a nontypical scenario. Label of the crime (first-degree assault vs. bias-motivated assault) and gender of the victim were varied within the context of an attack perpetrated within other gender dyads (i.e., when the victim was female, the perpetrator was male, and vice versa). Results indicated that participants in the assault condition were more likely to find the defendant guilty than those in the hate crime condition. Participants also made differential attributions of victim blame, such that those in the assault condition found the victim to be more mentally unstable than those in the hate crime condition.
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Jeanine Skorinko & Barbara Spellman
Victims & Offenders, Summer 2013, Pages 278-307
Abstract:
Stereotype-based judgments in the legal system can be particularly damaging. In Experiment 1, we surveyed 179 participants to assess which of 55 crimes they viewed as stereotypical of 13 groups of people. Stereotypic crimes based on ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and age were found. We used these results to create crime scenarios for Experiments 2 and 3 that unconfounded crime stereotypicality and crime violence. We then examined the effects of stereotypic crimes with black or white defendants on mock jurors' memories and decisions. Memory biases were found in line with the stereotypic crimes. Offenders' verdicts and sentences were sometimes biased by stereotypic crimes. By unconfounding crime stereotypicality and violence, the results also demonstrate how violence influences biases in memories and decisions.
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Avital Ginton
Psychology, Crime & Law, Summer 2013, Pages 577-594
Abstract:
A unique method for estimating field accuracy of the Comparison Question Test (CQT) - a polygraph technique - is presented, based on a combined probabilistic and algebraic model. It is built on paired examinations in criminal cases in which two opposing versions per case have been subjected to polygraph tests. The developed model is ground-truth free, thus there was no need to rely on external criteria of deception (e.g., confessions or physical evidence) in estimating the accuracy of the CQT. Results indicate an accuracy rate of 0.94 in detecting guilty examinees (Sensitivity) with a 0.06 False Negative rate and an accuracy rate of 0.835 (Specificity) with False Positive of 0.165 for the innocents. These figures excluded 20% of the cases that were ruled inconclusive. When no inconclusive calls were allowed, the accuracy rate dropped down to 0.8 with 0.2 error rates for both the guilty and the innocent examinees. The importance of this research stems from its being a field study that due to the unique methodology was not subjected to weaknesses usually found in polygraph field validity studies. This method is applicable to other techniques of deception detection and with some necessary adaptations may be also to eyewitness situations.
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Eyewitness testimony in the Lockerbie bombing case
Elizabeth Loftus
Memory, Summer 2013, Pages 584-590
Abstract:
It was in 1988 that a Pan Am flight blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. A Libyan named Al-Megrahi was convicted of the crime. His conviction was based in large part on the testimony of a single eyewitness, a shopkeeper who identified him as the person who had purchased clothing allegedly packed in the suitcase that contained the explosives that blew up the plane. But careful analysis of the eyewitness evidence leads to suspicions about the accuracy of the evidence. This analysis was presented to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which concluded that the conviction might have been a miscarriage of justice.
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Who should I look at? Eye contact during collective interviewing as a cue to deceit
Shyma Jundi et al.
Psychology, Crime & Law, forthcoming
Abstract:
Pairs of liars and pairs of truth tellers were interviewed and the amount of eye contact they made with the interviewer and each other was coded. Given that liars take their credibility less for granted than truth tellers, we expected liars to monitor the interviewer to see whether they were being believed, and to try harder to convince the interviewer that they were telling the truth. It was hypothesised that this monitoring would manifest itself through more eye contact with the interviewer and less eye contact with each other than in the case of truth tellers. A total of 43 pairs of participants took part in the experiment. Truth tellers had lunch in a nearby restaurant. Liars took some money from a purse, and were asked to pretend that instead of taking the money, they had been to a nearby restaurant together for lunch. Pairs of liars looked less at each other and displayed more eye contact with the interviewer than pairs of truth tellers. The implications of these findings are discussed.
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Mock Jurors' Use of Error Rates in DNA Database Trawls
Nicholas Scurich & Richard John
Law and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Forensic science is not infallible, as data collected by the Innocence Project have revealed. The rate at which errors occur in forensic DNA testing - the so-called "gold standard" of forensic science - is not currently known. This article presents a Bayesian analysis to demonstrate the profound impact that error rates have on the probative value of a DNA match. Empirical evidence on whether jurors are sensitive to this effect is equivocal: Studies have typically found they are not, while a recent, methodologically rigorous study found that they can be. This article presents the results of an experiment that examined this issue within the context of a database trawl case in which one DNA profile was tested against a multitude of profiles. The description of the database was manipulated (i.e., "medical" or "offender" database, or not specified) as was the rate of error (i.e., one-in-10 or one-in-1,000). Jury-eligible participants were nearly twice as likely to convict in the offender database condition compared to the condition not specified. The error rates did not affect verdicts. Both factors, however, affected the perception of the defendant's guilt, in the expected direction, although the size of the effect was meager compared to Bayesian prescriptions. The results suggest that the disclosure of an offender database to jurors might constitute prejudicial evidence, and calls for proficiency testing in forensic science as well as training of jurors are echoed.