If Looks Could Kill: Do Characteristics of Female Offenders Influence Death Penalty Sentencing Decisions?

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Conner Bell ◽  
Gavin Lee ◽  
Lynn Pazzani ◽  
Mateja Vuk
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Female Offenders ◽  
Sentencing Decisions

The Death Penalty Trial: How Jury Sentencing Decisions Relate to Capital Sentencing Procedures

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Wolbransky ◽  
Michael E. Keesler ◽  
Pamela Laughon ◽  
David DeMatteo
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Sentencing ◽  
Sentencing Decisions

Leniency for Lethal Ladies: Using the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model to Examine Gender-Based Sentencing Disparities

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-343
Author(s):  
Emma E. Fridel
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Female Offenders ◽  
Differential Treatment ◽  
Sentencing Decisions ◽  
Actor Partner Interdependence Model ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
To Receive

Research has shown that female offenders typically receive differential treatment in the criminal justice system in comparison to their male counterparts, even for extreme crimes like murder. This study compares the criminal sentences of 300 homicide offenders who killed at least two victims with a single co-offender (150 pairs) within their dyads using the actor–partner interdependence model (APIM) to determine if gender has an effect on leniency for even the most extreme crimes. Women were less likely to receive the harshest possible punishment, regardless of their partner’s gender. These findings provide support for the female leniency effect, suggesting that gender bias continues to influence sentencing decisions for homicide.

Death Penalty Disposition in China: What Matters?

2016 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 253-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yudu Li ◽  
Dennis Longmire ◽  
Hong Lu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
The United States ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Sentencing Decisions ◽  
Significant Relationships ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Capital Cases ◽  
Using Data

In theory, sentencing decisions should be driven by legal factors, not extra-legal factors. However, some empirical research on the death penalty in the United States shows significant relationships between offender and victim characteristics and death sentence decisions. Despite the fact that China frequently imposes death sentences, few studies have examined these sanctions to see if similar correlations occur in China’s capital cases. Using data from published court cases in China involving three violent crimes—homicide, robbery, and intentional assault—this study examines the net impact of offender’s gender, race, and victim–offender relationship on death sentence decisions in China. Our overall multiple regression results indicate that, after controlling for other legal and extra-legal variables, an offender’s gender, race, and victim–offender relationship did not produce similar results in China when compared with those in the United States. In contrast, it is the legal factors that played the most significant role in influencing the death penalty decisions. The article concludes with explanations and speculations on the unique social, cultural, and legal conditions in China that may have contributed to these correlations.

The effects of mortality salience and evidence strength on death penalty sentencing decisions

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel D. Lieberman ◽  
Jared Shoemaker ◽  
Daniel A. Krauss
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Mortality Salience ◽  
Sentencing Decisions ◽  
Evidence Strength

scholarly journals Likeability and Expert Persuasion: Dislikeability Reduces the Perceived Persuasiveness of Expert Evidence

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariam Younan ◽  
Kristy A. Martire
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Expert Opinion ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Expert Evidence ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Sentencing Decisions ◽  
Evidence Quality ◽  
Quality Evidence ◽  
Sentencing Outcomes

With the use of expert evidence increasing in civil and criminal trials, there is concern jurors' decisions are affected by factors that are irrelevant to the quality of the expert opinion. Past research suggests that the likeability of an expert significantly affects juror attributions of credibility and merit. However, we know little about the effects of expert likeability when detailed information about expertise is provided. Two studies examined the effect of an expert's likeability on the persuasiveness judgments and sentencing decisions of 456 jury-eligible respondents. Participants viewed and/or read an expert's testimony (lower vs. higher quality) before rating expert persuasiveness (via credibility, value, and weight), and making a sentencing decision in a Capitol murder case (death penalty vs. life in prison). Lower quality evidence was significantly less persuasive than higher quality evidence. Less likeable experts were also significantly less persuasive than either neutral or more likeable experts. This “penalty” for less likeable experts was observed irrespective of evidence quality. However, only perceptions of the foundational validity of the expert's discipline, the expert's trustworthiness and the clarity and conservativeness of the expert opinion significantly predicted sentencing decisions. Thus, the present study demonstrates that while likeability does influence persuasiveness, it does not necessarily affect sentencing outcomes.

Forging a New Practice Area: Social Work's Role in Death Penalty Mitigation Investigations

2003 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Neurological Disorders ◽  
Clinical Skills ◽  
The United States ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Sentencing Decisions ◽  
Yield Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Penalty Phase

The death penalty remains alive and well in the United States. Courts in 37 states try defendants who are oftentimes mentally retarded, mentally ill, or suffer from neurological disorders. Social workers are using their skills and expertise to lead mitigation investigations where disability, discrimination, and deprivation in defendant's lives are being woven into the fabric of the penalty phase process. Mitigation investigations yield information about a defendant's life that is then empirically linked with factors identified in the social science literature and presented to juries to guide their focus in making sentencing decisions. Advanced clinical skills and an ecological theoretical approach to interpreting the biopsychosocial realities of the defendant's life are proving to be vital components of capital litigation.

Living with the decision that someone will die: Linguistic distance and empathy in jurors' death penalty decisions

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 503-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Conley
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Linguistic Distance ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Sentencing Decisions ◽  
Capital Trials ◽  
Death Sentences

AbstractBased on ethnographic fieldwork in Texas death penalty trials, this article explores how language helps to make death penalty decisions possible—how specific communicative choices mediate and restrict jurors', attorneys', and judges' actions and experiences while serving and reflecting on capital trials. By analyzing postverdict interviews with jurors, trial language, and written legal language, I examine a variety of communicative practices through which defendants are dehumanized and thus considered deserving of death. This dehumanization is made possible through the physical and linguistic management of distance, which enables jurors to deny empathy with defendants and, in turn, justify their sentencing decisions. In addition, the article probes how jurors' linguistic choices can create distance between themselves and the reality of their decisions, further facilitating death sentences. (Law, empathy, deixis, agency, dehumanization, linguistic distance)*

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