Defense Attorneys and Plea Bargains

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelsey S. Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Defense Attorneys ◽  
Adversarial System ◽  
Federal Standard ◽  
Extralegal Factors ◽  
The U.S

In the landmark Gideon v. Wainwright decision (1963), the U.S. Supreme Court established the federal standard of appointed counsel for indigent defendants as fundamental to fairness. This right has been upheld throughout the years and is central to our adversarial system. The attorney’s responsibility is to zealously serve as the accused’s strongest counselor and advocate. In the context of plea bargaining, the attorney can assist the defendant in making a voluntary, knowing, and intelligent plea decision. The attorney may act as a “debiaser,” counteracting irrationality on the defendant’s part. However, research suggests structural influences and psychological processes may impede the role of the attorney. This chapter explores how legal and extralegal factors affect attorneys’ plea decision-making, which ultimately influence defendants’ decisions to waive or invoke their right to trial.

Decision-Making and Holistic Public Defense Post-Montgomery v. Louisiana

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 886-907
Author(s):  
Jeanette Hussemann ◽  
Jonah Siegel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Defense Attorneys ◽  
Public Defense ◽  
Emotional Wellness ◽  
The U.S

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) for youth are unconstitutional. In 2016, the Court held in Montgomery v. Louisiana that the ruling in Miller should be applied retroactively. Drawing from qualitative interviews with justice actors, and individuals who were sentenced to LWOP as juveniles and paroled, this article examines the implementation of Miller-Montgomery in Michigan, the factors that influence decisions to release juvenile lifers, and their reentry process. In doing so, we focus specific attention to the role of publicly appointed defense attorneys and the application of holistic defense practices to support Montgomery case mitigation and juvenile lifer reentry. Findings indicate that institutional disciplinary and programming records, emotional wellness, statements by victims’ family members, political considerations, and reentry plans are key considerations when deciding whether a juvenile lifer should be eligible for parole.

The Role of Gender Norms in Judicial Decision-Making at the U.S. Supreme Court: The Case of Male and Female Justices

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 494-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane A. Gleason ◽  
Jennifer J. Jones ◽  
Jessica Rae McBean
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Judicial Decision ◽  
Judicial Decision Making ◽  
Masculine Norms ◽  
Gender Impacts ◽  
The U.S

Although still a minority, the growing number of women on both the Bench and at the Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court has important implications for judicial decision-making and successful advocacy at the Court. Research in judicial behavior generally focuses on vote direction and the presence of female attorneys in a case. We offer a more nuanced account of how gender impacts both attorney success and judicial decision-making by drawing on work in social and political psychology and utilizing quantitative textual analysis to explore the tension between masculine norms of behavior that are valued in the legal profession and feminine norms of behavior that are expected of women, but devalued in the legal profession. Based on the Court’s long-standing disdain for emotional arguments, we examine how the emotional content in 601 party briefs shapes the Court’s majority opinions. Our results indicate that male justices evaluate counsel based on their compliance with traditional gender norms—rewarding male counsel for cool, unemotional arguments and rewarding female counsel for emotionally compelling arguments. However, we find no evidence that gender norms shape the opinions of female justices. Given that the justice system is supposed to be “blind,” our results highlight the durability of gendered expectations and raise questions about the objectivity of judicial decision-making.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Vanessa A. Edkins ◽  
Allison D. Redlich
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Current System ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Research ◽  
Defense Attorneys

While a great deal of psycho-legal research has focused on the trial process—and the decision making of jurors and juries, in particular—trials are not reflective of the current system of justice in the United States. Instead, we find ourselves within a system of pleas (Lafler v. Cooper, 2012) with a scarcity of social science research available to guide us. With this volume, we hope to integrate the current plea bargaining research that informs the field, from charging and defendant decision making, to attorney influences, to the ramifications at the larger system and institutional levels. Spanning multiple disciplines, the research and theories related to plea bargaining have much to contribute to public policy and to changes that individual actors (e.g., defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges) may decide to incorporate in their daily interactions within our system of pleas.

The Role of Emotional Language in Briefs Before the U.S. Supreme Court

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan C. Black ◽  
Matthew E.K. Hall ◽  
Ryan J. Owens ◽  
Eve Ringsmuth
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Emotional Language ◽  
The U.S

The Combat Exclusion and the Role of Women in the Military

Hypatia ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Wagner Decew
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Women In The Military ◽  
History Of ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S

I first discuss reasons for feminists to attend to the role of women in the military, despite past emphasis on antimilitarism. I then focus on the exclusion of women from combat duty, reviewing its sanction by the U.S. Supreme Court and the history of its adoption. I present arguments favoring the exclusion, defending strong replies to each, and demonstrate that reasoning from related cases and feminist analyses of equality explain why exclusion remains entrenched.

U.S. Supreme Court Decision-Making and the Free Exercise Clause

1993 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 511-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Ignagni
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
Free Exercise Clause ◽  
Attitudinal Model ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Free Exercise Of Religion ◽  
The U.S

The U.S. Supreme Court, at various times, has changed the constitutional tests it claimed to use in order to settle free exercise of religion disputes. These changes in official doctrine and the manner in which many cases have been decided have left the Supreme Court open to much criticism from legal scholars. This study differs substantially from previous work in this area. It uses a fact-attitudinal model to analyze the cases from the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts. Its findings indicate that these decisions are, generally, explainable and predictable.

scholarly journals The judgment of crimes against humanity in Brazil: Analysis through the critical criminological lens of lola aniyar

2021 ◽  
pp. 47135-47145
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Lewis Carroll ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Military Dictatorship ◽  
Criminal Control ◽  
Decision Making Rule

In this article we discuss two recent Brazilian Supreme Court judgments about crimes committed during the civil-military dictatorship: Allegation of Disobedience of Fundamental Precept suit n. 153 (constitutionality of the 1979 amnesty law), and Extradition suit n. 1362, that discussed the extradition of an Argentine citizen who was convicted of committing crimes against humanity during the Argentine dictatorship). We analyze the role of the Brazilian Supreme Court in the (re) construction of the “criminal problem” and “criminal control” in relation to crimes against humanity perpetrated during the periods of the Argentine (1978-1983) and Brazilian (1964-1985) dictatorship. We take Lola Aniyar de Castro Thought’s, seeking some inspiration, for whom the criminology of the 21st Century is the “criminology of human rights”, and criminal control would be the thermometer of human rights. In the last part of this article, we discussed what seems to have been “the triumph of Lewis Carroll”, in the metaphor of reversing meanings: when protecting human rights is not to protect human rights, by creating an ad hoc decision-making rule from which “remembering is to forget”, and “forgetting is to remember”, provided that, from the peculiar Rule n. 42, the investigation and accountability for crimes against humanity are not allowed.

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