Study Guide 5 -- 

 Study Guide Quiz 6   -- Sentencing part 2 -- CRJU 3311 Fall 2023

Four entities that have power over the sentencing process:

Legislator:

Judges:

Governor:

Prosecutor:

The Martinsen report -- 1974 and the legislators  - Ideological Shift

The 1980’s Federal legislative reform movement truth in sentencing -- Sentencing Shift --

Federal legislation shaped state’s legislative sanctions

The transition from indeterminate sentencing to determinate sentencing “habitual offender laws”

Judicial discretion

       1) Harm to victim

2) availability of sentence alternatives,

3) The offender’s criminal intent / remorse

Rehabilitation model (1950-1974) was challenged

Conservative response:

Racial discrimination in sentencing  

The prosecutor’s decision to go to trial or bargain away --  legal factors   

a) if the case is strong enough on the most serious charge

b) info on other offenders

c) They desire to lighten their case-loads

d) by prison overcrowding.

Extra-legal factors in the prosecutor’s decision to go to trial or bargain away -- 

a)  The public’s perception of harm to victim

b) ethnicity of offender

c)  ethnicity of victim.