DISCUSSION
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Interestingly, there were no 3-way interactions in
this analysis, which was the initial goal of this project. The 3-way for the sentence
length dependent variable, the cell mean containing a private attorney,
biological evidence found at the crime scene, and convicted with assault didn’t
have any values to compute because there were no cases in which these variables
were represented. The data set wasn’t created to measure this across other
variables, and hence, no 3-way. The second 3-way, for the case conviction
dependent variable was computed, but was not significant. There were no cases
in which a defendant had a private attorney, had biological evidence found at
the crime scene, and was charged with assault. Although biological evidence
isn’t necessary when charging someone with assault, here has to be cases like
that that exist. More data on this specific variable would help mitigate this
issue and help to find if there may be a 3-way relationship between these
variables.
The sentence length dependent
variable had no 2-way interactions that were significant; this suggests that
there are no significant relationships between any of the variables and those
cases ending in longer sentences. However, it is interesting that there were
significantly more cases ending in convictions between type of attorney and
type of crime, as the only significant 2-way. More often than not, homicide
cases ended in convictions than assault cases. Even more interesting was that
there was a larger effect for private defenders than public defenders.
If the evidence from this study
is still generalizable to today, as this data is dated by at least a decade,
this would suggest that defendants should be advised to stick with a public
defender whether they can afford a private attorney or not. This
is also contrary to the evidence given by Scheck et al. (2003) and Bright
(2002), suggesting that public attorneys may not be the best way to go, since
they aren’t able to give their full attention to each case they are assigned.
This would also be a cause of
alarm for private defenders and if they are performing their job as they should
be, or they’re settling on deals for their clients rather than use the justice
system as it’s meant to be used. One
such case, The State versus Adnan Syed, is not in the jurisdictions mentioned
in the ‘Methods’ section, but is ongoing in Baltimore, Maryland, where the
defense attorney hired by Mr. Syed, who is now deceased as of now and will
remained unnamed, was found incompetent during the course of the trial in early
2000. If this is found not only as proof in Maryland, but as evidence also in Los
Angeles County, California; Indianapolis, Indiana; Evansville, Indiana; Fort
Wayne, Indiana; and South Bend, Indiana, there should be a major call for
criminal justice reform.
Lastly,
in looking at the main effects, the only main effect that was significant
across both independent case outcome variables was biological evidence. In
looking back to Garrett (2011), it can be seen that maybe forensic evidence has
a huge part in judge and jury decision-making, but this analysis may help
suggest that there is a relationship between biological evidence found at crime
scenes and case convictions as well as longer sentences. Unlike Baskin &
Sommers (2010), where DNA evidence, nor all types of forensic evidence, did not
play a predictive role in determining case outcomes, this analysis shows that
biological evidence did play a significant role in case outcomes. To
definitively say this though, further data and analysis are required.
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