Alcohol and Drug Mitigation in Capital Murder Trials: Implications for Sentencing Decisions

Explaining the “Female Victim Effect” in Capital Punishment

“…Other research demonstrates that jurors may misunderstand their instructions so that they believe case designation as heinous and cruel requires them to choose death. Having said this, no prior research that has directly examined whether or not a victim sex effect exists has incorporated a measure of whether or not the case was designated as heinous and cruel (for an indirect examination, see Bjerregaard, Smith, Fogel, & Palacios, 2010). Having said this, no prior research that has directly examined whether or not a victim sex effect exists has incorporated a measure of whether or not the case was designated as heinous and cruel (for an indirect examination, see Bjerregaard, Smith, Fogel, & Palacios, 2010).…”

Mental health mitigating evidence and judicial outcomes for federal capital defendants

“…This expectation is derived from the conceptual underpinnings of the capital justice system, which state this as the intended purpose of mitigating evidence. We may have failed to find empirical support for an association between the general construct of mental illness mitigating evidence and case outcomes because the specific types of evidence that comprised this category had varied effects (Barnett et al, 2004(Barnett et al, , 2007Bjerregaard et al, 2010;Edens et al, 2005;Garvey, 2004;Gillespie et al, 2014;McPherson, 1995;Stevenson et al, 2010). The failure to find the expected associations is concerning.…”

“…Alternatively, the circumstances of the offense and legal counsel's choice of mental illness mitigators may be unrelated. Prior research suggests that mental illness mitigating evidence may lead to quite varied responses from jurors, depending on the specific evidentiary factor, and at times intended mitigators may in actuality be valuated as aggravators (Barnett et al, 2004(Barnett et al, , 2007Bjerregaard et al, 2010;Edens et al, 2005;Garvey, 2004;Gillespie et al, 2014;McPherson, 1995;Stevenson et al, 2010). It is plausible that legal counsel may formulate a defense strategy with these various elements in mind when choosing to pursue a given mental illness mitigator.…”

“…Juries have also been found to respond differently when considering the evidentiary value of substance disorders. Bjerregaard et al (2010) reported that alcohol related mitigating factors had no impact on the outcomes of North Carolina capital murder trials, whereas drug related factors were associated with an increased risk of a death sentence. Given the high rate of comorbidity of mental health disorders among capital defendants (Salekin et al, 2010;Sevilla, 1999), the inconsistency in juror valuation of discrete types of psychological evidence may pose a particularly serious dilemma in valuating multiple pieces of psychological evidence from a given defendant.…”

A propensity score matching analysis of the relationship between victim sex and capital juror decision-making in North Carolina

“…The present study includes a host of more than 50 legal and extralegal case characteristics that have been previously identified as being important in the body of research focused on capital sentencing (Baldus et al, 1990;Baldus and Woodworth, 2003;Bjerregaard et al, 2010), as well as several case characteristics that were necessary for analysis given the structure of the NCCSP data (see Appendix 1 for full coding scheme).…”