Testing the Efficacy of Interventions to Decrease Racial Bias in Jury Selection

Despite legal restrictions, attorneys continue to use peremptory challenges to strike minorities from juries (Clark, Boccaccini, Caillouet, & Chaplin, 2007; Equal Justice Initiative, 2010; Gabbidon, Kowal, Jordan, Roberts, & Vincenzi, 2008). The current protection against racially motivated peremptory challenges provided by Batson v. Kentucky (1986) has not been effective in reducing racial discrimination during voir dire and social scientists have yet to identify a suitable procedure for reducing the bias. The present research examined if methods used in reducing discrimination in industrial and organizational psychology can have a similar impact in a legal setting. Participants viewed venirepersons who varied in race, attitude and gender. Participants rated how likely it would be for them to use a peremptory challenge on each venireperson and then chose two to exclude at the end. Venireperson attitude was the only significant predictor of likelihood ratings and exclusion. Several possibilities are explored to explain why the research did not replicate previous studies or archival data

Undeliverable: Suspended Driver’s Licenses and the Problem of Notice

In North Carolina, one in seven adult drivers currently has a suspended license for nondriving related reasons.  As in many other states, in North Carolina, driver’s licenses are commonly suspended, for reasons unrelated to safety, when a person fails to appear in court in response to notice of a traffic court date or fails to pay traffic fines.  Notices of traffic court dates are sent by mail, typically to the address on record at the Department of Motor Vehicles, as are subsequent notices that the consequence for nonappearance will be a driver’s license suspension.  To better understand the effects of these driver’s license suspensions and whether individuals are even aware of the suspensions, we sought to survey a randomly selected 300 people in Wake County, North Carolina who had their licenses suspended between 2017–2018.  We sent these surveys by mail and found something unexpected and unrelated to many of the survey questions themselves: that the addresses on file for individuals whose licenses had been suspended were often inaccurate.  Over one-third of these mail surveys were returned to sender.  These undeliverable mailings suggest that large numbers of people, numbering perhaps in the hundreds of thousands in North Carolina, never receive actual notice of either their court date or the drastic consequence of nonappearance.  Further, they may have no idea that the state has suspended their license, and as a result, may suffer severe consequences if later stopped for driving with a revoked license.  We conclude by discussing the due process and policy problems implied by these findings

Juvenile Life Without Parole in North Carolina

Life without parole (LWOP) is “an especially harsh punishment for a juvenile,” as the U.S. Supreme Court noted in Graham v. Florida. The United States is the only country in the world that imposes juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences. Many of these individuals were sentenced during a surge in LWOP sentencing in the 1990s. In the past decade, following several Supreme Court rulings eliminating mandatory sentences of LWOP for juvenile offenders, such sentencing has declined. This Article aims to empirically assess the rise and then the fall in JLWOP sentencing in a leading sentencing state, North Carolina, to better understand these trends and their implications. We examine the cases of ninety-four North Carolina juveniles, aged thirteen to seventeen at the time of their offenses, who were sentenced to JLWOP. Of those, forty-nine are currently serving LWOP sentences. In North Carolina, JLWOP sentencing has markedly declined. Since 2011, there have been only five of such sentences. Of the group of ninety-four juvenile offenders, forty-four have so far been resentenced to non-LWOP sentences—largely pursuant to the post-Miller v. Alabama legislation passed in North Carolina. These JLWOP sentences are primarily concentrated in a small group of counties. A total of 61% (fifty-seven of the ninety-four) JLWOP sentences in North Carolina were entered in one of the eleven counties that have imposed more than three JLWOP sentences. We find a path dependency to these sentences: once a county has imposed a JLWOP sentence, it has a higher probability of imposing a JLWOP sentence again in the future. In contrast, homicide rates are not predictive of JLWOP sentences. We question what goals JLWOP serves, given what an inconsistently used, uncommon, geographically limited, and costly sentence it has been in practice. In conclusion, we describe alternatives to JLWOP, including the model adopted in states such as California and Wyoming, in which there is periodic review of lengthy sentences imposed on juvenile offenders

Life Without Parole Sentencing in North Carolina

What explains the puzzle of life without parole (LWOP) sentencing in the United States? In the past two decades, LWOP sentences have reached record highs, with over 50,000 prisoners serving LWOP. Yet during this same period, homicide rates have steadily declined. The U.S. Supreme Court has limited the use of juvenile LWOP in Eighth Amendment rulings. Further, death sentences have steeply declined, reaching record lows. Although research has examined drivers of incarceration patterns for certain sentences, there has been little research on LWOP imposition. To shed light on what might explain the sudden rise of LWOP, we examine characteristics of the more than 1,627 cases in which LWOP was imposed from 1995 to 2017, in North Carolina, one of the states that imposes the largest numbers of these sentences. We begin by analyzing defendant race, crime, and sentence patterns by county. We associate LWOP with homicide rates, and examine interactions between homicide, victim race, and prior LWOP sentencing. This first empirical analysis of adult LWOP sentences finds important local variations in its imposition. We find that as the homicide rate increases within a county, we observe fewer LWOP sentences. We find that fewer LWOP sentences are predicted to occur as the number of black victim homicides increase in a county, but no such relationship is found when considering the number of white victim homicides. Finally, we find a strong path dependency and concentration of LWOP sentences in counties, where counties that have imposed LWOP sentences in the past are more likely to continue to do so. These findings have implications for efforts to reconsider the most severe sentences in the U.S., and they suggest that prosecutorial discretion in seeking long sentences will be important subjects for future research and policy

Undeliverable: Suspended Driver’s Licenses and the Problem of Notice

In North Carolina, one in seven adult drivers currently has a suspended license for nondriving related reasons.  As in many other states, in North Carolina, driver’s licenses are commonly suspended, for reasons unrelated to safety, when a person fails to appear in court in response to notice of a traffic court date or fails to pay traffic fines.  Notices of traffic court dates are sent by mail, typically to the address on record at the Department of Motor Vehicles, as are subsequent notices that the consequence for nonappearance will be a driver’s license suspension.  To better understand the effects of these driver’s license suspensions and whether individuals are even aware of the suspensions, we sought to survey a randomly selected 300 people in Wake County, North Carolina who had their licenses suspended between 2017–2018.  We sent these surveys by mail and found something unexpected and unrelated to many of the survey questions themselves: that the addresses on file for individuals whose licenses had been suspended were often inaccurate.  Over one-third of these mail surveys were returned to sender.  These undeliverable mailings suggest that large numbers of people, numbering perhaps in the hundreds of thousands in North Carolina, never receive actual notice of either their court date or the drastic consequence of nonappearance.  Further, they may have no idea that the state has suspended their license, and as a result, may suffer severe consequences if later stopped for driving with a revoked license.  We conclude by discussing the due process and policy problems implied by these findings

Juvenile Life Without Parole in North Carolina

Life without parole (LWOP) is “an especially harsh punishment for a juvenile,” as the U.S. Supreme Court noted in Graham v. Florida. The United States is the only country in the world that imposes juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences. Many of these individuals were sentenced during a surge in LWOP sentencing in the 1990s. In the past decade, following several Supreme Court rulings eliminating mandatory sentences of LWOP for juvenile offenders, such sentencing has declined. This Article aims to empirically assess the rise and then the fall in JLWOP sentencing in a leading sentencing state, North Carolina, to better understand these trends and their implications. We examine the cases of ninety-four North Carolina juveniles, aged thirteen to seventeen at the time of their offenses, who were sentenced to JLWOP. Of those, forty-nine are currently serving LWOP sentences. In North Carolina, JLWOP sentencing has markedly declined. Since 2011, there have been only five of such sentences. Of the group of ninety-four juvenile offenders, forty-four have so far been resentenced to non-LWOP sentences—largely pursuant to the post-Miller v. Alabama legislation passed in North Carolina. These JLWOP sentences are primarily concentrated in a small group of counties. A total of 61% (fifty-seven of the ninety-four) JLWOP sentences in North Carolina were entered in one of the eleven counties that have imposed more than three JLWOP sentences. We find a path dependency to these sentences: once a county has imposed a JLWOP sentence, it has a higher probability of imposing a JLWOP sentence again in the future. In contrast, homicide rates are not predictive of JLWOP sentences. We question what goals JLWOP serves, given what an inconsistently used, uncommon, geographically limited, and costly sentence it has been in practice. In conclusion, we describe alternatives to JLWOP, including the model adopted in states such as California and Wyoming, in which there is periodic review of lengthy sentences imposed on juvenile offenders

Juvenile Life Without Parole in North Carolina

Life without parole (LWOP) is “an especially harsh punishment for a juvenile,” as the U.S. Supreme Court noted in Graham v. Florida. The United States is the only country in the world that imposes juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences. Many of these individuals were sentenced during a surge in LWOP sentencing in the 1990s. In the past decade, following several Supreme Court rulings eliminating mandatory sentences of LWOP for juvenile offenders, such sentencing has declined. This Article aims to empirically assess the rise and then the fall in JLWOP sentencing in a leading sentencing state, North Carolina, to better understand these trends and their implications. We examine the cases of ninety-four North Carolina juveniles, aged thirteen to seventeen at the time of their offenses, who were sentenced to JLWOP. Of those, forty-nine are currently serving LWOP sentences. In North Carolina, JLWOP sentencing has markedly declined. Since 2011, there have been only five of such sentences. Of the group of ninety-four juvenile offenders, forty-four have so far been resentenced to non-LWOP sentences—largely pursuant to the post-Miller v. Alabama legislation passed in North Carolina. These JLWOP sentences are primarily concentrated in a small group of counties. A total of 61% (fifty-seven of the ninety-four) JLWOP sentences in North Carolina were entered in one of the eleven counties that have imposed more than three JLWOP sentences. We find a path dependency to these sentences: once a county has imposed a JLWOP sentence, it has a higher probability of imposing a JLWOP sentence again in the future. In contrast, homicide rates are not predictive of JLWOP sentences. We question what goals JLWOP serves, given what an inconsistently used, uncommon, geographically limited, and costly sentence it has been in practice. In conclusion, we describe alternatives to JLWOP, including the model adopted in states such as California and Wyoming, in which there is periodic review of lengthy sentences imposed on juvenile offenders