Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Reconciling Experimental Incoherence With Real-World Coherence In Punitive Damages, Theodore Eisenberg, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Martin T. Wells

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Experimental evidence generated in controlled laboratory studies suggests that the legal system in general, and punitive damages awards in particular, should display an incoherent pattern. According to the prediction, inexperienced decisionmakers, such as juries, should fail to convert their qualitative judgments of defendants' conduct into consistent, meaningful dollar amounts. This Article tests this prediction and finds modest support for the thesis that experience across different types of cases will lead to greater consistency in awards. Despite this support, numerous studies of damage awards in real cases detect a generally sensible pattern of damage awards. This Article tries to reconcile the …

Implicit Racial Attitudes Of Death Penalty Lawyers, Theodore Eisenberg, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Sheri Lynn Johnson

Defense attorneys commonly suspect that the defendant's race plays a role in prosecutors' decisions to seek the death penalty, especially when the victim of the crime was white. When the defendant is convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, it is equally common for such attorneys to question the racial attitudes of the jury. These suspicions are not merely partisan conjectures; ample historical, statistical, and anecdotal evidence supports the inference that race matters in capital cases. Even the General Accounting Office of the United States concludes as much. Despite McCleskey v. Kemp, in which the United States Supreme Court …

The Effects Of Intent: Do We Know How Legal Standards Work?, Theodore Eisenberg, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Sheri Lynn Johnson

No one knows how the intent standard works in racial discrimination cases, though many have speculated. To test the speculation, this study examines how the intent standard actually operates. Its findings cast doubt on whether we really know how any legal standard functions.

Probing "Life Qualification" Through Expanded Voir Dire, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, A. Brian Threlkeld

Sheri Lynn Johnson

The conventional wisdom is that most trials are won or lost in jury selection. If this is true, then in many capital cases, jury selection is literally a matter of life or death. Given these high stakes and Supreme Court case law setting out standards for voir dire in capital cases, one might expect a sophisticated and thoughtful process in which each side carefully considers which jurors would be best in the particular case. Instead, it turns out that voir dire in capital cases is woefully ineffective at the most elementary task--weeding out unqualified jurors. Empirical evidence reveals that many …

Expert Testimony In Capital Sentencing: Juror Responses, John H. Montgomery, J. Richard Ciccone, Stephen P. Garvey, Theodore Eisenberg

Stephen P. Garvey

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Furman v. Georgia (1972), held that the death penalty is constitutional only when applied on an individualized basis. The resultant changes in the laws in death penalty states fostered the involvement of psychiatric and psychologic expert witnesses at the sentencing phase of the trial, to testify on two major issues: (1) the mitigating factor of a defendant’s abnormal mental state and (2) the aggravating factor of a defendant’s potential for future violence. This study was an exploration of the responses of capital jurors to psychiatric/psychologic expert testimony during capital sentencing. The Capital Jury Project is …

The Emotional Economy Of Capital Sentencing, Stephen P. Garvey

Stephen P. Garvey

You often hear that one reason capital jurors condemn capital defendants is that jurors don't empathize with defendants. And one reason they don't empathize is that the process of capital sentencing is rigged against empathy. Using data from the South Carolina segment of the Capital Jury Project, I try to examine the role emotion plays in capital sentencing. Without entering here all the important and necessary caveats, I find that the self-reported emotional responses jurors have toward capital defendants run the gamut from sympathy and pity at one extreme, to disgust, anger, and fear at the other. What causes these …

But Was He Sorry? The Role Of Remorse In Capital Sentencing, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Stephen P. Garvey

What role does remorse really play in capital sentencing? We divide this basic question in two. First, what makes jurors come to believe a defendant is remorseful? Second, does a belief in the defendant's remorse affect the jury's final judgment of life or death? Here we present a systematic, empirical analysis that tries to answer these questions. What makes jurors think a defendant is remorseful? Among other things, we find that the more jurors think that the crime is coldblooded, calculated, and depraved and that the defendant is dangerous, the less likely they are to think the defendant is remorseful. …

Jury Responsibility In Capital Sentencing: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Stephen P. Garvey

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 …

Forecasting Life And Death: Juror Race, Religion, And Attitude Toward The Death Penalty, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Stephen P. Garvey

Determining whether race, sex, or other juror characteristics influence how capital case jurors vote is difficult. Jurors tend to vote for death in more egregious cases and for life in less egregious cases no matter what their own characteristics. And a juror's personal characteristics may get lost in the process of deliberation because the final verdict reflects the jury's will, not the individual juror's. Controlling for the facts likely to influence a juror's verdict helps to isolate the influence of a juror's personal characteristics. Examining each juror's first sentencing vote reveals her own judgment before the majority works its will. …

Virginia's Capital Jurors, Stephen P. Garvey, Paul Marcus

Stephen P. Garvey

Next to Texas, no state has executed more capital defendants than Virginia. Moreover, the likelihood of a death sentence actually being carried out is greater in Virginia than it is elsewhere, while the length of time between the imposition of a death sentence and its actual execution is shorter. Virginia has thus earned a reputation among members of the defense bar as being among the worst of the death penalty states. Yet insofar as these facts about Virginia's death penalty relate primarily to the behavior of state and federal appellate courts, they suggest that what makes Virginia's death penalty unique …

The Merciful Capital Juror, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey

Stephen P. Garvey

We examine the role of mercy in capital sentencing along three dimensions. We first explain why mercy is a philosophically problematic virtue, and second, why it presently holds an ambiguous status within constitutional doctrine. Finally, we draw on interviews with jurors who served on capital cases in order better to understand how the behavior of merciful jurors compares to the behavior of their less merciful counterparts. Among other things, we find that merciful jurors tend to be better educated and to attend religious services regularly. We also find that merciful jurors are, as one might reasonably expect, more apt to …

The Deadly Paradox Of Capital Jurors, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Stephen P. Garvey

We examine support for the death penalty among a unique group of respondents: one hundred and eighty-seven citizens who actually served as jurors on capital trials in South Carolina. Capital jurors support the death penalty as much as, if not more than, members of the general public. Yet capital jurors, like poll respondents, harbor doubts about the penalty's fairness. Moreover, jurors--black jurors and Southern Baptists in particular--are ready to abandon their support for the death penalty when the alternative to death is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, especially when combined with a requirement of restitution. Support for the …

Xenophilia In American Courts, Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg

Kevin M. Clermont

Foreigner! The word says it all. Verging on the politically incorrect, the expression is full of connotation and implication. A foreigner will face bias. By such a thought process, many people believe that litigants have much to fear in courts foreign to them. In particular, non-Americans fare badly in American courts. Foreigners believe this. Even Americans believe this. Such views about American courts are understandable. After all, the grant of alienage jurisdiction to the federal courts, both original and removal, constitutes an official assumption that xenophobic bias is present in state courts. As James Madison said of state courts: “We …

Exorcising The Evil Of Forum-Shopping, Kevin Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg

Kevin M. Clermont

Most of the business of litigation comprises pretrial disputes. A common and important dispute is over where adjudication should take place. Civil litigators deal with nearly as many change-of-venue motions as trials. The battle over venue often constitutes the critical issue in a case. The American way is to provide plaintiffs with a wide choice of venues for suit. But the American way has its drawbacks. To counter these drawbacks, an integral part of our court systems, and in particular the federal court system, is the scheme of transfer of venue "in the interest of justice." However, the leading evaluative …

How Employment-Discrimination Plaintiffs Fare In The Federal Courts Of Appeals, Kevin Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg, Stewart Schwab

Kevin M. Clermont

Employment-discrimination plaintiffs swim against the tide. Compared to the typical plaintiff, they win a lower proportion of cases during pretrial and after trial. Then, many of their successful cases are appealed. On appeal, they have a harder time in upholding their successes, as well in reversing adverse outcome. This tough story does not describe some tiny corner of the litigation world. Employment-discrimination cases constitute an increasing fraction of the federal civil docket, now reigning as the largest single category of cases at nearly 10 percent. In this article, we use official government data to describe the appellate phase of this …

Courts In Cyberspace, Theodore Eisenberg, Kevin M. Clermont

Kevin M. Clermont

No abstract provided.

Foreigners' Fate In America's Courts: Empirical Legal Research, Kevin Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg

Kevin M. Clermont

This article revisits the controversy regarding how foreigners fare in U.S. courts. The available data, if taken in a sufficiently big sample from numerous case categories and a range of years, indicate that foreigners have fared better in the federal courts than their domestic counterparts have fared. Thus, the data offer no support for the existence of xenophobic bias in U.S. courts. Nor do they establish xenophilia, of course. What the data do show is that case selection drives the outcomes for foreigners. Foreigners’ aversion to U.S. forums can elevate the foreigners’ success rates, when measured as a percentage of …

Trial By Jury Or Judge: Transcending Empiricism, Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg

Kevin M. Clermont

Pity the civil jury, seen by some as the sickest organ of a sick system. Yet the jury has always been controversial. One might suppose that, with so much at stake for so long, we would all know a lot about the ways juries differ from judges in their behavior. In fact, we know remarkably little. This Article provides the first large-scale comparison of plaintiff win rates and recoveries in civil cases tried before juries and judges. In two of the most controversial areas of modern tort law--product liability and medical malpractice--the win rates substantially differ from other cases' win …

Explaining Death Row's Population And Racial Composition, John H. Blume, Theodore Eisenberg, Martin T. Wells

John H. Blume

Twenty-three years of murder and death sentence data show how murder demographics help explain death row populations. Nevada and Oklahoma are the most death-prone states; Texas's death sentence rate is below the national mean. Accounting for the race of murderers establishes that black representation on death row is lower than black representation in the population of murder offenders. This disproportion results from reluctance to seek or impose death in black defendant-black victim cases, which more than offsets eagerness to seek and impose death in black defendant-white victim cases. Death sentence rates in black defendant-white victim cases far exceed those in …

Judicial Politics, Death Penalty Appeals, And Case Selection: An Empirical Study, John Blume, Theodore Eisenberg

John H. Blume

Several studies try to explain case outcomes based on the politics of judicial selection methods. Scholars usually hypothesize that judges selected by partisan popular elections are subject to greater political pressure in deciding cases than are other judges. No class of cases seems more amenable to such analysis than death penalty cases. No study, however, accounts both for judicial politics and case selection, the process through which cases are selected for death penalty litigation. Yet, the case selection process cannot be ignored because it yields a set of cases for adjudication that is far from a random selection of cases. …

Probing "Life Qualification" Through Expanded Voir Dire, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, A. Brian Threlkeld

John H. Blume

The conventional wisdom is that most trials are won or lost in jury selection. If this is true, then in many capital cases, jury selection is literally a matter of life or death. Given these high stakes and Supreme Court case law setting out standards for voir dire in capital cases, one might expect a sophisticated and thoughtful process in which each side carefully considers which jurors would be best in the particular case. Instead, it turns out that voir dire in capital cases is woefully ineffective at the most elementary task--weeding out unqualified jurors. Empirical evidence reveals that many …

欠測値補定の診断手法としての多重代入法(高橋将宜), Masayoshi Takahashi

Masayoshi Takahashi

No abstract provided.

Depicting Estimates Using The Intercept In Meta-Regression Models: The Moving Constant Technique, Blair T. Johnson Dr., Tania B. Huedo-Medina Dr.

Blair T. Johnson

In any scientific discipline, the ability to portray research patterns graphically often aids greatly in interpreting a phenomenon. In part to depict phenomena, the statistics and capabilities of meta-analytic models have grown increasingly sophisticated. Accordingly, this article details how to move the constant in weighted meta-analysis regression models (viz. “meta-regression”) to illuminate the patterns in such models across a range of complexities. Although it is commonly ignored in practice, the constant (or intercept) in such models can be indispensible when it is not relegated to its usual static role. The moving constant technique makes possible estimates and confidence intervals at …

The Lower Ordovician Fillmore Formation Of Western Utah: Storm-Dominated Sedimentation On A Passive Margin., Benjamin Dattilo

Benjamin F. Dattilo

No abstract provided.

Meta-Analysis Of Type I Error Rates For Detecting Differential Item Functioning With Logistic Regression And Mantel-Haenszel In Monte Carlo Studies, Eva Van De Water Ph. D.

Eva Van De Water

Differential item functioning (DIF) occurs when individuals from different groups who have equal levels of a latent trait fail to earn commensurate scores on a testing instrument. Type I error occurs when DIF-detection methods result in unbiased items being excluded from the test while a Type II error occurs when biased items remain on the test after DIF-detection methods have been employed. Both errors create potential issues of injustice amongst examinees and can result in costly and protracted legal action. The purpose of this research was to evaluate two methods for detecting DIF: logistic regression (LR) and Mantel-Haenszel (MH).

To …

Link Spamming Wikipedia For Profit, Andrew West, Jian Chang, Krishna Venkatasubramanian, Oleg Sokolsky, Insup Lee

Oleg Sokolsky

Collaborative functionality is an increasingly prevalent web technology. To encourage participation, these systems usually have low barriers-to-entry and permissive privileges. Unsurprisingly, ill-intentioned users try to leverage these characteristics for nefarious purposes. In this work, a particular abuse is examined -- link spamming -- the addition of promotional or otherwise inappropriate hyperlinks.

Our analysis focuses on the "wiki" model and the collaborative encyclopedia, Wikipedia, in particular. A principal goal of spammers is to maximize *exposure*, the quantity of people who view a link. Creating and analyzing the first Wikipedia link spam corpus, we find that existing spam strategies perform quite poorly …

Generating A Dynamic Synthetic Population – Using An Age-Structured Two-Sex Model For Household Dynamics, Mohammad-Reza Namazi-Rad, Payam Mokhtarian, Pascal Perez

Payam Mokhtarian

Generating a reliable computer-simulated synthetic population is necessary for knowledge processing and decision-making analysis in agent-based systems in order to measure, interpret and describe each target area and the human activity patterns within it. In this paper, both synthetic reconstruction (SR) and combinatorial optimisation (CO) techniques are discussed for generating a reliable synthetic population for a certain geographic region (in Australia) using aggregated- and disaggregated-level information available for such an area. A CO algorithm using the quadratic function of population estimators is presented in this paper in order to generate a synthetic population while considering a two-fold nested structure for …

Models For Improving Patient Throughput And Waiting At Hospital Emergency Departments, Jomon Aliyas Paul, Lin Li

Jomon Aliyas Paul

Background: Overcrowding diminishes Emergency Department (ED) care delivery capabilities.

Objectives: We developed a generic methodology to investigate the causes of overcrowding and to identify strategies to resolve them, and applied it in the ED of a hospital participating in the study.

Methods: We utilized Discrete Event Simulation (DES) to capture the complex ED operations. Using DES results, we developed parametric models for checking the effectiveness and quantifying the potential gains from various improvement alternatives. We performed a follow-up study to compare the outcomes before and after the model recommendations were put into effect at the hospital participating …

A General Framework For Infrastructure System Reliability Modelling And Analysis, Payam Mokhtarian, Mohammad-Reza Namazi-Rad, Tin Kin Ho, Mahmoud Efatmaneshnik

Payam Mokhtarian

An infrastructure system is inherently complex, with layers of both explicitly defined and hidden or subtle interfaces with other infrastructure systems and human users. High availability is desired, which implies stringent requirements on reliability and safety. Reliability analysis typically starts at component or sub-system level and aggregates through the system functional hierarchy. Because of the system complexity, incorporating occurrences of all possible interactions and scenarios is not always practical and failure data is often limited. Moreover, there are unobserved events among the sub-systems distributing either randomly or with temporal trend. To facilitate reliability analysis amid the complex environment and uncertain …

A Probabilistic Predictive Model For Residential Mobility In Australia, Mohammad-Reza Namazi-Rad, Nagesh Shukla, Albert Munoz, Payam Mokhtarian, Jun Ma

Payam Mokhtarian

Household relocation modelling is an integral part of the planning process as residential movements influence the demand for community facilities and services. Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) created the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) program to collect reliable longitudinal data on family and household dynamics. Socio-demographic information (such as general health situation and well-being, lifestyle changes, residential mobility, income and welfare dynamics, and labour market dynamics) is collected from the sampled individuals and households. The data shows that approximately 17% of Australian households and 13% of couple families in the HILDA sample …