Week 7: the sequel we’ve all been waiting for

Welcome back to my senior project! I’m excited to say that this week was very fruitful. It was also quite slow however, in that not many surprises happened. The wheels turned and I got work done. I spent the majority of the week finalizing the second section of my paper. This section, as I have discussed before in previous entries, is a list of 10 example cases picked at random to create a percentage chart of they’re outcomes. The specifics in these cases won’t be listed but information like charges faced by the defendant and outcome will be made clear in that they are allowed to be shared. Each of these cases I’ve been given information and learned more about throughout this week as my advisor, Mrs. Germana Giordanno, has worked in length with all of them. She provided me with tips and improvements on how I should structure the cases in my list. One of the biggest changes she suggested was to organize the cases based on severity of punishment following the result. She suggested this as another look into the statistics of cases in the NY area. Organizing cases this way will be able to highlight the disparity between what a defendant is facing versus what they receive at the end of the day following sentencing. Lastly, a big piece of information provided to me by my on-site advisor was that while a majority of cases are resolved through a plea deal in order to have a more lenient sentencing, the firm at which my on-site is taking place has a substantial percentage of cases that get dismissed by the judge and prosecution before going to both trial and plea negotiations. This update on the situation might skew the results of my example cases if I come up with a large amount of dismissed cases. It may look like a lot of people are just getting off scot free without sufficient evidence but the reality remains that only about 5% of total cases in the US are dismissed at all. Regardless, my hypothesis that 9/10 cases are resolved through plea bargains remains the same just through the overwhelming data gathered before me. Overtime, if my gut feeling about dismissed cases grows then I will revise my hypothesis based on the firm’s specific numbers over the years.

Overall, this week has been very successful in that I finished a big portion of my paper and I eagerly look forward to working on my next sections. Come by next week for more updates!