5 - Invocations for Counsel, the Rulings, and the Courts: A Statistical Analysis of the Corpus

Summary

Chapter 5 provides a statistical analysis of the legal rulings that comprise the book’s corpus. The analysis looks at the possible relationships between the variables that make up the corpus, including types of invocations for counsel, types of suspects (e.g., juveniles, L2 speakers), and the judges’ presidential appointments, among an array of other legal and linguistic factors, and the judges’ rulings on the legal standing of the suspects’ invocations for counsel. To frame the discussion and understand the seeming disconnect between suspects’ invocations for counsel and the application of the law, the chapter provides a description of the corpus, the entry and selection of variables, and the research questions posed. The findings of the analysis provide further evidence of the effect of judicial rulings on the suspects/defendants’ legal journey. Given the potential significant role of suspects’ statements in the conviction of a crime, this chapter also includes a discussion on whether a ruling that suppresses such statements is enough to reverse a lower court’s ruling on the use of such statements and/or its content in court.