Race, Gender, and Outcomes in First Degree Murder Cases

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of offender's and victim's race and gender on legal outcomes for defendants initially charged with first degree murder. Drawing upon past theorizing and research, we hypothesize that Black offenders and killers of non-Blacks will be subjected to more severe legal sanctioning, and that female offenders and killers of males will receive less severe sanctioning. We also predict that the effects of status characteristics on legal outcomes will be attenuated in the subsample of cases that go to trial because of formal guidelines governing trial procedures. Using data from prosecutor's files for a sample of 33 U.S. counties, these hypotheses are tested for three legal outcomes: first degree murder conviction, conviction on a lesser charge, and no conviction. The results of ordinal logistic regression analyses offered mixed support for our hypotheses. Both race and gender exhibit some of the expected effects on legal outcomes, but contrary to predictions, status effects are not attenuated in trial cases.