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Preferred term

bifurcated trial  

Definition

  • A two-stage trial, required in all capital cases, where the first stage determines a defendant's guilt or innocence and the second part decides whether the defendant should be sentenced to death. The bifurcated trial was developed as a remedy to what the U.S. Supreme Court found to be the arbitrary imposition of the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia (1972). [Source: The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences; Bifurcated Trial]

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https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/bifurcated_trial

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