Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T10:39:58.375Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Assessing the Capriciousness of Death Penalty Charging

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Robert E. Weiss ,
Richard A. Berk  and
Cathrine Y. Lee
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

We discuss capriciousness in decisions to charge homicide defendants with capital crimes. We propose using Shannon Information to assess capriciousness in a charging system and apply Shannon Information to analyze new data from San Francisco County, California. We show that about two-thirds of the potential systemic capriciousness is removed by the explanatory variables available. The one-third remaining is dependent on inherently unstable features of charging practices that necessarily produce capriciousness.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , 1996 , pp. 607 - 626
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by The Law and Society Association

References

References

Baldus, David C., Woodworth, George, & Pulaski, Charles A. Jr. (1985) “Monitoring and Evaluating Contemporary Death Penalty Sentencing Systems: Lessons from Georgia,” 18 Univ. of California-Davis Law Rev. 1375.Google Scholar
Baldus, David C., Woodworth, George, & Pulaski, Charles A. Jr. (1990) Equal Justice and the Death Penalty: A Legal and Empirical Analysis. Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Berk, Richard A., Weiss, Robert E., & Boger, Jack (1993a) “Chance and the Death Penalty,” 27 Law & Society Rev. 89.Google Scholar
Berk, Richard A., Weiss, Robert E., & Boger, Jack (1993b) “Rejoinder,” 27 Law & Society Rev. 125.Google Scholar
Berk, Richard A., Western, Bruce, & Weiss, Robert E. (1995) “Statistical Inference from Apparent Populations” (with discussion), 25 Sociological Methodology 421.Google Scholar
Bowers, William J., Pierce, Glenn L., & McDevitt, John F. (1984) Legal Homicide: Death as Punishment in America, 1864–1982. Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Breiman, Leo, Friedman, Jerome H., Olshen, Richard A., & Stone, Charles J. (1984) Classification and Regression Trees. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Gross, Samuel R., & Mauro, Robert (1989) Death and Discrimination: Racial Disparities in Capital Sentencing. Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Khinchin, A. I. (1957) Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Kullback, Solomon (1958) Information Theory and Statistics. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith.Google Scholar
Maynard, Douglas W. (1984) Inside Plea Bargaining: The Language of Plea Bargaining. New York: Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCullagh, Peter, & Nelder, John A. (1989) Generalized Linear Models. 2d Ed. London: Chapman & Hall.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paternoster, Raymond (1993) “Comment: Assessing Capriciousness in Capital Cases,” 27 Law & Society Rev. 111.Google Scholar
Paternoster, Raymond, & Kazyaka, Annmarie (1988) “Racial Considerations in Capital Punishment: The Failure of Evenhanded Justice,” in Haas, K. C. & Inciardi, J. A., eds., Challenging Capital Punishment: Legal and Social Science Approaches. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Shannon, Claude E. (1948) “The Mathematical Theory of Communication,” 27 Bell System Technical J. 379, 623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
U.S. General Accounting Office (1990) Death Penalty Sentencing: Research Indicates Patterns of Racial Disparities. GAO/GGD-90–57. Washington: General Accounting Office.Google Scholar

Case

Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar