Research Paper on:
Death Penalty Cases and Sentencing

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
the jury and judge, hold their collective breaths and wait to see what length of term and sentence will be handed down to the defendant in a criminal court case,  especially those where capital punishment is a possibility. Once the sentencing phase has commenced and the jury has rendered their verdict, per the judges ruling, sentencing calculations follow. What  these consist of, in a nutshell, are the calculations of time served by the individual. There are scads of software that do these calculations, taking into account each states primary  codes and by laws in regard to the offense and the mandates of each county in which the offense occurred. In other words, in some states, there is a mandatory  life sentence for drug trafficking, while those convicted of more violent crimes are actually eligible for parole. These software programs take into account each states mandates. The downside, of course,  is that one would think that these software packages would have to be renewed often since the laws in regard to these offenses are constantly being amended or changed completely,  including length of term served, and mandatory requirements. These sentencing calculations, as one can see, do not seem to be standardized from one state to the next. There have been  proposals to standardize this and other sentencing issues so as to increases in criminal activity in certain areas of the country where sentencing laws and prosecution rates are lower for  certain crimes. For example, prior to October 1, 1983, courts in Florida sentenced in accordance with the provisions of law that granted a very wide latitude in the sentencing decision(US  VS Pierre, 2002). Sanctions ranged from a fine, up to state prison incarceration. As it stands now, the trial process in the case of capital punishment sentences is sorely in