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Full-Text Articles in Criminal Procedure
Bargaining Inside The Black Box, Allison Orr Larsen
Bargaining Inside The Black Box, Allison Orr Larsen
Faculty Publications
When jurors are presented with a menu of criminal verdict options and they cannot reach a consensus among them, what should they do? Available evidence suggests they are prone to compromise—that is, jurors will negotiate with each other and settle on a verdict in the middle, often on a lesser-included offense. The suggestion that jurors compromise is not new; it is supported by empirical evidence, well-accepted by courts and commentators, and unsurprising given the pressure jurors feel to reach agreement and the different individual views they likely hold. There are, however, some who say intrajury negotiation represents a failure of …
Is Punishment Relevant After All? A Prescription For Informing Juries Of The Consequence Of Conviction, Jeffrey Bellin
Is Punishment Relevant After All? A Prescription For Informing Juries Of The Consequence Of Conviction, Jeffrey Bellin
Faculty Publications
The American jury, once heralded as “the great corrective of law in its actual administration,” has suffered numerous setbacks in the modern era. As a result, jurors have largely become bystanders in a criminal justice system that relies on increasingly severe punishments to incarcerate tens of thousands of offenders each year. The overwhelming majority of cases are resolved short of trial and, even when trials occur, jurors are instructed to find only the facts necessary for legal guilt. Apart from this narrow task, jurors need not, in the eyes of the law, concern themselves with whether a conviction and subsequent …