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Journal Article #1: Lehmann, P. S., Chiricos, T., & Bales, W. B. (2017). Juveniles on trial: Mode of conviction and the adult courts sentencing of transferred juveniles. Crime & Delinquency. doi:10.1177/0011128717714203.

Abstract: Several studies have compared the criminal court sentences given to transferred juveniles with those given to adults, but this research has reported inconsistent findings. In addition, some research has found that mode of conviction can interact with offenders’ characteristics, resulting in stronger or weaker effects of these factors among defendants convicted at trials. The current study explores the direct effects of juvenile status on sentence severity and whether these effects are conditioned by mode of conviction. Examination of data from Florida circuit courts (N = 1,107,233) shows that transferred juveniles are less likely to be incarcerated than adults but are given longer incarceration sentences. Interaction analyses reveal that these disparities are weaker among trial cases than among plea cases.

Journal Article #2: Burns, R. P. (2017). Jury nullification and the constituent power of the people. Law, Culture, and the Humanities. doi:10.1177/1743872117716132.

Abstract: Nullification constitutes a small, though important, part of what makes jury trial decision-making distinctive. The increasing bureaucratization of American criminal law means that what was thought to be the exercise of ordinary jury judgment has been transformed into nullification. Understandings that locate “We the People’s” constituent power in sovereign will tend sharply to distinguish the extraordinary moment of constitution creation from the business of ordinary legality. Consequently, those understandings have difficulty imagining a nullifying jury’s doing anything other than defying the will of the people. Hannah Arendt provides an understanding of the founding of the Constitution in the prerevolutionary political practices of the colonists that offers an understanding of jury nullification as more continuous with those practices and more continuous with ordinary jury decision-making.