SO IS IT LEGAL TO BRING SNACKS FOR CRIMINAL COURT JUDGES?
Horrifyingly enough Discover magazine reports that a well-fed judge may dole out leniency for criminal defendants more often than a hungry jurist.
Israeli researcher Shai Danziger at Ben Gurion University of the Negev did a 10-month study that looked at more than 1100 applications for parole and found that the judges studied were more likely to grant parole at the start of the day, and after breaks for a morning snack and then again after lunch.
The ABA Journal reports:
The odds of a prisoner winning parole started off at 65 percent, then plummeted over a few hours, and returned to 65 percent after the breaks, before plummeting again, the magazine reports. The decisions weren’t entirely arbitrary, however. Prisoners deemed likely to commit another crime, or who weren’t part of a rehabilitation program, were still less likely to win parole.
Discovery Magazine writes that researcher Danziger felt he could easily explain the judges’ actions:
All repetitive decision-making tasks drain our mental resources. We start suffering from “choice overload” and we start opting for the easiest choice. For example, shoppers who have already made several decisions are more likely to go for the default offer, whether they’re buying a suit or a car. And when it comes to parole hearings, the default choice is to deny the prisoner’s request. The more decisions a judge has made, the more drained they are, and the more likely they are to make the default choice. Taking a break replenishes them.
There are several other ways of explaining this striking pattern but Danziger ruled all of them out. It wasn’t the case that a few individuals skewed the data, for the pattern was consistent across all the judges. The results weren’t due to discrimination, for the judges treated the prisoners equally regardless of their gender, ethnicity or the severity of their crime.
And if you’re facing a criminal case, get your defense attorney to slip the bailiff some chips and jelly beans for the judge.