Law Commons^™

Reflections On The Newtown Shooting One Year Later, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

One year has passed since the horrific Newtown school shooting of December 14, 2012, and we have likely learned all that will be known about the tragic events of that day. As we reflect back on the event and the subsequent political and legislative responses, a few points should be noted.

The Death Penalty, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

A system of punishment involving the execution of individuals convicted of a capital crime.

The issue of the death penalty has been an area of enormous academic and political ferment in the United States over the last forty years, with the country flirting with abolition in the 1970s, followed by a period of renewed use of the death penalty, and then a period of retrenchment, reflected in a declining number of death sentences and executions and a recent trend leading six states to abolish the death penalty in the last six years. Internationally, there is a steady movement away from …

Capital Punishment In Connecticut, 1973-2007: A Comprehensive Evaluation From 4686 Murders To One Execution, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

This study explores and evaluates the application of the death penalty in Connecticut from 1973 until 2007, a period during which 4686 murders were committed in the state. The objective is to assess whether the system operates lawfully and reasonably or is marred by arbitrariness, caprice, or discrimination. My empirical approach has three components. First, I provide background information on the overall numbers of murders, death sentences, and executions in Connecticut. The extreme infrequency with which the death penalty is administered in Connecticut raises a serious question as to whether the state’s death penalty regime is serving any legitimate social …

Substance Vs. Sideshows In The More Guns, Less Crime Debate: A Comment On Moody, Lott, And Marvell, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

We are grateful to authors Carlisle Moody, John Lott, and Thomas Marvell (hereafter MLM) for their close attention to our article “The Impact of Right-to- Carry Laws and the NRC Report: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy,” which was published in the American Law and Economics Review (Aneja, Donohue, and Zhang 2011), and then re-issued as a National Bureau of EconomicResearch working paper with some substantively unimportant errors corrected (Aneja, Donohue, and Zhang 2012). (Henceforth, we too will use the abbreviation ADZ to refer to our jointly authored work.) We think the attention to this work is …

Outlier Nation: Homicides, Incarceration, Guns And Gun Culture, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

The killing of 20 children and 6 teachers at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut has shaken the nation enough so that the issue of how to combat America’s unusual level of gun violence is now on the agenda for the first time in almost two decades. In 1994, President Clinton succeeded in getting two major gun control measures: 1) a national background check program that was designed to keep guns away from felons and the mentally ill, and 2) a ban on the type of “assault weapons” used by Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter. Unfortunately, the National Rifle Association …

Do Police Reduce Crime? A Reexamination Of A Natural Experiment, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

We reexamine a natural experiment first studied by Di Tella and Schargrodsky (2004, “DS”). In response to a 1994 terrorist attack against a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, the government implemented 24-hour police surveillance on city blocks with Jewish institutions. Using a control group of blocks without Jewish institutions, DS applied difference-in-differences, finding that increased policing substantially reduced car theft. We explain how the reallocation of police resources from unprotected to protected blocks, shifts in criminal activity to avoid 24-hour police patrols, and a parking prohibition on protected blocks undermine the original design. The intervention may have displaced, rather …