Brandon L Garrett
Biographic Data
| ID | 5922782 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brandon L Garrett |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brandon L |
| FAMILY NAME | Garrett |
| SIGNATURE | GARRETT B L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3996-8209 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
New Insights on Expert Opinion About Eyewitness Memory Research
Experimental psychologists investigating eyewitness memory have periodically gathered their thoughts on a variety of eyewitness memory phenomena. Courts and other stakeholders of eyewitness research rely on the expert opinions reflected in these surveys to make informed decisions. However, the last survey of this sort was published more than 20 years ago, and the science of eyewitness memory has developed since that time. Stakeholders need a curr…
Special issue on justice, legitimacy, and technology
This special issue explores the intersection of justice, legitimacy, and technology to illuminate connections among these inter-related concepts and provide much-needed data that have the potential to inform governmental actors and institutions. This Introduction begins with a discussion of the motivating influences and goals for the special issue, followed by a summary of the articles we selected for inclusion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025…
Ineffectiveness of the “consistent with” judicial limitation on forensic firearm identification testimony
OBJECTIVE: Judicial limitations on forensic firearm identification testimony aim to prevent overstated conclusions declaring a definitive match (or "identification") between bullets or cartridge cases and a specific firearm. The Maryland Supreme Court has ruled that examiners may state only that markings are "consistent with" those from a particular firearm. Another judicial ruling held that examiners may state only that the defendant's firearm "…
Psychological science from research to policy
Understanding Plea Bargaining in a New Progressive DA’s Office
Plea deals resolve the vast majority of prosecuted criminal cases in the U.S. legal system. Prosecutors hold disproportionate power in plea bargaining and have been blamed for driving punitiveness and racial disparities. Progressive prosecutors aim to reverse these trends, but little is known about how they will alter plea practices. We conducted qualitative interviews with all the assistant district attorneys (ADAs, N = 19) in a mid-sized office…
Error Aversions and Due Process
William Blackstone famously expressed the view that convicting the innocent constitutes a much more serious error than acquitting the guilty. This view is the cornerstone of due process protections for those accused of crimes, giving rise to the presumption of innocence and the high burden of proof required for criminal convictions. While most legal elites share Blackstone’s view, the citizen jurors tasked with making due process protections a re…
Eyewitness confidence may not be ready for the courts
) remind us that they are aware of some conditions in which confidence does not trump all but suggest that initial high-confidence errors should be rare. In this reply, we draw attention to new lab research that continues to cast doubt on the value of an initial eyewitness identification made with high confidence. Additional data from field studies of police lineups lead us to conclude that it is far too risky in real-world cases to assume that e…
Convicting with confidence? Why we should not over-rely on eyewitness confidence
Eyewitness memory researchers have recently devoted considerable attention to eyewitness confidence. While there is strong consensus that courtroom confidence is problematic, we now recognise that an eyewitness's initial confidence in their first identification - in certain contexts - can be of value. A few psychological scientists, however, have confidently, but erroneously claimed that in real-world cases, eyewitness initial confidence is the m…
The Law on Police Use of Force in the United States
Recent events in the United States have highlighted the fact that American police resort to force, including deadly force, much more often than in many other Western countries. This Article describes how the current regulatory regime may ignore or even facilitate these aggressive police actions. The law governing police use of force in the United States derives in large part from the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohi…
Open risk assessment
As criminal justice actors increasingly seek to rely on more evidence‐informed practices, including risk assessment instruments, they often lack adequate information about the evidence that informed the development of the practice or the tool. Open science practices, including making scientific research and data accessible and public, have not typically been followed in the development of tools designed for law enforcement, judges, probation, and…
Mock jurors’ evaluation of firearm examiner testimony
OBJECTIVES: Firearms experts traditionally have testified that a weapon leaves "unique" toolmarks, so bullets or cartridge casings can be visually examined and conclusively matched to a particular firearm. Recently, due to scientific critiques, Department of Justice policy, and judges' rulings, firearms experts have tempered their conclusions. In two experiments, we tested whether this ostensibly more cautious language has its intended effect on …
Valid or voodoo? A qualitative study of attorney perceptions of risk assessment in sentencing and plea bargaining
Prior research largely has explored judicial perceptions of risk assessment in sentencing. Little is known about how other court actors, specifically, prosecutors and defense attorneys, perceive risk assessments in the sentencing process. Here, we report a qualitative study on the use of risk assessment by prosecutors and defense attorneys in Virginia. A prior survey ( n = 70) pointed to a statistically significant difference in how prosecutors a…
Wrongful Convictions
In response to wrongful convictions, there has been a revolution in criminal procedure and research in law and science. This review seeks to summarize the cross-disciplinary explosion in work studying known wrongful convictions, examining their causes, and assessing policy reforms designed to help detect and prevent errors in criminal justice. Scholars have increasingly studied the characteristics of known wrongful-conviction cases, including by …
Risk and resources
Virginia's sentencing guidelines include alternative sanctions based on the use of a quantitative instrument called the Nonviolent Risk Assessment (NVRA) that identifies individuals convicted of drug and property crimes that are considered to be at lower risk of recidivism. Although nondispositive, the NVRA affords judges the discretion to grant alternative sentences to eligible low‐risk defendants. In this study, we explore how judges make use o…
End of Its Rope
Today, death sentences in the U.S. are as rare as lethal lightning strikes. Brandon Garrett shows us the reasons why, and explains what the failed death penalty experiment teaches about the effect of inept lawyering, overzealous prosecution, race discrimination, wrongful convictions, and excessive punishments throughout the criminal justice system
Too Big to Jail
Convicting the Innocent
DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling analysis, Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 people exonerated by DNA testing, and proposes systemic reforms.
Risk and resources
Virginia's sentencing guidelines include alternative sanctions based on the use of a quantitative instrument called the Nonviolent Risk Assessment (NVRA) that identifies individuals convicted of drug and property crimes that are considered to be at lower risk of recidivism. Although nondispositive, the NVRA affords judges the discretion to grant alternative sentences to eligible low‐risk defendants. In this study, we explore how judges make use o…
Psychological science from research to policy
Convicting the Innocent
DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling analysis, Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 people exonerated by DNA testing, and proposes systemic reforms.
Too Big to Jail
End of Its Rope
Today, death sentences in the U.S. are as rare as lethal lightning strikes. Brandon Garrett shows us the reasons why, and explains what the failed death penalty experiment teaches about the effect of inept lawyering, overzealous prosecution, race discrimination, wrongful convictions, and excessive punishments throughout the criminal justice system
Wrongful Convictions
In response to wrongful convictions, there has been a revolution in criminal procedure and research in law and science. This review seeks to summarize the cross-disciplinary explosion in work studying known wrongful convictions, examining their causes, and assessing policy reforms designed to help detect and prevent errors in criminal justice. Scholars have increasingly studied the characteristics of known wrongful-conviction cases, including by …
Risk and resources
Virginia's sentencing guidelines include alternative sanctions based on the use of a quantitative instrument called the Nonviolent Risk Assessment (NVRA) that identifies individuals convicted of drug and property crimes that are considered to be at lower risk of recidivism. Although nondispositive, the NVRA affords judges the discretion to grant alternative sentences to eligible low‐risk defendants. In this study, we explore how judges make use o…
The Law on Police Use of Force in the United States
Recent events in the United States have highlighted the fact that American police resort to force, including deadly force, much more often than in many other Western countries. This Article describes how the current regulatory regime may ignore or even facilitate these aggressive police actions. The law governing police use of force in the United States derives in large part from the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohi…
Open risk assessment
As criminal justice actors increasingly seek to rely on more evidence‐informed practices, including risk assessment instruments, they often lack adequate information about the evidence that informed the development of the practice or the tool. Open science practices, including making scientific research and data accessible and public, have not typically been followed in the development of tools designed for law enforcement, judges, probation, and…
Mock jurors’ evaluation of firearm examiner testimony
OBJECTIVES: Firearms experts traditionally have testified that a weapon leaves "unique" toolmarks, so bullets or cartridge casings can be visually examined and conclusively matched to a particular firearm. Recently, due to scientific critiques, Department of Justice policy, and judges' rulings, firearms experts have tempered their conclusions. In two experiments, we tested whether this ostensibly more cautious language has its intended effect on …
Valid or voodoo? A qualitative study of attorney perceptions of risk assessment in sentencing and plea bargaining
Prior research largely has explored judicial perceptions of risk assessment in sentencing. Little is known about how other court actors, specifically, prosecutors and defense attorneys, perceive risk assessments in the sentencing process. Here, we report a qualitative study on the use of risk assessment by prosecutors and defense attorneys in Virginia. A prior survey ( n = 70) pointed to a statistically significant difference in how prosecutors a…
Eyewitness confidence may not be ready for the courts
) remind us that they are aware of some conditions in which confidence does not trump all but suggest that initial high-confidence errors should be rare. In this reply, we draw attention to new lab research that continues to cast doubt on the value of an initial eyewitness identification made with high confidence. Additional data from field studies of police lineups lead us to conclude that it is far too risky in real-world cases to assume that e…
Convicting with confidence? Why we should not over-rely on eyewitness confidence
Eyewitness memory researchers have recently devoted considerable attention to eyewitness confidence. While there is strong consensus that courtroom confidence is problematic, we now recognise that an eyewitness's initial confidence in their first identification - in certain contexts - can be of value. A few psychological scientists, however, have confidently, but erroneously claimed that in real-world cases, eyewitness initial confidence is the m…
Understanding Plea Bargaining in a New Progressive DA’s Office
Plea deals resolve the vast majority of prosecuted criminal cases in the U.S. legal system. Prosecutors hold disproportionate power in plea bargaining and have been blamed for driving punitiveness and racial disparities. Progressive prosecutors aim to reverse these trends, but little is known about how they will alter plea practices. We conducted qualitative interviews with all the assistant district attorneys (ADAs, N = 19) in a mid-sized office…
Error Aversions and Due Process
William Blackstone famously expressed the view that convicting the innocent constitutes a much more serious error than acquitting the guilty. This view is the cornerstone of due process protections for those accused of crimes, giving rise to the presumption of innocence and the high burden of proof required for criminal convictions. While most legal elites share Blackstone’s view, the citizen jurors tasked with making due process protections a re…
Psychological science from research to policy
New Insights on Expert Opinion About Eyewitness Memory Research
Experimental psychologists investigating eyewitness memory have periodically gathered their thoughts on a variety of eyewitness memory phenomena. Courts and other stakeholders of eyewitness research rely on the expert opinions reflected in these surveys to make informed decisions. However, the last survey of this sort was published more than 20 years ago, and the science of eyewitness memory has developed since that time. Stakeholders need a curr…
Special issue on justice, legitimacy, and technology
This special issue explores the intersection of justice, legitimacy, and technology to illuminate connections among these inter-related concepts and provide much-needed data that have the potential to inform governmental actors and institutions. This Introduction begins with a discussion of the motivating influences and goals for the special issue, followed by a summary of the articles we selected for inclusion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025…
Ineffectiveness of the “consistent with” judicial limitation on forensic firearm identification testimony
OBJECTIVE: Judicial limitations on forensic firearm identification testimony aim to prevent overstated conclusions declaring a definitive match (or "identification") between bullets or cartridge cases and a specific firearm. The Maryland Supreme Court has ruled that examiners may state only that markings are "consistent with" those from a particular firearm. Another judicial ruling held that examiners may state only that the defendant's firearm "…
Psychology (11 works) · Criminology (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (6 works) · Deception detection and forensic psychology (5 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (4 works) · Criminal justice (4 works)