As guilty pleas continue to largely define the criminal adjudication context, given judges' latitude when it comes to sentencing a deeper understanding of how mitigation efforts might vary across defendants becomes important. While prior empirical work on this question implies that "mitigation plays an important role in determining sentences," comparatively under explored is how this "role" distributes.
In a recent paper, Equality in Sentencing Mitigation, John Meixner Jr. (Georgia) brings helpful data to this question. Specifically, the paper randomly draws a weighted sample (N=302) of federal felony cases from across all federal districts between 2015 and 2018. These cases were then matched the the defense counsels' "sentencing memorandum" data from PACER as well as case-level background data from the US Sentencing Commission.
The paper's core findings include: 1) "an additional 1,000 words of mitigation about a defendant’s personal circumstances predicts an approximately 13% reduction in sentence;" and 2) as Table 5 (below) implies, the paper does "not find evidence that race or politics have a substantial impact on the effectiveness of mitigation." An excerpted abstract follows.
"... In this Article, I present new data that shed light on these questions for the first time. I do this by leveraging two unique datasets. First, by systematically examining over 350 federal sentencing memoranda and coding them for the length of arguments devoted to various categories of mitigation (such as arguments about defendants’ good character, traumatic upbringing, or history of mental or physical illness). ... The results are encouraging. For the most part, I do not find evidence that race or politics have a substantial impact on the effectiveness of mitigation. In that way, mitigation may function as a sort of rising tide that lifts all boats, aiding defendants regardless of characteristics that may result in inequality in other parts of criminal procedure."
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