Judges on Trial

Abstract

Extant research on the effects of judicial background characteristics suggests minimal influence from the race or gender of the sentencing judge in criminal cases. This raises at least two possibilities: (1) the combined influence of judicial recruitment, indoctrination, and socialization into the judgeship results in a homogenous body of criminal court judges; or (2) current approaches to identifying judge effects in criminal sentencing have methodological and conceptual flaws that limit their ability to detect important influences from judicial background characteristics. The current article examines this issue with data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing that is augmented to include information on sentencing judges and criminal court contexts. It argues that the mode of conviction shapes the locus of sentencing discretion in ways that systematically underestimate judge effects for pooled estimates of incarceration and sentence length. The empirical results support this interpretation, especially for incarceration in trial cases, where older, female, and minority judges are substantially less likely to sentence offenders to jail or prison terms. The article concludes with a discussion of future research directions and policy implications for judge effects and disparity in sentencing.

Does Sentence Type and Length Matter? Interactions of Age, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender on Jail and Prison Sentences

“…The data provide detailed information from Pennsylvania criminal trial courts, including offense type, criminal history, individual characteristics, mode of conviction, and the length of the jail or prison sentences imposed. Consistent with previous research using these data, we limit the data to include only the most serious offense per judicial transaction (e.g., Britt, 2009;Johnson, 2003Johnson, , 2006Johnson, , 2014.…”

“…Multiple convictions are addressed with a binary variable (reference = single conviction), and changes to the sentencing guidelines are captured through a guidelines edition dummy variable (reference = sixth edition). Offense type is a dummy variable that is coded to reflect whether the individual was convicted of a violent, drug, or property offense, with other offenses that do not fall into these crime types (i.e., forgery, driving under the influence) serving as the reference (Johnson, 2006(Johnson, , 2014Steffensmeier et al, 2017;Ulmer & Johnson, 2004). year dummy variables account for annual changes within the courts from 2004 to 2010.…”

Information and digital technologies in jury trial of criminal cases in Russia

“…Представляется необходимым в целях обеспечения объективности и беспристрастности заседателей осуществлять формирование списков кандидатов после изучения их личности как минимум по двум направлениям в традиционном и дистанционном формате: во-первых, определить их морально-психологическое состояние (Fowler, 2005) путем изучения и обобщения характеризующих его личность сведений 8 , собеседования с психологом, тестирования кандидатов (Garvey et al, 2004); во-вторых, осуществить изучение их круга общения, чтобы исключить наличие родственных или иных личных отношений между кандидатами в присяжные и субъектами уголовного процесса, способными оказать влияние на беспристрастность кандидата (Johnson, 2012) при последующем участии в судебном разбирательстве и вынесении вердикта 9 .…”