Question

What components make up the sentencing process? Which components fall within the judge's discretion versus what a jury must decide?

Answer 1

Once a defendant is convicted guilty, the judge awards appropriate sentence. For minor offences, the sentence is awarded immediately but for more serious crimes, the judge receives views of prosecutor, the defense and the probation department.

The elements that go into sentencing are the circumstances under which the crime was committed, the background of the criminal ( history of crime), the mental state of offender when the crime was committed, the extent of cruelty towards the victim on the part of the criminal and the feeling of guilt in the criminal after crime.

There are several occasions where judges have sentenceing alternatives for an offence, the choice being on their discretion. The options include a prison term, fines, community service, deferred adjudication, probation etc.

However, there are cases where jury is bound to give mandatory sentence according to the state and federal laws. These laws bind the judges to impose same sentences for same kind of offence. The most prominent of such laws is the three strikes law where a criminal is imposed with life term when convicted of a serious violent felony and has two or more convictions before this incident, one of them being an incident of serious violnt felony.