On the docket
Public Opinion and Setting the Agenda on the U.S. Supreme Court
Amanda Bryan
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Arguably the most influential power the U.S. Supreme Court has is the power to choose which cases to decide. This power allows the nation’s only unelected branch of government to choose either to weigh in on key political controversies or avoid them completely. Here, I take one of the first case-level looks at the role of public opinion in the Court’s agenda-setting process. I argue justices vote to hear cases when they are likely to agree with public opinion on the outcome and eschew cases when they are out of step with the American people. However, the effect of public opinion depends on the political environment, especially on the level of public support the Court enjoys, the salience of the issue, and the case’s legal importance.
Courtroom Context and Sentencing
Christine Arazan, William Bales & Thomas Blomberg
American Journal of Criminal Justice, February 2019, Pages 23–44
Abstract:
This study provides an evaluation of the major policy shift in sentencing practices over the past half-century – namely the shift from indeterminate to determinant sentencing policies and the use of sentencing guidelines. The theoretical literature on courtroom organization and focal concerns informs this evaluation of determinate sentencing practices in Florida. Drawing from prior theoretical and empirical research, hierarchical linear and generalized linear models are estimated to assess courtroom effects on individual level sentencing outcomes. The findings document that location matters when sentenced in Florida. Specifically, the likelihood of being sentenced to prison and the length of sentence varies across counties, even after controlling for individual case and offender characteristics and a variety of contextual characteristics. Additionally, the influence of legal and extra-legal factors on prison in/out and sentence length decisions varies significantly across counties. Several court characteristics, including court size, caseload pressure and trial rate assert direct influence on a county’s likelihood of prison in/out and mean sentence length decisions.
The Effect of Prosecutorial Actions on Deterrence: A County-Level Analysis
Scott Mourtgos & Ian Adams
Criminal Justice Policy Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the current study, we examine prosecutorial decisions that affect the certainty, celerity, and severity of punishment at the county level in the state of Florida. Leveraging a unique data set, we investigate the effect of the rate at which prosecuting agencies within each county filed formal charges against offenders (certainty), the swiftness of criminal case resolution (celerity), and the rate at which cases were pled to less severe punishments (severity). We test for the effect of those covariates on aggregate county-level crime rates over a 5-year period. We find that prosecutors’ effect on the certainty and celerity of punishment was associated with lower levels of crime, whereas their effect on the severity of punishment was not. Together, these findings highlight the role of the prosecutor in shaping the general deterrent environment within a county.
Does video recording inhibit crime suspects? Evidence from a fully randomized field experiment
Saul Kassin et al.
Law and Human Behavior, February 2019, Pages 45-55
Abstract:
In partnership with a small city police department, we randomly informed or did not inform 122 crime suspects that their interrogations were being video-recorded. Coding of all sessions indicated that camera-informed suspects spoke as often and as much as did those who were not informed; they were as likely to waive Miranda at the outset and later; they were as likely to make admissions and confessions, not just denials; and they were perceived no differently by detectives on a range of dimensions. Looking at distal outcomes, we observed no differences in ultimate case dispositions. In terms of policy and practice, results did not support the hypothesis that recording — even when transparent, as required in 2-party consent states — inhibits suspects or alters case dispositions. At least for now, this conclusion is empirically limited to situations in which cameras are concealed and to interrogations that do not involve juveniles, homicides, or drug crimes, which we a priori excluded from our sample.
Status characteristics and their intersectionality: Majority opinion assignment in state supreme courts
Erin Kaheny, John Szmer & Robert Christensen
Politics, Groups, and Identities, forthcoming
Abstract:
We test whether justices’ traits – race, gender, age, previous judicial experience, education, and tenure – are associated with opinion assignment patterns as suggested by status characteristics theory. Female justices were more likely to be asked to write the majority opinion, particularly if the case raised a “women’s issue.” In complex cases, however, both female and African American justices were less likely to be selected to write the majority opinion. Extending intersectionality perspectives, advances in age were associated with a decreased likelihood in women and African American justices receiving the assignment, though at distinct age ranges.
Effects of a voter initiative on disparities in punishment severity for drug offenses across California counties
Alyssa Mooney et al.
Social Science & Medicine, forthcoming
Background: The jurisdiction where an offense is prosecuted significantly affects the severity of punishment for drug possession, creating geographic disparities in exposure to a social determinant of health. In California, felony conviction rates after drug possession arrests have historically varied enormously between counties. California Proposition 47 (Prop-47), passed in 2014, reduced drug possession offenses previously classified as felonies or wobblers (offenses for which prosecutors have discretion to file felony or misdemeanor charges) to misdemeanors. This study examines whether geographic variation in felony convictions after drug possession arrests was reduced, and whether effects were offset by changes in felony convictions for other offenses not addressed by Prop-47.
Methods: Arrests made after the implementation of Prop-47 were propensity score matched to similar arrests prior to Prop-47 to account for compositional changes in arrests. This approach compares the outcomes of individuals likely to be arrested with or without the reclassification of drug offenses. We use mixed models to estimate the change in county variance in the probability of felony conviction.
Results: The probability of a felony conviction among those arrested for Prop-47 drug offenses declined by 14 percentage points (95% CI: −0.16, −0.12), from 0.21 (95% CI: 0.19, 0.24) to 0.07 (95% CI: 0.06, 0.08). Counties with higher felony conviction probabilities pre-Prop-47 declined most, reducing cross-county variance. For those arrested for drug offenses unaffected by Prop-47, the probability of felony conviction declined by 7 percentage points (95% CI: −0.09, −0.05), from 0.34 (95% CI: 0.31, 0.37) to 0.27 (0.25, 0.29). Declines in both groups were driven by fewer felony convictions for Prop-47 drug offenses, with no increases in felony convictions for concurrent offenses.
Malice in Pretrial Negotiations
Brishti Guha
International Review of Law and Economics, June 2019, Pages 25-33
Abstract:
This is the first paper to incorporate two-sided malice into a complete information model of pretrial bargaining. Each party obtains malice utility from financial losses incurred by the other: psychological dissatisfaction caused to the other party by depriving them of a resolution also contributes to a utility from malice in every period in which there is no resolution. Introducing this feature in a complete information model a la Spier (1992) where a trial date is exogenously set and a plaintiff makes offers to a defendant in every period before the trial, and where there are both bargaining costs before the trial and litigation costs during the actual trial, I find that (i) some cases are never settled, but proceed to trial, (ii) settlement occurs either immediately or on the courthouse steps. This is in line with empirics, and happens without any form of private information or divergent expectations, contrary to traditional explanations. Since there is ample experimental evidence of malice as a motive, and since it is even more relevant between disputing parties, the new explanation that the paper suggests for both settlement failure and the timing of settlements is likely significant. The results are robust to a change in bargaining protocol to alternate offers, to the trial date being endogenous in an infinite horizon model, and to the introduction of costly discovery and uncertainty of plaintiff victory.
Body camera footage leads to lower judgments of intent than dash camera footage
Broderick Turner et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22 January 2019, Pages 1201-1206
Abstract:
Police departments use body-worn cameras (body cams) and dashboard cameras (dash cams) to monitor the activity of police officers in the field. Video from these cameras informs review of police conduct in disputed circumstances, often with the goal of determining an officer’s intent. Eight experiments (N = 2,119) reveal that body cam video of an incident results in lower observer judgments of intentionality than dash cam video of the same incident, an effect documented with both scripted videos and real police videos. This effect was due, in part, to variation in the visual salience of the focal actor: the body cam wearer is typically less visually salient when depicted in body versus dash cam video, which corresponds with lower observer intentionality judgments. In showing how visual salience of the focal actor may introduce unique effects on observer judgment, this research establishes an empirical platform that may inform public policy regarding surveillance of police conduct.
When Victims Refuse and Prosecutors Decline: Examining Exceptional Clearance in Sexual Assault Cases
Tara Richards, Marie Skubak Tillyer & Emily Wright
Crime & Delinquency, April 2019, Pages 474-498
Abstract:
This study examines the predictors of sexual assault case clearance, with a focus on arrest and two types of exceptional clearance: victim refusal to cooperate and prosecutorial declination to prosecute. Using National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data on crime incidents that contain a sexual offense (N = 21,977), we estimated a multinomial regression model to examine the predictors of different clearance types for cases of sexual assault. Results indicated that the likelihood of victim refusal decreases in cases perpetrated by strangers, involving victim injury, occurring in public, and involving multiple offenses. A similar pattern of findings was observed for the decision to decline to prosecute a case. In addition, prosecutors are more likely to decline to prosecute cases with male victims and older victims. We discuss the implications of our findings and directions for future research.
Morality, Compensation, and the Contractual Obligation
Sergio Mittlaender
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, March 2019, Pages 119-142
Abstract:
This article presents empirical estimates suggesting that most people do not perceive breach of contract followed by compensation for the promisee as immoral. In the absence of compensation, the article reveals that individuals commonly perceive the moral value of breach depending on the consequences thereof, with the unfairness of the outcome — and not the inefficiency — as the preponderant factor. Contract law reflects observed interpersonal morality and allows courts to rescind the contract on grounds of impossibility, impracticability, or frustration if the breach is fair and the promisor avoids exceptionally high losses, but not if the breach is unfair and the promisor breaches to profit from a substitutive transaction. The law, moreover, does not punish breach, nor inevitably require performance by the promisor, but instead aims at compensating the victim, thereby reflecting how most individuals perceive breach followed by compensation, from a normative standpoint: as not morally wrong.