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A Sub-Cultural Mitigation Defense: Explaining Behaviors Scripted From Ideas
Craig J. Forsyth*Picard Center, Department of Sociology, University of Louisiana, P.O. Box 42730, Lafayette, LA 70504 2730, USA
- *Corresponding Author:
- Craig J. Forsyth
Picard Center, Department of Sociology
University of Louisiana, P.O. Box 42730
Lafayette, LA 70504 2730, USA
Tel: 337-482-5372
E-mail: cjf5714@louisiana.edu
Received Date: November 08, 2013; Accepted Date: December 04, 2013; Published Date: December 07, 2013
Citation: Forsyth CJ (2013) A Sub-Cultural Mitigation Defense: Explaining Behaviors Scripted From Ideas. J Civil Legal Sci 3:109. doi:10.4172/2169-0170.1000109
Copyright: © 2013 Forsyth CJ. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
In this paper, I examine the role of a sociologist as a mitigation expert in two cases of violent crime. Both cases used a subculture of violence defense. Case I involved a young black male defendant and a white victim who wasan on-duty police officer. In Case II both victim and defendant were young black males. What makes these cases similar is that both involved a cultural defense in the sentencing phase. The author of this paper, testified at both of these sentencing hearings. The author is a Professor of Sociology, at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He has worked on over 300 violent crime cases since 1988, most of which were capital murder, but also include second degree murder, manslaughter, armed robbery, rape, and habitual offender hearings.
