Numerous arguments have been raised to halt the death penalty, including constitutional claims such as ineffective assistance of counsel, equal protection, right to trial by jury, and cruel and unusual punishment. The winning argument, however, in Evans v. State, a Maryland death penalty appeal,...

The author in this piece reflects on the death penalty in the U.S. in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The writer goes on to argue that capital punishment is, in and of itself, a form of violence. Also discussed in the article are the gradual removal of executions from public view,...

This paper examines the impact of jury racial composition on trial outcomes using a unique dataset of all felony trials in Sarasota County, Florida between 2004 and 2009. We utilize a research design that exploits day-to-day variation in the composition of the jury pool to isolate quasi-random...

This paper examines the impact of jury racial composition on trial outcomes using a unique dataset of all felony trials in Sarasota County, Florida between 2004 and 2009. We utilize a research design that exploits day-to-day variation in the composition of the jury pool to isolate quasi-random...

The institutionalization of actuarial risk assessments at sentencing reflects the extension of the academic and policy-driven push to move judges away from sentencing individual defendants and toward basing sentencing on population level representations of crimes and offenses. How have courts...

The recent European Union (EU) proposal to harmonize criminal penalties for sanctions violations across its member states purports to be an ambitious initiative to create a consistent approach to sanctions enforcement across the Union. However, the proposal falls short of the reform needed to...

Does the death penalty save lives? A surge of recent interest in this question has yielded a series of papers that purport to show robust and precise estimates of a substantial deterrent effect of capital punishment. We assess the various approaches that have been used in this literature,...

A common view in the law and economics literature holds that equal increases in type-1 and type-2 error lower deterrence by the same amount. We demonstrate that this view is generally incorrect both when the court's error concerns the assessment of the alleged offender's act (mistake of act) and...

This paper considers the principled approach to the sentencing of young people, requiring the recognition of the lesser capacity and culpability of the offender due to their personal characteristics. The author uses New Zealand as a case study to discuss whether, and how, judges would exercise...

This article considers the possibility of simultaneously reducing crime, prison sentences, and the tax burden of financing the criminal justice system by introducing positive sanctions, which are benefits conferred to non-convicts. Specifically, it proposes a procedure wherein a part of the...