Prior court research has focused primarily on the judge's sentencing behavior and to a lesser degree the prosecutor's charging decision. None of these studies have taken into account relationships between multiple case decisions. This analysis is a comparison of three criminal court decisions made by the prosecutor, judge, and defense attorney. Using 1986 felony court data from three Florida Counties, OLS regression, corrected for sample selection bias, is employed to determine the effects of case and offender attributes on the arraignment charge severity, the conviction charge severity, and the penalty severity decisions. A typology describes the context of environmental influences which could affect decision-making within counties, classified as large, medium, and small felony caseload counties. / Decisions were compared across counties and within counties with the expectation that decision-making factors would be different across counties for the same decision because of the contextual differences of each county. Within counties the factors should be similar for each decision because of the cooperative nature of the courtroom workgroup. / Differences across counties revealed a concern for the crime rate and court processing characteristics such as whether bond was made. The small caseload county decisions were based on seriousness of the crime, but the actual decision-making appeared to be somewhat haphazard. Within counties, each decision was characterized by a few similar factors, but the nature of each decision was responsible for differences across the three judgments. The utility of the typology is discussed and suggestions for future research to develop the typology are made. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-09, Section: A, page: 3231. / Major Professor: Marc G. Gertz. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78305 |
| Contributors | Myers, Laura Brummett., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 163 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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