The trial tax and the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender, and age in criminal court sentencing.

Abstract

Objective: Prior research consistently demonstrates that defendants convicted at trial are sentenced more harshly than those who plead guilty. Additionally, a vast literature has shown that Black and Hispanic defendants, and especially young minority males, are particularly disadvantaged in sentencing, though these effects may be conditional on various legal and case-processing factors. However, it remains unclear how the mode of conviction might moderate these inequalities according to offenders' combined race/ethnicity, gender, and age. Hypotheses: I expected that mode of conviction would moderate the joint effects of race/ ethnicity, gender, and age on the imposition of a sentence to prison and on sentence length such that young minority males convicted at trial would receive more severe punishments than members of other subgroups. Method: The analyses made use of data on defendants sentenced for noncapital felony crimes in Florida circuit courts over a 12-year period (N = 1,076,500). Hurdle regression models and marginal effects analysis were used. Results: Greater sentencing disparities in absolute as well as relative terms between young minority males and other race/ethnicity, gender, and age subgroups were found among trial cases than among plea cases. Further, Black and Hispanic males were subjected to trial taxes that were substantially larger than those of other subgroups. Conclusions: These findings suggest that defendants who plead guilty are generally sentenced according to predictable and standardized "going rates" of punishment, whereas the enhanced discretion afforded judges in trial cases as well as racialized "bad facts" about defendants that emerge at trial may drive inequalities in punishment. Thus, extralegal sentencing disparities tied to mode of conviction are an area in which criminal justice reform efforts might be directed. Public Significance StatementThis study examined whether differentially applied trial taxes are a mechanism through which young Black and Hispanic males are sentenced more harshly than members of other race/ethnicity, gender, and age subgroups. The findings revealed that these disparities are more pronounced in the disposition of trial cases than plea cases, which may suggest that trials provide judges with liberated discretion and enhanced access to negative information about offenders, which, in turn, can aggravate extralegal inequalities in sentencing.

Racial justice in psycholegal research and forensic psychology practice: Current advances and a framework for future progress.

“…Articles by Lehmann (2023) and Saunders and Midgette (2023) examine how race interacts with legal structures to create disparities in punishment. Lehmann investigates how the so-called trial tax, in which defendants receive harsher punishment when they are convicted at trial rather than via plea agreements.…”