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Full-Text Articles in Law

Psychopathy And Sentencing: An Investigative Look Into When The Pcl-R Is Admitted Into Canadian Courtrooms And How A Pcl-R Score Affects Sentencing Outcome, Katie Davey Apr 2013

Psychopathy And Sentencing: An Investigative Look Into When The Pcl-R Is Admitted Into Canadian Courtrooms And How A Pcl-R Score Affects Sentencing Outcome, Katie Davey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Little is known about how and when the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R) is being introduced into Canadian Courts or how it affects sentencing outcomes. Using the Lexis-Nexis Quicklaw Academic Database to retrieve judge’s sentencing decisions, all 274 cases with PCL-R information for Canadian courts were included in this study. It was hypothesized correctly that PCL-R information would most often be introduced in Long Term Offender (LTO) and Dangerous Offender (DO) applications as well as sentencing cases for murderers and sex offenders. The 274 cases were then reduced to 37 cases in order to focus on sentencing without Dangerous Offender or …


Foreword: A Global Perspective On Sentencing Reforms, Oren Gazal-Ayal Jan 2013

Foreword: A Global Perspective On Sentencing Reforms, Oren Gazal-Ayal

Oren Gazal-Ayal

The articles published in this issue of Law and Contemporary Problems examine the effects of different sentencing reforms across the world. While the effects of sentencing reforms in the United States have been studied extensively, this is the first symposium that examines the effects of sentencing guidelines and alternative policies in a number of western legal systems from a comparative perspective. This issue focuses on how different sentencing policies affect prison population rates, sentence disparity, and the balance of power between the judiciary and prosecutors, while also assessing how sentencing policies respond to temporary punitive surges and moral panics. The …


Do Sentencing Guidelines Increase Prosecutorial Power? An Empirical Study, Oren Gazal-Ayal, Hagit Turjeman, Gideon Fishman Jan 2013

Do Sentencing Guidelines Increase Prosecutorial Power? An Empirical Study, Oren Gazal-Ayal, Hagit Turjeman, Gideon Fishman

Oren Gazal-Ayal

Traditionally, judges have had tremendous flexibility in sentencing. Offering judges maximum discretion in the sentencing process allows them to consider not only an offender’s criminal history and the severity of the crime committed, but also the complex web of mitigating and aggravating factors present in each case and additional qualitative factors, such as a defendant’s testimony or selfpresentation in a courtroom. When judges are empowered with more discretion, however, there is heightened potential for inter-judge variability in sentencing. In order to reduce sentencing disparities caused by individual sentencers, several countries and jurisdictions, most notably in the United States, have enacted …


Plea Bargaining, Sentence Modifications, And The Real World, Julian A. Cook Jan 2013

Plea Bargaining, Sentence Modifications, And The Real World, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

This article examines the 2011 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Freeman. At issue was whether defendants, such as Freeman, who enter a guilty plea pursuant to a binding plea agreement, are entitled to seek a modification of their sentence when the guideline range applicable to their offense has subsequently been lowered by the United States Sentencing Commission. By a five-to-four vote, the Court found that Freeman was eligible to seek a sentence reduction. However, as the article explains, the concurring and controlling opinion of Justice Sotomayor may ultimately prove to be problematic for criminal defendants generally and for …


Life Without Parole Under Modern Theories Of Punishment, Paul H. Robinson Jun 2012

Life Without Parole Under Modern Theories Of Punishment, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

Life without parole seems an attractive and logical punishment under the modern coercive crime-control principles of general deterrence and incapacitation, a point reinforced by its common use under habitual offender statutes like "three strikes." Yet, there is increasing evidence to doubt the efficacy of using such principles to distributive punishment. The prerequisite conditions for effective general deterrence are the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, effective and fair preventive detention is difficult when attempted through the criminal justice system. If we really are committed to preventive detention, it is better for both society and potential detainees that it be done …


The Machinery Of Criminal Justice, Stephanos Bibas Jan 2012

The Machinery Of Criminal Justice, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Two centuries ago, the American criminal justice was run primarily by laymen. Jury trials passed moral judgment on crimes, vindicated victims and innocent defendants, and denounced the guilty. But over the last two centuries, lawyers have taken over the process, silencing victims and defendants and, in many cases, substituting a plea-bargaining system for the voice of the jury. The public sees little of how this assembly-line justice works, and victims and defendants have largely lost their day in court. As a result, victims rarely hear defendants express remorse and apologize, and defendants rarely receive forgiveness. This lawyerized machinery has purchased …


Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, And Sentencing, Stephen J. Morse Jan 2011

Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, And Sentencing, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This chapter in, Gene-Environment Interactions in Developmental Psychopathology (K. Dodge & M. Rutter, eds. 2011), considers the relevance of GxE to criminal responsibility and sentencing. It begins with a number of preliminary assumptions that will inform the analysis. It then turns to the law’s view of the person, including the law’s implicit psychology, and the criteria for criminal responsibility. A few false starts or distractions about responsibility are disposed of briefly. With this necessary background in place, the chapter then turns specifically to the relation between GxE and criminal responsibility. It suggests that GxE causes of criminal behavior have no …


International Idealism Meets Domestic-Criminal-Procedure Realism, Stephanos Bibas, William W. Burke-White Jan 2010

International Idealism Meets Domestic-Criminal-Procedure Realism, Stephanos Bibas, William W. Burke-White

All Faculty Scholarship

Though international criminal justice has developed into a flourishing judicial system over the last two decades, scholars have neglected institutional design and procedure questions. International criminal-procedure scholarship has developed in isolation from its domestic counterpart but could learn much realism from it. Given its current focus on atrocities like genocide, international criminal law’s main purpose should be not only to inflict retribution, but also to restore wounded communities by bringing the truth to light. The international justice system needs more ideological balance, more stable career paths, and civil-service expertise. It also needs to draw on the domestic experience of federalism …


Documentation, Documentary, And The Law: What Should Be Made Of Victim Impact Videos?, Regina Austin Jan 2010

Documentation, Documentary, And The Law: What Should Be Made Of Victim Impact Videos?, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

Since the Supreme Court sanctioned the introduction of victim impact evidence in the sentencing phase of capital cases in Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808 (1991), there have been a number of reported decisions in which that evidence has taken the form of videos composed of home-produced still photographs and moving images of the victim. Most of these videos were first shown at funerals or memorial services and contain music appropriate for such occasions. This article considers the probative value of victim impact videos and responds to the call of Justice John Paul Stevens, made in a statement regarding the …


Do Ugly Criminals Receive Harsher Sentences? An Analysis Of Lookism In The Criminal Justice System, Kelly Beck Jan 2010

Do Ugly Criminals Receive Harsher Sentences? An Analysis Of Lookism In The Criminal Justice System, Kelly Beck

Business and Economics Honors Papers

For many years, researchers have attempted to find a link between beauty and labor market outcomes. Although many important findings have been noted in these studies, the beauty analysis utilized was a subjective measurement. This subjective method, while important, may have external factors creating bias in the rating itself. In this study, the impact of beauty is applied to criminals and their sentences. Using a computer based symmetry measurement tool, an objective beauty measurement will be utilized. This study will seek to uncover whether or not criminals who are less attractive, measured through facial symmetry, receive harsher prison sentences than …


Prosecutors And Evidence-Based Sentencing: Rewards, Risks, And Responsibilities, Steven Chanenson Dec 2008

Prosecutors And Evidence-Based Sentencing: Rewards, Risks, And Responsibilities, Steven Chanenson

Steven L. Chanenson

No abstract provided.


Extending The Reach Of The State Into The Post-Sentence Period: Section 26 Of The Criminal Justice Act 2007, Mary Rogan Jan 2008

Extending The Reach Of The State Into The Post-Sentence Period: Section 26 Of The Criminal Justice Act 2007, Mary Rogan

Articles

The Criminal Justice Act 2007 heralded a plethora of changes to Irish criminal law and procedure. The law on sentencing was also affected by its provisions. The focus of this article is on section 26 of that Act which introduces a general power on a court to make an order while passing sentence which will take effect on the expiration of a sentence of imprisonment. Under section 26 a court can impose two such orders, the “monitoring” order and the “protection of persons” order. The author assesses the background to the introduction of these dispositions and the potential application and …


Back-End Sentencing A Practice In Search Of A Rationale, Jeremy Travis Jan 2007

Back-End Sentencing A Practice In Search Of A Rationale, Jeremy Travis

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.


Sentencing Decisions: Matching The Decisionmaker To The Decision Nature, Paul H. Robinson, Barbara A. Spellman Jan 2005

Sentencing Decisions: Matching The Decisionmaker To The Decision Nature, Paul H. Robinson, Barbara A. Spellman

All Faculty Scholarship

The present sentencing debate focuses on which decisionmaker is best suited to make the sentencing decision. Competing positions in this debate typically view the sentencing decision as monolithic, preferring one decisionmaker over all the others. A monolithic view of the decision unnecessarily invites poor decisionmaking. The sentencing decision is properly viewed as a series of distinct decisions, each of which can best be performed by a decisionmaker with certain qualities. This Essay demonstrates how a system of optimal decisionmaking might be constructed -by sorting out the different attributes called for by the distinct aspects of the sentencing decision and matching …