1. Sentencing, Appeals, and
Chapter 9
Sentencing, Appeals, and
the Death Penalty

2. Crime in the United States
If a criminal defendant pleads guilty or is found guilty by a judge or jury, then the judge (or sometimes a jury) must impose a sentence.

3. Sentencing Judges are limited by statutory provisions and guided by:
prevailing philosophical rationales
organizational considerations
presentence investigation reports
their own personal characteristics

4. Statutory Provisions
State and federal legislative bodies enact penal codes that specify appropriate punishments for each statutory offense, or class of offense. Five types of punishments are used in the U.S.:
Fines
Probation
continued…

5. Statutory Provisions
Intermediate punishments (more restrictive than probation but less restrictive and costly than imprisonment)
Imprisonment
Death

6. Statutory Provisions
Judges in states that have indeterminate sentencing statutes generally have more discretion in sentencing than do judges in states with determinate sentencing laws.

7. indeterminate sentencing determinate sentencing
A sentence with a fixed minimum and maximum term of incarceration, rather than a set period.
determinate sentencing
A sentence with a fixed period of incarceration, which eliminates the decision-making responsibility of parole boards.

8. Statutory Provisions There are three types of determinate sentences:
flat-time
mandatory
presumptive

9. Statutory Provisions
Flat-time sentencing does not include options for parole and good time.
Rarely used today

10. flat-time sentencing
Sentencing in which judges may choose between probation and imprisonment but have little discretion in setting the length of a prison sentence. Once an offender is imprisoned, there is no possibility of reduction in the length of the sentence.

11. Statutory Provisions
Mandatory sentencing usually allows credit for good time, but does not allow release on parole.
mandatory sentencing
Sentencing in which a specified number of years of imprisonment (usually within a range) is provided for particular crimes.

12. Statutory Provisions
Presumptive sentencing is a compromise between legislatively mandated determinate and indeterminate sentences.

13. presumptive sentencing
Sentencing that allows a judge to retain some sentencing discretion, subject to appellate review. The legislature determines a sentence range for each crime. The judge is expected to impose the typical sentence, specified by statute, unless mitigating or aggravating circumstances justify a sentence below or above the range set by the legislature.

14. Statutory Provisions
In today’s “law and order” climate, state legislatures are increasingly replacing indeterminate sentences with determinate ones.

15. Philosophical Rationales
Historically, four major rationales have been given for the punishment imposed by the criminal courts:
Retribution
Incapacitation
Deterrence
Rehabilitation

16. Retribution
Although it has probably always played some role in sentencing decisions, retribution is now increasingly popular with the public as a rationale for punishment.

17. Incapacitation
Incapacitation makes it virtually impossible for offenders to commit crimes during the period of restraint.
Incapacitation was done historically through exile or banishment.
Today, incapacitation is done through imprisonment.

18. Deterrence There are two forms of deterrence:
Special or specific deterrence
General deterrence

19. special or specific deterrence
The prevention of individuals from committing crimes again by punishing them.
general deterrence
The prevention of people in general from engaging in crime by punishing specific individuals and making examples of them.

20. Rehabilitation
For much of the 20th Century, the primary rationale for punishing criminal offenders was rehabilitation.
Unfortunately, because the causes of crime are not fully understood, we don’t know how to completely correct or cure criminal offenders.

21. Presentence Investigation Reports (PSI)
Generally, a presentence investigation report is prepared by a probation officer, who conducts as thorough a background check as possible on a defendant. Sometimes a PSI includes sentencing recommendations.

22. presentence investigation report
Reports, often called PSIs or PSIRs, that are used in the federal system and the majority of states to help judges determine the appropriate sentence. They are also used in classifying probationers, parolees, and prisoners according to their treatment needs and security risk.

23. Appeals
Defendants can appeal their convictions on legal or constitutional grounds.
Because the defendant has already been found guilty, the presumption of innocence no longer applies during the appellate process, and the burden of showing why the conviction should be overturned shifts to the defendant.

24. Appeals
Generally, an offender must file a notice of intent to appeal within 30 to 90 days after conviction.
Also, the defendant must file an affidavit of errors specifying the alleged defects in the trial or pretrial proceedings.
Appeals are rarely successful.

25. Death Penalty - Enter the Supreme Court
Before 1968, the only issues the Supreme Court considered in relation to capital punishment concerned the means of administering the death penalty.

26. Enter the Supreme Court
Currently there are five methods of execution by statute:
Lethal injection
Electrocution
Lethal gas
Hanging
Firing squad

27. Enter the Supreme Court
Between 1968 and 1972, an informal moratorium on execution was observed as a series of lawsuits challenged the constitutionality of capital punishment.
The court set aside death sentences in 1972 for the first time ever.

28. Enter the Supreme Court
In the Furman v. Georgia decision, the court held that the way the death penalty was administered was unconstitutional, but not capital punishment itself. – Arbitrary nature
The decision voided the death penalty laws of some 35 states, and the death sentences of more than 600 men and women were commuted to imprisonment.

29. Enter the Supreme Court
By 1974, 30 states had enacted new death penalty statutes designed to meet the court’s objections. They came in two forms:
Mandatory statutes that mandated capital punishment for certain crimes.
Guided-discretion statues that provided specific guidelines for judges and juries.

30. Enter the Supreme Court
Mandatory statutes were rejected in 1976.
In the Gregg decision, the court upheld the constitutionality of guided-discretion statutes.

31. The Procedural Reforms Approved in Gregg
In Gregg, the court assumed, without any evidence, that the new guided-discretion statutes would eliminate the arbitrariness and discrimination that the court found objectionable in its Furman decision. The court was particularly optimistic about procedural reforms:
Bifurcated trials
Guidelines for judges and juries
Automatic appellate review

32. Enter the Supreme Court
As of April 1, 2003, 40 jurisdictions have capital punishment statutes.

33. Enter the Supreme Court
In decisions since Gregg, the Supreme Court has limited the crimes for which death is considered appropriate and has further refined death penalty jurisprudence.
The court has generally limited the death penalty to those offenders convicted of aggravated murder. Federal law allows more
continued…

34. Enter the Supreme Court
The court barred states from executing inmates who have developed mental illness while on death row.
The court recently barred states from executing inmates who are mentally retarded.
continued…

35. Enter the Supreme Court
Capital punishment is limited to offenders who are 18 or older at the time of the crime.
Death penalty statutes are constitutional even when statistics indicate that they have been applied in racially biased ways.

36. Appellate Review
About one-third of the initial convictions or sentences in capital cases are overturned on appeal, as a result of:
Denial of the right to an impartial jury
Problems of tainted evidence and coerced confessions
continued…

37. Appellate Review Ineffective assistance of counsel
Prosecutors’ references to defendants who refuse to testify

38. Prospects for the Future
Among Western, industrialized nations, the United States is the only nation to employ capital punishment.
Even where capital punishment is employed in the U.S., most jurisdictions use it rarely.
On average, about 60 executions per year