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72 Drake L. Rev. 37 (2025)
The Sentencing Advantage of Female Defendants in Homicide Cases

handle is hein.journals/drklr72 and id is 37 raw text is: THE SENTENCING ADVANTAGE OF FEMALE DEFENDANTS IN HOMICIDE CASES Michael O'Hear* & Darren Wheelock** ABSTRACT Sentencing researchers commonly find that female defendants receive more lenient sentences than male defendants, but the precise dynamics driving gender disparities remain elusive. This Article explores the phenomenon of gender-related sentencing disparities using a unique data set comprised of 543 major homicide cases in Wisconsin over a fifteen-year time period. On average, the male defendants received prison sentences that were more than seven years longer than the female defendants. In regression analyses, controls were introduced for criminal history and an unusually rich set of offense characteristics and case- processing variables, but sharp differences remained in the sentences for male and female defendants. Indeed, the only covariate that showed an equally large effect size was another gender-related variable, that is, whether the victim was female. The striking role of gender in this study raises questions about the possible influence of gender stereotyping in the sentencing process. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction ...............................................................................................38 II. Legal Context ............................................................................................39 III. Sources of Data..........................................................................................41 A. Court-System Data .............................................................................41 B. Police Data .........................................................................................43 C. Other Sources of Data ........................................................................46 IV. A Preliminary View of the Data................................................................46 A. Class B Homicide Sentences: Who, What, When, and Where ..........46 B. Male-Defendant and Female-Defendant Cases ..................................50 V. Taking a Closer Look: Does Defendant-Gender Really Matter? ..............53 A. Multivariate Regression Models for Years Sentenced .......................53 * Professor, Marquette Law School. B.A., J.D. Yale University. This work was generously supported by a research grant from Marquette Law School. Thanks also to May Arinze, Haley Haddad, and Abby Nilsson for helpful research assistance. ** Associate Professor, Marquette University Department of Social & Cultural Sciences. B.A., Ph.D. University of Minnesota. 37

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