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The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of sexual objectification on the attribution processes of the guilt of a defendant – and also on the level of guilt. It was also hypothesized that legal expertise could be a protective factor in countering the influence of sexual objectification.

Sexual objectification can be defined as the perspective in which a person is evaluated solely in terms of his or her body parts or sexual function. As yet, no studies have assessed the influence of sexual objectification on guilt assessment in the legal system; this paper aims to explore whether sexual objectification has an influence on the attribution processes of a defendant's guilt.

The statistical analysis revealed that the sexually objectified defendant received a guilty verdict more often than a non-sexually objectified defendant; additionally, legal experts were more likely to identify the defendant as not guilty than non-legal experts. The findings support the hypothesis that sexual objectification is indeed one of the common stereotypes that lead to discrimination.

The present study provides novel findings regarding sexual objectification in the forensic context in which the defendant is viewed and evaluated.

A sample of capital trials in North Carolina was analyzed to determine the impact on death sentencing of introducing mitigators related to diminished capacity on behalf of defendants. The results show that mitigators of this type were frequently submitted to the jury for consideration, and if accepted, the chances of a defendant being sentenced to death were diminished. However, when these mitigators were submitted but not accepted, the defendant's likelihood of receiving a death sentence was substantially escalated. These findings suggest a need for attorneys to carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of presenting diminished capacity mitigators in capital trials, and if choosing to do so, the absolute necessity of convincing the jury of their validity.

This paper aims to examine sentencing decisions for drug-trafficking offences in the criminal courts of the city of Recife to address a gap in quantitative research on drug sentencing and incarceration in Brazil.

Using original data obtained from the Court of Justice for Pernambuco, the research used multivariate regression analysis to investigate the effect of case processing, offender, and offence characteristics on sentence length.

A key finding of the research is the influence of two legal factors on sentence length: admitting to a drug-trafficking offence and being categorized as “mitigated trafficking”. Results also indicate that first-time defendants were more likely to be categorized as mitigated trafficking, stressing the importance of criminal history on predicting sentencing outcomes. “Mitigated trafficking” is a distinct category of drug-trafficking created by the Drug Law nº. 11.343 (2006) to protect defendants considered novices in the illicit drug market from receiving longer imprisonment sentences.

The findings suggest that the policy strategy of having a legal distinction for a specific type of defendant appears to be effective in impacting sentence length for drug-trafficking convictions. Future research could explore how similar strategies could be adopted to influence sentencing for other vulnerable groups. However, focussing on a defendant records or prior convictions as an eligibility criterion could disproportionately impact defendants who are caught in a cycle of re-offending for socio-economic reasons or a need to finance a substance use disorder.

This research address a gap in quantitative sentencing research in Brazil and contributes to the broader literature by presenting results that are aligned with previous studies conducted in North America.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of class action litigation on firms' cost of equity capital.

The paper uses three different models to estimate the cost of equity capital. To separate the impact of lawsuit filings on the cost of equity capital from that of the revelation event, a sample of lawsuits with a long lag between the disclosure events and filing dates was analyzed. Also, a comparison group study was conducted to illustrate the distinct impact of a lawsuit filing on the defendant firm's cost of equity capital. Finally, a multivariate analysis was used to examine the factors that affect the magnitude of such impact.

The paper finds that filing of a class action lawsuit results in a significant increase in the defendant firm's cost of equity capital incremental to the effect of the disclosure event. Additionally, increases in the cost of equity capital after the lawsuit filings are higher when the lawsuits involve generally accepted accounting principle (GAAP) violation and have high merit, and when the defendant firms are small and have high leverage.

Findings in this paper suggest that the filing of a lawsuit brings new information to the market and is likely to increase the defendant firm's cost of equity capital by increasing the perceived risk in corporate governance, information asymmetry and operation.

This paper reveals securities class actions increase the defendant firms' cost of equity capital.

The ways in which battered women respond to domestic violence, and the ways the legal system constructs those responses, constitute the framework of this chapter. The analysis focuses on mitigation in sentences of battered women who killed their abusers and examines the manifestation of agency and victimization in the mitigation structure. My thesis is that these women are perceived by courts solely as victims who lack agency and autonomy. Three main themes emerge from the analysis: first, the courts focus on the mental state of the defendants, stressing their psychological deficiencies as the primary mitigating factors. Secondly, many cases are categorized by courts as unique cases. Thirdly, in several cases the courts portray the women as “victims of circumstances”. An alternative analysis to that offered by the courts, one that seeks to reframe the mitigation process, is introduced in this chapter. According to this analysis, the narrative used in cases of battered women who kill should be changed to reflect dimensions of agency and resistance. In the suggested discourse, the abuse these women suffer is acknowledged, but is used to explain the women's urge to self-preservation and thus, the rationality and reasonableness of their acts.

Who is ultimately responsible for the harms that befall us? Corporations who make dangerous products, or the consumers who use them? The answer to this question has a profound impact on how personal injury lawyers screen products liability cases. In this chapter, I analyze results from an experimental vignette study in which 83 lawyers were asked to evaluate a hypothetical products liability case. Half of the lawyers practice in states considered to be difficult jurisdictions for the practice of personal injury law due to tort reform and conservative political climates (Texas and Colorado), while the other half work in states that have been relatively unaffected by tort reform and are considered to be more “plaintiff friendly” (Pennsylvania and Massachusetts). While lawyers in reform states and non-reform states were equally likely to accept the hypothetical case with which they were presented, they approached the case in different ways, used different theories, and made different arguments in order to justify their acceptance of the case. Lawyers in states with tort reform were most likely to accept the case when they focused on the issue of corporate social responsibility – that is, what the defendant did wrong, how they violated the rules, and how they could have prevented the injury in question. Lawyers in non-reform states, however, were most likely to accept the case when they believed that jurors would feel sorry for the injured child and not find their client at fault for the injury.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of gender in intimate partner violence (IPV) and, based upon the author’s experience as an expert witness, 25 years of clinical experience working with IPV perpetrators and victims, and a review of the relevant scholarly literature, provide judges, attorneys, mental health professionals and expert court witness suggestions for the adjudication of cases involving IPV in homicide and other cases.

The author reviewed the extant general domestic violence research literature, depending largely on results from findings from the Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project, a series of 17 literature review published in five issues of the peer-reviewed journal, Partner Ause. Other relevant research articles were found via a search of the PschInfo database, using the keywords “intimate partner homicides,” “domestic violence homicides,” “intimate partner homicides and gender” and “domestic violence homicides and gender.”

The judicial response to IPV perpetration has been limited by common misconceptions, among them the confusion between most forms of IPV, which are primarily bi-directional and less consequential and battering, which involves more serious assaults and is typically motivated out of a desire to dominate and control one’s partner. Another misconception is that women are much more likely than men to perpetrate IPV in self-defense or to express emotion. On the other hand, there is no question that female victims are much more likely to experience severe physical injuries, and that women account for approximately three-quarters of homicide victims.

These include the following: this concise review of IPV research provides a clearer understanding of IPV, useful for anyone working in the field. Mental health professionals working with IPV perpetrators, as well as victims, can draw from this research best practice suggestions in working with more problematic cases. The paper should be especially useful to anyone involved in the adjudication of IPV cases, including lethal cases. In particular, prosecutors and attorneys working for the defense are given suggestions on how to obtain more reliable research data, choose more fruitful questions for their clients, and better conceptualize a case overall.

This paper presents a more nuanced and evidence-based conceptualization of serious and lethal IPV, drawing on a broad research base not generally available to members of the legal profession.

Is the death penalty dying? This autobiographical essay offers observations on the application of capital punishment in three very different legal jurisdictions at three different time periods when – partially by happenstance and partially by design – she was a homicide researcher, a participant and an observer of profound changes in the jurisdiction's application of the death penalty.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it proposes a basic organizing framework for when a plaintiff’s race, ethnicity, or sex may impact civil jury awards. The framework takes into account psychological and structural sources of bias and the ways in which they may interact when jurors have more or less discretion. Second, the paper employs a methodological innovation to overcome one of the primary barriers to empirical field research on bias in civil legal decisions: the absence of plaintiff demographic information.

The data set is comprised of jury verdicts in tort cases combined with information from the US Census Bureau regarding race and ethnicity. Statistical tests measure the relationships between race, ethnicity, sex, and awards for economic damages and pain and suffering.

Overall, the results were consistent with the psycho-structural framework. Where jurors had discretion (i.e. pain and suffering damages), they awarded less to black plaintiffs than to white plaintiffs, indicating potential psychological bias. Where jurors had little discretion (i.e. lost income) they awarded less to female plaintiffs and more to Asian plaintiffs than to male and white plaintiffs, respectively, a potential reflection of structural income disparities. Thus, the framework and method have promise for exploring relationships between structural and psychological bias and differential civil jury awards.

Because demographic information is not easily available, there is very little research on race and gender bias in civil cases. This study introduces and provides a conceptual test of a novel framework for when bias is most likely to impact damage awards in these cases and tests it using advances in social demography that can help researchers overcome this barrier.