The impact of victim-offender familial relationships on capital sentencing outcomes

• Main Author: Evans, Katharine D
• Format: Others
• Published: Scholar Commons 2005
• Subjects: Capital punishment; Victim-offender relationships; Death sentence; Murder; Aggravating circumstances; American Studies; Arts and Humanities
• Online Access: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/2871; http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3870&context=etd

This study is an investigation of whether familial relationships among offenders and their victims affect capital sentencing. Using a sample of capital cases from North Carolina restricted to familial homicides, logistic regression models are used while controlling for legal and extra-legal factors that influence decision outcomes. Such models of capital sentencing are developed to (1) determine whether familial-victim cases have unique correlates; and (2) whether there are variations in the effects of these correlates across gender. Contradictory to these hypotheses, results suggest that acquaintance and stranger relationships are less likely to receive a capital outcome when compared to familial relationships. Therefore, in North Carolina it appears that familial relationships receive capital outcomes more frequently than other types of victim-offender relationships.