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- A defendant’s failure to show remorse is one of the most powerful factors in criminal sentencing, including capital sentencing. Yet there is currently no evidence that remorse can be accurately evaluated in a courtroom. Conversely there is evidence that race and other impermissible factors create hurdles to evaluating remorse.
www.researchgate.net/publication/283661089_Remorse_and_Criminal_Justice
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Mar 1, 2014 · The role of remorse in judicial decisions in the criminal justice system has been addressed in scholarship and remains controversial. The purpose of this qualitative research was to examine the views of sitting criminal judges on remorse, its assessment, and its relevance in their decision-making.
- Commentary
Simopoulos and Khin 1 have made a valuable contribution to...
- RIS
The purpose of this qualitative research was to examine the...
- Zotero
The purpose of this qualitative research was to examine the...
- Commentary
Remorse matters insofar as criminal justice takes an interest in the attitudes that defendants and convicted offenders have toward those whom the criminal justice system is—at least on the face of it—designed to protect and serve.
- Rocksheng Zhong
- ABSTRACT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- RESULTS
- Legal relevance
- Time and place for remorse
- Expressions of remorse: “More an art than a science”
- Remorse and mental illness
- DISCUSSION
- Discounting procedural constraints on the expression of remorse
- Oversimplified views of mental illness and its effects on remorse
- Implications for forensic psychiatry
- LIMITATIONS
- FUTURE RESEARCH
- CONCLUSION
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SO YOU’RE SORRY? THE ROLE OF REMORSE IN CRIMINAL LAW. Rocksheng Zhong, Madelon Baranoski, Neal Feigenson, Larry Davidson, Alec Buchanan, and Howard V. Zonana. Law and Psychiatry Division, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. The role of remorse in judicial decisions in the criminal justice system has been ad...
I would like to thank my thesis supervisors, Madelon Baranoski and Howard Zonana, who have been gracious and impeccable mentors. Your openness, commitment, and academic acumen will inspire me throughout my career. Thank you for the early mornings, the late nights, the hurried phone calls, and the endless stream of emails. I would also like to thank...
Remorse can in some ways be likened to pornography: oftentimes, people do not know exactly what it is, but they know it when they see it. This intuitive approach is usually adequate in everyday life when stakes are low and rigor is unnecessary. When little Timmy says, “I’m sorry,” after knocking over the cookie jar, we generally need not explore th...
Judges generally concurred with the proposed definition of remorse, with some revisions and expansions: remorse is a “blending of emotions and belief or reason” or a “fundamental regret for self-accusatory consciousness of guilt”; remorse includes “an appreciation of the impact on the victim”; remorse can exist towards others beyond the victim (e.g...
Judges disagreed about whether remorse was legally relevant in criminal justice, and responses ranged across the full continuum. As described later in this thesis, judges viewed remorse within the legal sequence of events as primarily relevant to the times of arraignment and sentencing. Those who viewed remorse as central to the criminal process st...
Differences in the settings over which judges presided may have contributed to the variation in judicial experiences with remorse. For example, judges interviewed at a time when they were presiding over trials generally stated that they almost never encounter remorse and that defendants who contest their charges are not likely to be remorseful: “Wh...
Judges varied in their level of confidence in assessing remorse, ranging from a high degree of confidence to no confidence that genuine remorse can be distinguished from feigned remorse. Those confident in their ability often cited their experience: “I do not find it difficult to judge remorse. I get people.” “After 40 years of dealing with people,...
Although one judge professed to have “not the slightest idea” about the nature of the relationship between mental illness and remorse, most believed that the presence of mental illness essentially altered the consideration and relevance of remorse: “When you get into mental illness, it is a whole different ballgame.” “Your ability to be able to put...
The key finding in this study was that judges did not express uniform views about the nature of remorse, its assessment, or its relevance to the judicial process. They also disagreed about the effect of mental illness on remorse and whether psychiatrists could offer any insight about remorse in people afflicted with psychiatric disorders. These num...
While it may be unsurprising from a psychological perspective that judges intuitively rely on remorse in decision-making, my findings further showed that this reliance can be legally problematic. Despite judges’ relative lucidity concerning their preference for the good behavior and good character they believed was reflected by remorse, surprisingl...
Against this backdrop of legal challenges and practical difficulties, judges struggled to describe the effect of mental illness on judgments of remorse. Judges seemed to view the presence of mental illness as requiring an alteration of their usual assessments. They were willing to make allowances for mental illness, but their responses suggest a ca...
Currently, unless specifically requested, an assessment of remorse is not regularly included in most forensic psychiatric reports. However, my results suggest that remorse ought to be addressed more often. Despite the significance many judges place on remorse, judicial clarity and consistency remain lacking. Moreover, the courts’ conceptions of men...
The present research implemented a qualitative interview method that relied on snowball sampling. Several methodological limitations were inherent in the study. First, the interviews were all conducted by one researcher and thus heavily dependent on his interviewing skills and style. Furthermore, interviews, by their nature, rely on reflective self...
The present research was a qualitative study designed to examine the range of criminal judges’ views about remorse. I was able to identify a host of behaviors that judges deemed important in their assessments. One next step might be to create quantitative survey instruments and systematically investigate the degree of agreement between judges. Such...
Judging people based on their actions, reactions, and emotions is a basic part of human nature. Remorse is a universal emotion that people tend to believe provides information about a person’s character and likely future actions. Thus, it seems commonsensical that judges should assess criminal offenders’ remorse or lack of it in sentencing and othe...
- Rocksheng Zhong, Madelon Baranoski, Neal Feigenson, Larry Davidson, Alec Buchanan, Howard V Zonana
- 2014
But once an action is designated potentially criminal and an investigation begins, there are at least six places in which remorse can play a role in criminal justice. First of all, there is the relevance of a capacity of remorseto determinations of whether a person is criminally responsible.
Oct 23, 2015 · Abstract. A defendant’s failure to show remorse is one of the most powerful factors in criminal sentencing, including capital sentencing. Yet there is currently no evidence that remorse can be accurately evaluated in a courtroom.
- Susan A. Bandes
- 2016
A defendant’s failure to show remorse is one of the most powerful factors in criminal sentencing, including capital sentencing. Yet there is currently no evidence that remorse can be accurately evaluated in a courtroom.
Jul 22, 2021 · They contend that, in order to respect remorseful offenders, sentencing judges must reduce their sentences. Why they should do so, by how much they should do so, and whether they should do so when the individuals being sentenced are recidivists, are among the questions discussed.
