Aggravating and Mitigating Factors in Sentencing.
Purpose. Jurors’ religious characteristics are related to death penalty attitudes and verdicts. Jurors’ religious characteristics might also relate to endorsements of aggravating circumstances (aggravators) and mitigating circumstances (mitigators)—factors that make a defendant more or less deserving of the death penalty, respectively.
Aggravating factors will include an offence committed whilst on bail, previous offending, religious or racial aggravation or sexual orientation or disability of the victim. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 Sentencing Guidelines is the authoritative guidelines on sentencing to be applied by the courts.
B. Consider the effect of aggravating and mitigating factors (other than those within examples above) The following may be particularly relevant but these lists are not exhaustive. Factors indicating higher culpability. Breach of bail conditions; Offender involves others; Factors indicating greater degree of harm.
Other sentencing principles. 718.2 A court that imposes a sentence shall also take into consideration the following principles: (a) a sentence should be increased or reduced to account for any relevant aggravating or mitigating circumstances relating to the offence or the offender, and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing.
AGGRAVATING YOUTH: ROPER v SIMMONS AND AGE DISCRIMINATION. At the penalty phase of Christopher Simmons's murder trial, the prosecutor argued to the jury that Simmons's youth should be con-sidered aggravating, rather than mitigating: Let's look at the mitigating circumstances. Age, he says. Think about age. Seventeen years old.
With the starting point established and all aggravating and mitigating factors considered, the court will adjust the sentence within the range determined by the class of drug. In certain cases where the defendant has relevant previous convictions for drug offences, the court may be required to impose a minimum length of prison sentence.
Mitigating circumstances or factors make a bad action, especially a crime, easier to understand and excuse, and may result in the person responsible being punished less severely. ( law ) The judge found that in her case there were mitigating circumstances.