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“He Takes Some of My Time; I Take Some of His”: An Analysis of Judicial Sentencing Patterns in Jury Cases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Thomas M. Uhlman  and
N. Darlene Walker
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Abstract

The jury has been widely credited with contributing to the best elements of the American judicial system. Utilizing computerized case histories of 29,000 felony defendants in an urban trial court, this article examines an important aspect of the jury process—judicial sentencing following jury trials. The data show that the sentencing cost of pursuing constitutionally guaranteed jury trial rights is high: jury defendants are punished with substantially greater harshness than are plea and bench convictees in essentially similar criminal cases. Regardless of sentencing philosophy, virtually every judge who sentenced jury, bench, and plea defendants sentenced jury defendants far more harshly and sent them to jail more frequently. Stiffer penalties for jury defendants appears to be the operational, though unstated, judicial policy, exercised out of the apparent administrative interest in reducing the number of lengthy jury trials.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , Winter 1980 , pp. 323 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

*

We gratefully acknowledge Professor Richard J. Richardson's contributions to this paper. We would also like to thank Carol W. Kohfeld, C. Moore Muffin, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions in the preparation of this manuscript. Research support from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the University of Houston Limited Grant-in-aid Program is also gratefully acknowledged.

References

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