A Test of Racial Bias in Capital Sentencing

By A. Alesina, Eliana La Ferrara. 2014

196 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We propose a test of bias based upon patterns of judicial errors. We model the trial court as minimizing a weighted sum of type I and II errors. We define racial bias a situation where the weight depends on defendant/victim race. If the court is unbiased, the error rate should be independent of the combination defendant/victim race. We test this prediction using an original dataset on all capital appeals in 1973-1995. We find that in the first and last stage of appeal the probability of error is 3 and 9 percentage points higher for minority defendants who killed white (vs. minority) victims.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6cef6d14e41b1f270b7b54df48b431690d4f0e21

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Alma Cohen
2. Devin G. Pope
3. Crystal S. Yang

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Alma Cohen
2. Devin G. Pope
3. Crystal S. Yang

Citations in the corpus

• Racial Disparities in Voting Wait Times: Evidence from Smartphone Data (2019, result): “As one final example, several studies have documented racial bias by judges in criminal sentencing (Alesina and Ferrara 2014; Glaeser and Sacerdote 2003; Abrams et al. 2012).”
• NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE EFFECTS OF PRE-TRIAL DETENTION ON CONVICTION, FUTURE CRIME, AND EMPLOYMENT: EVIDENCE FROM RANDOMLY ASSIGNED JUDGES (2016, unknown): “[4] Alesina, Alberto, and Eliana La Ferrara.”
• Testing for Racial Prejudice in the Parole Board Release Process: Theory and Evidence (2015, unknown): “We measure recidivism according to the two measures most commonly used in the literature: (1) a return to prison for the commission of a new crime; and (2) a return to prison either because the individual was convicted of a new crime or a technical parole violation.”
• Judicial Politics and Sentencing Decisions (2019, methodology): “Yijtc = β0 + β1 ∗Republicanij + β2 ∗Blacki + β3 ∗ Femalei + β4 ∗Republicanij ∗Blacki + β5 ∗Republicanij ∗ Femalei + Xi + γt + κc + σj + ijtc (2)”
• Racial Bias in Bail Decisions ⇤ (2018, unknown): “[5] Alesina, Alberto, and Eliana La Ferrara.”