Comparative proportionality review: A nationwide examination of reversed death sentences

A required part of the appellate review of death sentences in many capital punishment jurisdictions is comparative proportionality review. This procedure requires the court to compare the death sentence under review with sentences in similar cases to determine whether it is excessive. This article examines those death sentences from across the country that have been reversed on comparative proportionality grounds. Relatively few death sentences have been reversed on these grounds, and the number of reversals is decreasing. The reviews that reverse sentences infrequently compare only to other death sentences, commonly use a method that requires more than a mere common aggravating factor for selecting comparison cases, and rarely use the frequency method of comparative proportionality review.     

Training prison inmates as paralegals: An experimental project

A program to train inmates as paralegals was established at a large state prison in the Midwest. Qualified inmates were randomly assigned to the training or to a control condition. Both groups were administered measures assessing legal knowledge, the use of legal knowledge, attitudes about the criminal justice system, and self-perceptions before and after training. The trainee group showed a significant increase in its amount of legal knowledge after training. Members of the trainee group also reported a significant increase in the number of other inmates requesting aid from them on legal problems. In addition, interviews were conducted with two random samples of the general inmate population, before and after the paralegal training program. These interviews revealed strong support for the training program, and this support increased over the period of the program. Limited data on longer-term effectiveness of the paralegal's performance in the prison legal aid clinic and in paralegal jobs following parole supported the positive, shorter-term results.     

Method of payment and the cesarean birth rate in a hospital in northeast Brazil

This paper examines factors associated with the cesarean birth rate, including medical condition and method of payment, in the largest maternity hospital of Fortaleza, Brazil. Data were collected on 5996 women who delivered at the Maternidade Escola Assis Chateaubriand from October 1980 to July 1981. All women were classified according to how they paid for their care: private (financed at least part of their care with own funds), insured (federal or state), or indigent. Private patients were found to be far more likely than patients in the other two groups to have cesarean deliveries, due primarily to the high percentage of private patients recorded as having prolonged or obstructed labor, combined with a high rate of prior cesarean sections. From this data, it appears likely that financial incentives did play a role in physician decisions on whether to perform cesarean deliveries.