Most of the financial support for this 10-year study has been provided by Columbia Law School, and the authors wish to express their deepest gratitude to the School and particularly to its Dean, David Leebron, for the generous ongoing support of this project.

The authors also are extremely grateful to the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, for its generous support of the second phase of the project culminating in this Report, and to NIJ Project Officer Andrew Goldberg. We also wish to thank the Open Society Institute and Tanya Coke, Nancy Mahon, Miriam Porter and Catherine Samuels for their support and encouragement in the first phase of this project, and for their assistance in making our reports available to the public.

This phase of the Project was immensely aided by the thoughtful advice of members of the Advisory Board empaneled under our NIJ grant: John Blume, Visiting Professor of Law and Director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, Cornell Law School; Hon. Robert E. Colville, Judge, Court of Common Pleas, Criminal Division, and former District Attorney, Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania; Professor John Hagan, Northwestern University Department of Sociology and Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation; and Hon. Andrew Sonner, Associate Judge, Court of Special Appeals of Maryland, Chair, Maryland Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy, and former State's Attorney, Montgomery County, 1971-96. Thanks also to Professor Joseph B. Kadane, Leonard J. Savage University Professor of Statistics and Social Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University.

We are also deeply appreciative of the research, administrative and technical assistance of Sarah Alvarez, James Cerrato, Peggy Crawley, Catherine Gain, Jim Fox, Brandon Garrett, Bob Hayman, Randy Hertz, Monica Ho, Jim Hoover, Rick Kaplan, Jonathan Lloyd, John Lundin, Alexandra Marchovsky, Franz Merine, Emily Monroe, Solomon Rosenbaum, Kyle Lange, Kate McGarry, Hope Mohr, Archana Prakash, and Jennifer Schotz.

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