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Jury Responsibility In Capital Sentencing: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells
Jury Responsibility In Capital Sentencing: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
The law allows executioners to deny responsibility for what they have done by making it possible for them to believe they have not done it. The law treats members of capital sentencing juries quite differently. It seeks to ensure that they feel responsible for sentencing a defendant to death. This differential treatment rests on a presumed link between a capital sentencer's willingness to accept responsibility for the sentence she imposes and the accuracy and reliability of that sentence. Using interviews of 153 jurors who sat in South Carolina capital cases, this article examines empirically whether capital sentencing jurors assume responsibility …
Litigation Outcomes In State And Federal Courts: A Statistical Portrait, Theodore Eisenberg, John Goerdt, Brian Ostrom, David Rottman
Litigation Outcomes In State And Federal Courts: A Statistical Portrait, Theodore Eisenberg, John Goerdt, Brian Ostrom, David Rottman
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
"U.S. Juries Grow Tougher on Plaintiffs in Lawsuits," the New York Times page-one headline reads. The story details how, in 1992, plaintiffs won 52 percent of the personal injury cases decided by jury verdicts, a decline from the 63 percent plaintiff success rate in 1989. The sound-byte explanations follow, including the notion that juries have learned that they, as part of the general population, ultimately pay the costs of high verdicts. Similar stories, reporting both increases and decreases in jury award levels, regularly make headlines. Jury Verdict Research, Inc. (JVR), a commercial service that sells case outcome information, often is …