Capital Punishment Decision Making on the Supreme Court of Florida

Abstract

As they have done with research on the U.S. Supreme Court, judicial politics scholars have studied the influences on state supreme court justices' decision making. Although earlier state court decision‐making research focused on extra‐legal explanations, more recent studies have integrated both legal and extra‐legal variables into their models. However, most of the extant research on state court decision making employs a multi‐state design, which has been quite useful, yet it does not capture adequately the influence of state court precedent. Consequently, this paper complements this literature by testing an integrated model of Florida Supreme Court justices' capital punishment decision making. This integrated model is based on a random sample of 150 capital punishment cases decided by the Florida Supreme Court from 1980 to 1997. I examine the 995 individual votes each justice cast, testing the influence of an array of legal precedent, including Florida's, and extra‐legal variables. The results confirm the validity of the integrated model.