Growing Use of Sentencing Differentials in Resentencings
Much attention has been focused in recent years on sentencing differentials in the plea bargaining context. The term sentencing differential captures the difference in sentence received by defendants who proceed to trial versus the sentence of codefendants or similarly situated defendants who plead guilty. For example, a Vera Institute Report from 2020 entitled In the Shadows noted that the odds of incarceration were 2.7 times greater for those who went to trial and the sentences in their review were 57 percent longer. See Ram Subramanain et al, Vera Inst. of Just., In the Shadows: A Review of the Research on Plea Bargaining (Sept. 2020). Many have argued that this represents a punishment for exercising one's Constitutional right to trial by jury, leading some to call this phenomenon the "Trial Penalty." Academics have been focusing a light on this phenomenon for some time and there are now several cases indicating that the judiciary is listenin...