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Judges vs. juries
Over at Volokh Conspiracy there is an interesting debate (I link to the page in general since there are several postings) over a survey, quite large, of federal criminal cases that concludes judges are MUCH more likely to acquit than juries. It also concludes that this gap arose after 1989 -- before then, there was little difference.
The difference appears to span all types of cases -- misdemeanors as well as felonies, defendants represented by PDs and those represented by private counsel, etc.. There is a debate as to why, and the one explanation that seems to hold water is that the stiff sentencing guidelines (which are/were indeed VERY stiff) make judges more willing to hold the prosecution to a strict standard of proof. I'd say this is an argument for a fully informed jury (i.e., where the jury knows the likely punishment). Judges who are "in the know" hold to a stricter standard of proof than juries who are kept in the dark. There is also a risk of self-selection: you only go to a judge on a case with a clear legal defense -- but why would this only arise after 1989?
They note that defendants routinely go for jury trial anyway, and when they ask for a bench trial prosecutors don't use their veto power.
Comments
Half of them are traffic cases. Traffic cases go before judges instead of juries. Judges and juries both tend to withhold adjudication or acquit on traffic cases.
Posted by: beerslurpy at July 1, 2006 01:44 AM
Withholding adjudication might be a Florida traffic court thing, so I probably misspoke.
But the general idea I got from that paper was that the statistic could mostly be accounted for by traffic infractions. Exclude traffic infractions and the difference is much less impressive.
Posted by: beerslurpy at July 1, 2006 01:47 AM