Death Penalty Sentencing Research Articles

Race, sex, and age disparities in death penalty sentencing: a systematic review

Demographic factors can influence death penalty outcomes. This systematic review examines literature regarding intersectionality of race, sex, and age disparities in capital punishment sentencing. Three databases were searched with similar terms, yielding 1,258 articles for review. After evaluating the remaining articles based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, 12 articles were included for the final review. Differences in outcomes were reported when evaluating the race, sex, and/or age of both the defendant and the victim. Most studies found disadvantaged death penalty sentencing outcomes for both minority defendants and minority victims. Implications for future research and policy decisions are discussed.

The Importance of Federal Habeas Review as a Means to Challenge Florida's Death Penalty Sentencing and Drug Possession Statutes

The Importance of Federal Habeas Review as a Means to Challenge Florida's Death Penalty Sentencing and Drug Possession Statutes

Implementation of Death Penalty Crime: Dilemma between the Nationality Principle and Human Rights

Extradition and prosecution are cornerstones of international law cooperation’s enforcement to prevent immunity from criminal responsibility, especially regarding the refusal to extradite nationals. The principle’s implementation in its development is influenced by the trend from abolitionist countries to refuse the requests for Mutual Legal Assistance in criminal matters (MLA) related to death penalty crimes. Guarantees from requesting the state not to impose death penalty sentences needs to implement nationality jurisdiction if the state refuses to extradite its citizens to another country. Countries that impose death penalty demonstrate that the nationality principle is very successful in investigating crimes committed abroad, whereas countries that have abolished the death penalty consider the nationality principle to be a violation of human rights. This paper focuses its discussion on the usefulness of Article 8 paragraph (5) of the Criminal Code Draft, which regulates the exceptional nature of the death penalty in the nationality principle’s implementation. This paper concludes that the exceptional nature of the death penalty in nationality principles' implementation is regulated in Article 8 paragraph (5) of the Criminal Code Draft. This Article elaborates that a country of hindered crime could prevent MLA requests from Indonesia related to death penalty crimes based on its international obligations and the perspective of human right. This research uses a normative approach and pragmatic-descriptive analysis.

Why Should The Death Penalty Not Be Abolish For Narcotics Crimes? A Case Study In Indonesia

Narcotic crimes are global phenomena that transcend jurisdictional borders. In Indonesia, narcotics crimes attract a different form of punishment, including the death penalty, depending on the nature and gravity of the crimes. This study examines Indonesian law's death penalty sentence for narcotics crimes. It explores the governing principles and current law position relating to this controversial law. This research adopts doctrinal research. The sources of legal materials consist of three, namely, primary, secondary, and tertiary sources of law. The results of this study reveal that the death penalty for the offenders of narcotics crimes under Indonesian law is lawful and justifiable, considering its gravity, nature and impacts. The crimes have caused substantial social, economic and resource loss to the nation and country.

American Roulette: The Social Logic of Death Penalty Sentencing Trials. By Sarah Beth Kaufman. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020. 260 pp. $29.95 paperback

<i>American Roulette: The Social Logic of Death Penalty Sentencing Trials</i>. By Sarah Beth Kaufman. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020. 260 pp. $29.95 paperback

National Opinions on Death Penalty Punishment for the Boston Marathon Bomber Before vs. After Sentencing.

Humans seek consistency between their internal thoughts and the outside world. Thus, when legal authorities make decisions, people are likely to accept and obey these decisions in order to remain consistent with the societies in which they live. Few studies have explored these biases in an applied context. We examined the relationship between the sentencing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (the Boston Marathon bomber) and Americans' opinions about his punishment in a natural quasi-experiment. We expected that Tsarnaev's sentencing would be associated with increased support for his death penalty sentence, in a manner consistent with the legitimization literature. A survey of a representative U.S. national sample (N=3,341; 78.13% total response rate) was conducted between April 29 and June 26, 2015. We assessed views about Tsarnaev's sentencing (i.e., whether he should receive the death penalty), political party, demographics, and psychological indicators; 81.77% of our sample completed the survey prior to Tsarnaev's sentencing and 18.23% completed the survey afterwards. Multiple logistic regression analyses indicated that those who completed the survey after Tsarnaev was sentenced to death were more likely to support a death penalty sentence than were those who took the survey prior to the sentencing (OR=1.48, p=.007; 95% confidence [1.11, 1.96]). These results remained significant after adjusting for significant covariates, including male gender, White race, Protestant-Christian religious affiliation, Boston residency, beliefs in a just world, and Republican political party identification. Results of this quasi-experiment suggest that people adjust their opinions to be consistent with the fait accompli, particularly once the outcome is widely known.

Book Review: Sarah Beth Kaufman, American Roulette: The Social Logic of Death Penalty Sentencing Trials

Book Review: Sarah Beth Kaufman, <i>American Roulette: The Social Logic of Death Penalty Sentencing Trials</i>

Setting the Record Straight on the Death Penalty: A Critical Review of American Roulette

This is a critical review of the book American Roulette: The Social Logic of Death Penalty Sentencing Trials by Sarah Beth Kaufman. This review covers the topics of race, strategic trial considerations, victim impact testimony, the future dangerousness standard, and death-qualified juries. While the book is not without its merits, this review primarily focuses on its shortcomings—the most significant of which is the lack of interaction with counterarguments.

Challenge to the Death Penalty

In Shoop v. Hill , 139 S. Ct. 504 (2019 ) , the U.S. Supreme Court vacated and remanded a Sixth Circuit appellate court's decision to grant habeas relief for a respondent who argued that his death penalty sentence was contrary to clearly established federal law due to his intellectual disability. In

Penological Justifications as Sentencing Factors in Death Penalty Sentencing

When the Supreme Court of India upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab in 1980, it also laid down a sentencing framework for subsequent sentencing courts, guiding them in deciding between life imprisonment and the death penalty. This framework, popularly known as the ‘rarest of rare’ framework, was focused on individualised punishment. However, subsequent judgments have strayed away from Bachan Singh’s core framework, and the use of penological justifications as sentencing factors has contributed significantly to this deviation. This article argues that it is not within the mandate of sentencing judges to invoke penological theories as separate sentencing factors in individual cases when deciding between life imprisonment and the death sentence. The article begins by distinguishing between the penological justifications used to retain the death penalty in Bachan Singh and those underlying the sentencing framework developed in the judgment. It then examines subsequent judgments to trace the manner in which the capital sentencing framework was shaped to be crime-centric through the use of penological ideas like ‘collective conscience’ and deterrence. Examining the implications of penological justifications occupying a dominant place in death penalty sentencing, the article examines the broader concerns about the lack of clarity with sentencing goals. The failure in individual cases to distinguish between penological justifications as sentencing factors determining punishment, on the one hand, and viewing them as consequences arising out of an individualised sentencing process, on the other, lies at the core of the critique in this article.

‘To Stay the Murderer’s Hand and the Rapist’s Passions, and for the Safety and Security of Civil Society’: The Emergence of Racial Disparities in Capital Punishment in Jim Crow New Orleans

Abstract This essay examines capital punishment in New Orleans between 1920 and 1945. Building on a quantitative analysis of case-level data culled from police, court, and prison records, it explores the emergence of racial disparities in death-penalty sentencing and charts the increasing use of capital punishment as a mechanism of racial control. The paper focuses on four surprising and counter-intuitive patterns in the application of the death penalty. First, shifts in the use of capital punishment during this era bore no connection to patterns of violent crime. Second, changes in death-penalty sentencing were only loosely related to overall trends in homicide conviction. Third, and most surprising, Orleans Parish jurors, particularly during the 1920s, sent white killers to the gallows at a higher rate than African American killers. And fourth, the analysis of case-level records reveals dramatic shifts in death-penalty sentencing during the 1930s, particularly the development of a pronounced racial disparity in the application of capital punishment. Prosecutors also exploited the threat of capital charges to secure guilty pleas from African American suspects, and thus changes in death-penalty sentencing contributed to racial disparities in incarceration. In short, this micro-analysis helps to explain when and why the death penalty became a core component of Jim Crow criminal justice.

The New Jim Crow's Equal Protection Potential

In 1954, the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education opinion relied on social science research to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson’s separate but equal doctrine. Since Brown, social science research has been considered by the Court in cases involving equal protection challenges to grand jury selection, death penalty sentences, and affirmative action. In 2016, Justice Sotomayor cited an influential piece of social science research, Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, in her powerful Utah v. Strieff dissent. Sotomayor contended that the Court’s holding overlooked the unequal racial impact of suspicionless stops. Though the defendant in Strieff was white, Sotomayor emphasized that “it is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny,” and mentioned The New Jim Crow in support of her conclusions about the role race plays in suspicionless stops. The New Jim Crow, published in 2010, has sold over 750,000 copies. It describes how the criminal justice system disproportionately targets and incarcerates black men. The book has inspired a popular movement to end mass incarceration and the racial caste system mass incarceration has created. In addition to its appearance in Strieff, The New Jim Crow was cited in United States v. Nesbeth, a well-publicized 2016 sentencing order from the Eastern District of New York in which the court imposed probation instead of the incarceration recommended by the federal sentencing guidelines. The New Jim Crow has also been cited to explain the unfair collateral consequences faced by those convicted of drug crimes, as well as convictions’ disproportionate racial impact. This essay is the first to study The New Jim Crow’s equal protection potential. The New Jim Crow’s presence in federal decisions is reminiscent of the Supreme Court’s citation to social science research in Brown v. Board of Education. This essay considers whether The New Jim Crow sits alongside canonical works of social science research considered by the Supreme Court in cases like Brown. It examines how The New Jim Crow is sometimes cited by the federal courts in passing, as a nod to a work that has infiltrated popular culture, but not always as evidence that influences case outcomes. Noting its appearance in Judge Scheindlin’s orders finding that the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk encouraged unconstitutional racial profiling, it questions whether The New Jim Crow could successfully support equal protection claims. It concludes that citations to The New Jim Crow represent soft law, albeit soft law with hard law potential.

Death penalty decision‐making: Fundamentalist beliefs and the evaluation of aggravating and mitigating circumstances

PurposeJurors’ religious characteristics are related to death penalty attitudes and verdicts. Jurors’ religious characteristics might also relate to endorsements of aggravating circumstances (aggravators) and mitigating circumstances (mitigators)—factors that make a defendant more or less deserving of the death penalty, respectively. The purpose of this research was to assess the extent to which religious fundamentalism was related to endorsement and weighing of aggravators and mitigators and subsequent death penalty decisions while controlling for relevant religious and demographic characteristics.MethodsTwo studies were conducted. Study 1 included a regression analysis in which participants filled out religious and demographic measures via an online survey. In Study 2, participants acted as mock jurors in a death penalty trial in which the defendant was already found guilty. Mock jurors read the case facts and attorney arguments and then weighed aggravators and mitigators before recommending a sentence for the defendant.ResultsIn Study 1, fundamentalism negatively predicted mitigator endorsement, intrinsic religiosity negatively predicted aggravator endorsement, and orthodoxy positively predicted aggravator endorsement. In Study 2, fundamentalism was related to death penalty sentences, and this was mediated by people's weighing of aggravators and mitigators. Specifically, fundamentalism was related to a lower likelihood of choosing a life sentence because fundamentalism was negatively related to weighing mitigators over aggravators.ConclusionsResults support and explain prior research linking fundamentalism with punitiveness in death penalty cases. Such findings support the “eye for an eye” punishment philosophy associated with fundamentalist beliefs. Theoretical and legal implications are discussed.

Capital Punishment Decisions in Pennsylvania: 2000-2010: Implications for Racial, Ethnic and Other Disparate Impacts

A study of disparity in the administration of the death penalty in Pennsylvania by Kramer, Ulmer, and Zajac (2017) was recently completed for the Pennsylvania Interbranch Commission on Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Fairness. This study collected basic statistical data on 4,274 cases charged with homicide in Pennsylvania from 2000 to 2010, and then collected highly detailed data from courts and prosecutors’ offices on a subset of 880 first degree murder convictions in 18 counties accounting for more than 87% of all 2000-2010 first degree murder convictions. Utilizing propensity score methods in analyses of these first degree murder convictions, the study examined whether defendants’ and victims’ race/ethnicity (separately and in combination), predicted: 1) prosecutors’ decisions to seek the death penalty, 2) prosecutors’ decisions to retract a motion to seek the death penalty once it is filed, and 3) court decisions to sentence defendants to death or life without parole. Key findings were: 1) No pattern of disparity was found to the disadvantage of Black or Hispanic defendants in prosecutors’ decisions to seek and, if sought, to retract the death penalty. 2) Black and Hispanic defendants were not disadvantaged in death penalty sentence decisions relative to White defendants. 3) Cases with White victims, regardless of race of defendant, were 8% more likely to receive the death penalty, while Black victim cases were 6% less likely to receive the death penalty. 4) Prosecutors filed to seek the death penalty in 36% of first degree convictions; but later retracted that filing in 46% of those cases. Moreover, a predominant pattern emerged in which a death penalty filing strongly predicted a guilty plea in these murder cases, and pleading guilty strongly predicted the retraction of the death penalty filing. 5) There were very large differences between counties in the likelihood of prosecutors filing to seek the death penalty, the likelihood of their retracting that filing, and in courts imposing the death penalty. In fact, the biggest extra-legal influence on whether defendants faced or received the death penalty was where their cases were handled. 6) Public defenders were less likely than private or court appointed attorneys to have the death penalty filed in cases they represented. However, public defender cases were more likely to receive the death penalty, and defendants represented by private attorneys were especially unlikely to receive the death penalty. These defense attorney differences also, in turn, varied greatly between counties.

Mourners in the Court: Victims in Death Penalty Trials, through the Lens of Performance

This article presents findings from ethnographic research in death penalty trials around the United States, focusing on the role of victims and their supporters. Victim impact testimony (VIT) in death penalty sentencing has received intense legal scrutiny during the past thirty years. The ruling jurisprudence allows VIT with the explanation that it deserves parity with testimony about the defendant's background. Drawing on observations and interviews with participants in 15 death penalty trials, I demonstrate that this framing confuses the central role of victim supporters in the courtroom. Victim supporters function as mourners, which grants them a socially elevated position in the courtroom. I argue that the consequences of the institutionalization of VIT can only be understood through this lens.

Juror Decision-making in Death Penalty Sentencing when Presented with Defendant's History of Child Abuse or Neglect.

Previous studies have found aggravating, mitigating, and null effects of defendant histories of abuse and neglect on punishment preferences in capital sentencing. Perceiving these defendants as more dangerous, jurors may be more likely to favor the death penalty when such evidence is presented. This is counter to the intuition that abuse or neglect reduces culpability, and therefore mitigates the severity of punishment. We investigated the effect of defendant childhood physical abuse, sexual abuse, or neglect on the probability of a prospective juror preferring the death penalty in an between-subject experimental design. Using vignettes and two large samples (students and jurors), defendant histories were found to mitigate the probability that the hypothetical defendant received the death penalty, with sexual abuse having the most salient effect. Further, the effects were conditioned by preference for the death penalty - larger mitigating effects were observed among individuals who favor the death penalty. These findings suggest that initial judgments of abuse and neglect are related to juror leniency, and further research on the interaction of jury instructions and defendant histories is needed. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Study of Euthanasia and Related Values in Taiwan

This paper analyses the factors influencing euthanasia and related values in Taiwan. The data used are from the 2015 Survey Research on Attitudes towards the Death Penalty and Related Values in Taiwan, which focused on knowledge, attitudes towards the death penalty, and the concepts of social, political, and law values. The sample ages are from 21 to 94. The method used is probit modelling for examining the influences on euthanasia issues in Taiwan. The main empirical results find that older people, persons with higher educational attainment, those who favour abolition of the death penalty and do not oppose divorce, abortion, same-sex relationships, and putting down homeless’ cats or dogs are more likely to approve of the use of euthanasia to end their lives. In contrast, Mainlanders, people who support the death penalty and favour long-term prison sentences are less likely to support the use of euthanasia.

The Meandering Course of Death Penalty Sentencing in India: A Critical Analysis

The Meandering Course of Death Penalty Sentencing in India: A Critical Analysis

When domestic goes capital: Juror decision making in capital murder trials involving domestic homicide.

Prior research suggests that homicide cases involving familial offenders and victims are subject to a "domestic discount" that reduces sentencing severity. However, the operation of a domestic discount in regard to death penalty sentencing has been rarely examined. The current research uses a near-population of jury decisions in capital murder trials conducted in North Carolina from 1991 to 2009 (n = 800), and a series of logistic regression analyses to determine whether there is (a) a direct effect between offender-victim relationship (e.g., domestic, friend/acquaintance, and stranger) and jury decision making, and/or (b) whether domestic offender-victim relationship (as well as other offender-victim relationships) moderates the effect of legal and extralegal case characteristics on jury assessment of the death penalty. Our findings revealed no empirical support for a "domestic discount" whereby juries are less likely to impose death sentences in cases involving domestic homicides. However, substantial differences in predictors of death sentencing were found across offender-victim dyads; most notably, domestic homicide cases demonstrated the most legalistic model of jury decisions to impose death sentences.

El caso Nagayama Norio: pistas para una real justicia juvenil

En el año 1967 la sociedad japonesa se estremeció al conocer los sucesos del apresamiento de un adolescente de nombre Nagayama Norio acusado de asesinar a tres personas en una senda de violencia que devino en la determinación de la pena de muerte, opción válida en ese entonces y aún ahora para el Estado japonés como resolución justa para casos tan graves como los de asesinato. El responsable de los asesinatos era al momento de haberlos cometido un adolescente y al tener en perspectiva la pena impuesta, vale la pena interrogarnos en torno a la validez reñida con los derechos humanos de los niños, niñas y adolescentes de las condenas semi carcelarias o carcelarias y el uso de la violencia para solucionar la violencia adolescente. El presente artículo propone, a partir del análisis de un caso emblemático de condena de pena de muerte a un adolescente, la elaboración de pautas para la praxis social y judicial con poblaciones de adolescentes en conflicto con la ley, la solución definitiva, agotadora del derecho humano, resolutiva de la pena de muerte expuesta como contrasentido de la solución humanitaria responsable, sistemática, basada en el derecho humano.