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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% …