Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

Research on capital punishment's impact on plea deals

By Douglas A. Berman

Though the article itself is not available for free, this new posting on SSRN spotlights an issue that I have long thought critical to really understanding the death penalty's true impact on modern criminal justice systems.  The article by Ilyana Kuziemko, which comes from a recent issue of the American Law and Economics Review, is titled "Does the Threat of the Death Penalty Affect Plea Bargaining in Murder Cases? Evidence from New York's 1995 Reinstatement of Capital Punishment."  Here is the abstract:This article investigates whether the death penalty encourages defendants charged with potentially capital crimes to plead guilty in exchange for lesser sentences.  I exploit a natural experiment in New York State: the 1995 reinstatement of capital punishment, coupled with the public refusal of some prosecutors to pursue death sentences (N...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on March 04, 2008 (boomark / email).