Responsive justice? Retention elections, prosecutors, and public opinion

Do elected judges and prosecutors change their behavior to reflect public opinion after they receive information about constituent preferences? In this article I use a unique measure of public opinion—votes on an initiative to legalize marijuana—to examine the responsiveness of prosecutors and trial court judges to a strong, issue-specific, constituency-level opinion signal. I find that, at least in recent drug cases in Colorado, both prosecutors and judges changed their sentencing behavior after receiving that signal. Prosecutors responded only to local-level opinion, while judges responded to both local and statewide opinion.