A French / US research team, who analysed the outcomes of more than 4 million court cases, found that, if you’re a defendant : Having a decision on one’s birthday reduces the sentence by 4 days out of an average total sentence length of 127 days If you’re wondering why a defendant may get more […]
Studies into possible implications of laughter episodes at the US Supreme Court were initiated in 2005 by Professor Jay D. Wexler (Boston University School of Law) who was the first to calculate the ‘Laughter Episodes Instigated Per Argument Average’ (LEIPAA) from the records of court proceedings. Details here in a 2016 Improbable Article. Then, in 2019, […]
When a judge falls asleep in the courtroom, sometimes people are alert enough to notice – and then word gets out to the public. That’s happened often enough for two doctors to decide to do something. What they did was to gather news reports about slumbering judges, write a paper about those reports, and then […]
A Pennsylvania judge allegedly used simple mathematics to decide how long a newly convicted felon would stay in prison, according to a December 29, 2009 Citizensvoice report (thanks to Ted Nimes for bringing it to our attention): Former Luzerne County Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. sentenced one former juvenile defendant to six months at a […]