Trial Penalties in Federal Sentencing: Extra‐Guidelines Factors and District Variation

The guarantee of the right to a jury trial lies at the heart of the principles that underlie the American criminal justice system's commitment to due process of law. We investigate the differential sentencing of those who plead guilty and those convicted by trial in U.S. District Courts. We first investigate how much of any federal plea/trial sentencing differences are accounted for by substantial assistance to law enforcement, acceptance of responsibility, obstruction of justice, and other Guideline departures. Second, we investigate how such differences vary according to offense and defendant characteristics, as well as court caseloads and trial rates. We use federal sentencing data for fiscal years 2000–02, along with aggregate data on federal district court caseload features. We find that meaningful trial penalties exist after accounting for Guidelines‐based rationales for differentially sentencing those convicted by guilty plea versus trial. Higher district court caseload pressure is associated with greater trial penalties, while higher district trial rates are associated with lesser trial penalties. In addition, trial penalties are lower for those with more substantial criminal histories, and black men. Trial penalties proportionately increase, however, as Guideline minimum sentencing recommendations increase. We also supplement our analysis with interview and survey data from federal district court participants, which provide insights into the plea reward/trial penalty process, and also suggest important dimensions of federal court trial penalties that we cannot measure.     

The Time Penalty: Examining the Relationship Between Time to Conviction and Trial vs. Plea Disparities in Sentencing

Although studies of sentencing routinely find that defendants who plead guilty receive relatively lenient sentences compared with similarly situated defendants convicted by trial, we have yet to fully understand the role of “mode of conviction” in the sentencing process. In particular, we know little about how the size of the disparity between guilty pleas and trial convictions may depend upon time in case processing, or the timing of pleas; that is, when during the process defendants plead guilty. This is a considerable issue, as “time” often is central to explanations given for plea-trial disparities. The current study examines this central, yet seldom empirically captured, dimension of the sentencing process. Using information gathered in an ancillary data collection effort operated under the supervision of the American Terrorism Study, we differentiate between the mode of conviction and time to conviction and explore the role of “time” in sentence severity, especially with regard to the plea-trial disparity. While consisting of defendants identified in connection with terrorism investigations, and sentenced in federal courts, our study takes advantages of a unique opportunity to isolate the effects of time from the mode of disposition and to explore time correlates of sentencing outcomes. In doing so, we raise important questions about the multiple ways in which time and mode of conviction may affect sentencing more generally and contribute to the larger theoretical discussions of how punishment decisions are made.     

U.S. ATTORNEYS AND SUBSTANTIAL ASSISTANCE DEPARTURES: TESTING FOR INTERPROSECUTOR DISPARITY*

An important and highly discretionary component of the federal sentencing guidelines is the downward departure for providing substantial assistance. Critics charge that the substantial assistance departure, which requires a motion by the prosecutor, may produce the type of unwarranted sentencing disparity that the guidelines were intended to eliminate. Research reveals, for example, that jurisdictional variations are evident in the use of substance assistance departures (Johnson, Ulmer, and Kramer, 2008; Nagel and Schulhofer, 1992), and that the likelihood of receiving the departure is affected by legally irrelevant offender characteristics, which include race, ethnicity, and gender (Mustard, 2001). The purpose of this article is to extend this research by exploring the degree to which decisions regarding substantial assistance departures vary across prosecutors. Using data on offenders sentenced in three U.S. district courts and a multilevel modeling strategy, we investigate whether interprosecutor disparity exists in the likelihood of substantial assistance departures and in the criteria that prosecutors use in deciding whether to file a motion for a substantial assistance departure. Findings indicate that significant interprosecutor variation remains after taking into account offender characteristics, case characteristics, and the district in which the case is adjudicated.     

论现代审前羁押制度遵循的普遍原则

原则作为规则的基础或本源是一种综合性、稳定性原理和准则,其特点是不预先设定任何确定的、具体的事实状 态,没有规定具体的权利和义务,更没有确定的法律后果,可称为规则的规则,是法律推理的权威出发点。审前羁 押制度遵循的普遍原则是指设置羁押制度时指导并使羁押制度具体化的原理和准则,是审前羁押制度以现代法 治理念为基础所形成的准则,归纳起来就是:程序法定原则、必要性原则、例外原则、比例原则、司法裁判原则和法 律救济原则。     

保释制度探微

审前羁押有利于侦查工作和刑事诉讼程序的顺利进行,但是该措施以付出限制犯罪嫌疑人的人身自由为代价。保释制度既可以使犯罪嫌疑人获得有限的自由,又能够保证刑事诉讼的顺利进行,现已成为许多国家采用的羁押替代措施。我国目前超期羁押现象严重,赋予犯罪嫌疑人保释权、构建我国保释制度是从根本上解决该问题的出路。我国宪法应将保释权作为基本人权予以明确规定,并制定保释法对保释的范围、保释的条件、保释的程序等作出具体规定。     

Defending the Homeland: Judicial Sentencing Practices for Federal Immigration Offenses

In the last decade, immigration prosecutions in federal court have increased 165%, with immigration offenses comprising over 28% of the federal criminal caseload in 2008. Despite this increase, research has yet to fully examine the sentencing outcomes for these offenders. Exploration of sentencing outcomes for immigration offenders is particularly salient due to the racial/ethnic composition of these defendants and the documented history of disparate treatment of minorities at this decision point. To explicate these issues, we examine the sentence length of immigration cases to assess the impact of legal, extra-legal, and case-processing factors. We further disaggregate by offense type to explore if correlates of sentencing are consistent across specific categories of immigration violations. Finally, we examine southwestern border districts, which process over 70% of all cases, to assess their specific sentencing practices. Model results, theoretical implications, and avenues for future research are also discussed.     

Restoring accountability in pretrial release: the Philadelphia pretrial release supervision experiments

As drug arrests and jail overcrowding added pressure to increase pretrial release in localities during the 1980s and 1990s, the need to manage a larger and higher-risk pretrial population of defendants awaiting adjudication in the community became a high priority for justice agencies. In the late 1990s Philadelphia officials sought to discover the ingredients of a successful supervision strategy through four interlinked field experiments to provide an empirical basis for a major reform of the pretrial release system. The results of the linked randomized experiments question common assumptions about “supervision,” its impact and effectiveness, about the underlying nature of the noncompliant defendant, and deterrence implications. The study emphasizes the importance of interpreting the findings in the context of implementation of the policy reform. Findings suggest that facilitative notification strategies wield little influence on defendant behavior and that deterrent aims are undermined by the system's failure to deliver consequences for defendant noncompliance during pretrial release. The most significant contribution of the article is its illustration of a major evidence-based policy reform undertaken by a major court system.     

Examining the Impact of Ecological Contexts on Gender Disparity in Federal Sentencing

Gender disparity in sentencing outcomes has been well established in literature. Recent research has increasingly paid attention to social contexts within which judicial decision-making occurs. This study combines these two lines of research by dissecting the nature of gender disparity through ecological lenses. Using 2008–2010 federal sentencing data, we examine the roles of religious and political conservatism in affecting gender-based sentencing disparity. We find that religious and political conservatism reduces gender disparity, with the female discount dissipating in court communities with higher levels of religious and political conservatism. We also find that the conditioning effects of both religious conservatism and political conservatism on gender disparity further interact with race, with black female defendants more likely to be influenced by religious and political conservatism than their white counterparts. Overall, this study contributes to sentencing literature by demonstrating that gender disparity is deeply entrenched in the ecological contexts of court communities.     

Low-Level,but High Speed?: Assessing Pretrial Detention Effects on the Timing and Content of Misdemeanor versus Felony Guilty Pleas

Abstract

While numerous studies have examined pretrial detention and felony case outcomes, little empirical attention has been devoted to misdemeanor pretrial detention. We theorize that misdemeanants detained for a longer proportion of time will plead guilty quicker because the costs of fighting their charges in jail often outweigh the sanctions they face. Utilizing data on 165,630 felony and misdemeanor cases from Miami-Dade County, Florida, during a 4-year period (2012–2015) we assess whether the effects of pretrial detention length on the timing and content of guilty pleas differ across lower-level and upper-level courts. Survival analyses and multinomial logistic regressions indicate that misdemeanor cases overall and those involving lengthier pretrial detention are resolved faster, with most resulting in non-carceral sanctions such as credit for time served (CTS). Given that misdemeanors make-up the bulk of U.S. criminal cases, these findings reveal important insights about how pretrial detention impacts case-processing dynamics in lower courts.     

SENTENCING IN CONTEXT: A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS

Criminal sentencing is, along with arresting and prosecuting, among the most important of formal social control decisions. In this study we use hierarchical modeling to test hypotheses about contextual level influences and cross level interaction effects on local court decisions. Most of the explanatory "action," our analysis shows, is at the individual case level in criminal sentencing. We also find evidence that local contextual features–such as court organizational culture, court caseload pressure, and racial and ethnic composition–affect sentencing outcomes, either directly or in interaction with individual factors. We conclude by discussing theoretical implications of our findings, and how our study points out some dilemmas among civil rights, local autonomy and organizational realities of criminal courts.     

The Effects of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Disorders on Institutional Misconduct Among Female Inmates

The US Sentencing Guidelines are among the most ambitious attempts in history to control sentencing discretion. However, a major sea change occurred in January of 2005, when the US Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Booker and Fanfan, that in order to be constitutional, the federal guidelines must be advisory rather than presumptive. The impact of the Booker/Fanfan decisions on interjurisdictional variation and sentencing disparity is an opportunity to examine the issue of whether the increased opportunity to sentence according to substantively rational criteria entails increased extralegal disparity. We draw on a conceptualization of courts as communities and a focal concerns model of sentencing decisions to frame expectations about federal sentencing in the wake of Booker/Fanfan. We test these expectations using USSC data on federal sentencing outcomes from four time periods: prior to the 2003 PROTECT Act, the period governed by the PROTECT Act, post-Booker/Fanfan, and post-Gall v US. In general, we find that extralegal disparity and between-district variation in the effects of extralegal factors on sentencing have not increased post-Booker and Gall. We conclude that allowing judges greater freedom to exercise substantive rationality does not necessarily result in increased extralegal disparity.     

Delay reduction in the federal courts: Rule 50(b) and the Federal Speedy Trial Act of 1974

During the 1970s, 94 federal district courts implemented two major policy initiatives, Rule 50(b) of theFederal Rules of Criminal Procedure and the Federal Speedy Trial Act, that were designed in Washington to combat delay in the processing of federal criminal cases. Both of these initiatives established a national priority of delay reduction in criminal cases, encouraged local district court planning for delay reduction; established reporting procedures for monitoring local compliance, and provided for the determination of quantitative goals for the time to disposition of criminal cases. Neither initiative mandated specific activities for delay reduction; this determination was left to the discretion of local federal district courts. This research examines the effectiveness of Rule 50(b) and the Speedy Trial Act by constructing a 150-month time series of three measures of case processing time. A multiple-intervention time-series model found that both of these initiatives contributed to the dramatic reduction in the time to disposition in federal criminal cases. These effects persisted after controls for changes in case characteristics and judicial resources were introduced.Points of view expressed in this research are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of the U.S. Department of Justice.     

VARIATION IN TRIAL PENALTIES AMONG SERIOUS VIOLENT OFFENSES*

We examine the differences in the sentencing of those who plead guilty and those convicted by jury trial among defendants convicted of serious violent offenses. Drawing from a focal concerns and court communities perspective on court decision making, we develop several hypotheses about jury trial penalties for serious violent offenders, and how such penalties may vary by offense characteristics, defendant characteristics, and court contexts. Our hierarchical models using Pennsylvania sentencing data from 1997 to 2000 reveal that defendants are substantially penalized if they exercise their right to a jury trial and then lose. Furthermore, this jury trial penalty is not evenly assessed, but depends on the seriousness and type of offense, defendant criminal history, and court contextual characteristics such as caseload, court community size, local violent crime rates, and the size of local black populations.     

DOWNWARD DEPARTURES FOR SERIOUS VIOLENT OFFENDERS: LOCAL COURT “CORRECTIONS” TO PENNSYLVANIA'S SENTENCING GUIDELINES*

We examine downward departures for serious violent offenders, using quantitative and qualitative data from Pennsylvania. We find that offense severity and prior record have negative direct effects on downward departures, but a positive interaction effect on them. Offenders convicted of aggravated assault, those who plead guilty, young black women, and offenders sentenced in large urban courts are more likely to receive downward departures, whereas those convicted by trial, young Hispanic males, and offenders sentenced in small rural courts are less likely to receive them. We argue that downward departures represent local “corrections” to guideline recommendations when there is a mismatch between guidelines and local court actors' definitions of key focal concerns of sentencing for serious violent offenders.