Jonathan Hasson (University of Oxford – Faculty of Law, Centre for Criminology; University of Haifa – Faculty of Law) has posted Exclusion of Evidence – An Empirical Study in Trial Courts: The Defendants’ Future in Light of a Judge’s Professional Identity and Work History on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Extra-legal factors can affect not only the verdict or arrest but any judicial decision in exclusionary rule hearings. Despite the importance of interim decisions in protecting human rights, deterring state misconduct, and promoting equality, their study in the literature has been limited. We filled this gap by testing the effect of legal and extra-legal factors on four different case processing outcomes in criminal cases decided in Israeli trial courts from 2006 to 2021 (N=689 cases). Mixed-effects logistic regressions and structural equation models were applied to identify the variables affecting an outcome of exclusion of evidence, breach of rights, acquittal, and scolding of the authorities. We found that judges’ gender and occupational experience (both number of years and type of profession) directly affect case outcomes and how they write legal decisions. First, former public defenders and private criminal defense attorneys are more lenient than former prosecutors, while judges who were both were right in the middle between these groups. Second, former law clerks were more likely to determine that breaches occurred and exclude evidence than former prosecutors, though the direct effect is non-significant when certain mediator variables are introduced. Third, female judges tended to be harsher than males. A second study utilizing a dataset of 231 Israeli judicial decisions of a different evidentiary rule (exclusion of confessions) affirmed these results. Our findings are important for research on the judicial selection process considering last century’s efforts to diversify the Israeli judiciary.