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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Judicial Responses To Age And Other Mitigating Evidence: An Exploratory Case Study Of Juvenile Life Sentences In Pre-Miller Cases, José B. Ashford, Katherine Puzauskas, Robert Dormady
Judicial Responses To Age And Other Mitigating Evidence: An Exploratory Case Study Of Juvenile Life Sentences In Pre-Miller Cases, José B. Ashford, Katherine Puzauskas, Robert Dormady
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
This study describes how judges in Maricopa County, Arizona responded to age and other mitigation evidence in imposing “life” versus “natural life” sentences for juvenile offenders convicted of homicide in pre-Miller cases. Maricopa County was selected for this case study because of its history of adhering to “restrictive interpretations” of various kinds of mitigation evidence and because of the characteristics of this county’s local court community. The study employed a mixed-methods design consisting of a content analysis of relevant case documents and a quantitative analysis of the findings from the qualitative analyses of legal case documents. It examined 82% …
Theorizing Failed Prosecutions, Jon B. Gould, Victoria M. Smiegocki, Richard A. Leo
Theorizing Failed Prosecutions, Jon B. Gould, Victoria M. Smiegocki, Richard A. Leo
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
Over the last twenty years, the scholarly field of erroneous convictions has skyrocketed, with multiple articles and books exploring the failures that convict the innocent. However, there has been comparatively little attention to the other side of the coin, failed prosecutions, when the criminal justice system falls short in convicting the likely perpetrator. In this Article, we take up an analysis of failed prosecutions, simultaneously seeking to define its breadth and explain its relation to erroneous convictions. We explore potential hypotheses for the existence of failed prosecutions and then compare those theories to a set of failed prosecutions compiled from …
The Republican Party, Conservatives, And The Future Of Capital Punishment, Ben Jones
The Republican Party, Conservatives, And The Future Of Capital Punishment, Ben Jones
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
The United States has experienced a significant decline in the death penalty during the first part of the twenty-first century, as death sentences, executions, public support, and states with capital punishment all have declined. Many recent reforms banning or placing a moratorium on executions have occurred in blue states, in line with the notion that ending the death penalty is a progressive cause. Challenging this narrative, however, is the emergence of Republican lawmakers as champions of death penalty repeal legislation in red states. This Article puts these efforts by Republican lawmakers into historical context and explains the conservative case against …