Judicial and prosecutorial decision-making: Assessing the effects of race, gender, and age on federal downward sentencing departures, 2013 – 2016

ABSTRACT

Downward sentencing departures in federal courts are generally either prosecutor-initiated (government-sponsored) or judge-initiated. This study examines the direct and joint influences of defendant race, gender, and age on the likelihood of government-sponsored, and judge-initiated, departure from federal sentencing guidelines using federal criminal sentencing data spanning 2013 to 2016. Findings reveal that extralegal factors have a more consistent and larger influence over government-sponsored downward departures than judge-initiated downward departures. Young Black males are particularly disadvantaged in their propensity to receive government-sponsored sentencing departures. Findings are discussed in terms of differing incentive structures and differing focal concerns between federal judges and prosecutors.

KEYWORDS:

• Sentencing
• judicial
• prosecutorial

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. As one reviewer noted, prosecutors can still have an impact on judges’ decisions to grant judge-initiated departures due to most cases being plead out. While this is an important point to make, the data do not allow us to measure the impact of prosecutors on judge-initiated departure decisions. Future research should aim to address this data limitation and understand the influence of prosecutor plea bargaining practices on judge-initiated departures from federal sentencing guidelines.

2. The federal sentencing data is manually inputted so coding errors are likely a result of human error. Coding errors on departure variables were found in approximately 3% of cases. Models were run with and without the coding errors and the substantive results of the analysis remained the same, likely due to the large overall sample size.

3. ‘Other’ defendants controlled for in the analysis but excluded from the tables for brevity. Results for ‘Other’ race defendants are available upon request.

4. 18 to 27 years = Lowest 19.99th percentile; 28 to 32 years = 20th to 39th percentile; 33 to 39 years = 40th to 59th percentile; 40 to 48 years = 60th to 79th percentile; 49 or older = 80th or higher percentile.

5. Sentence adjustments for acceptance of responsibility were strongly correlated (r > 0.60; p < 0.001) with mode of disposition. As a result, sentence adjustments for acceptance of responsibility are excluded from the analysis.

6. Supplemental models using list-wise deletion were estimated. The substantive results remained the same. Models using listwise deletion are available upon request.

7. The following equation is used to test the significance between the difference of the coefficients by mode of departure (see Paternoster et al. 1998): $t=\frac{b_1-b_2}{\sqrt{SE{b}_1^2+SE{b}_2^2}}$.

8. According to the Interactive Source Codebook from the USSC (2014, 2015b, 2016), downward departures occurred in 49–52% of federal cases annually between 2014 and 2016. The larger percent of downward departed cases in our sample is likely a product of the exclusion of cases which could not receive downward departures (Zone A cases) or were statutorily limited in their ability to receive downward departures (Non-U.S. Citizens, Armed Career Criminals/Dangerous Sex Offenders Against Minors).

9. Before imputation, the age variable was separated into five quintiles. During the chained imputation, age was entered using the mlogit function in STATA 15.

10. Two hundred and twenty-seven cases were given a government-sponsored departure via trial. A sufficient number of cases for regression analysis (Fox 2015). To be safe, the models were run with and without mode of disposition in the model and the results of all other variables were substantively the same.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bryan Holmes

Bryan Holmes is a doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati School of Criminal Justice.  He received his Bachelors degree from the University of Central Florida and Masters degree at the University of Cincinnati, both in criminal justice.  His research interests include courtroom decision making, sentencing, and corrections.

Christopher D’Amato

Christopher D’Amato is a doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati School of Criminal Justice.  He received his Bachelors degree from the Xavier University and Masters degree at the University of Cincinnati, both in criminal justice.  His research interests include risk assessment, effective correctional policies, and race/gender disparity.