it more practical to have judges sentence defendants. History Rise of jury sentencing The impetus for introducing jury sentencing was that in the late 18th century, punishment options expanded beyond shaming sanctions and the mandatory death penalty and came to include various ranges and modes of imprisonment, creating more room for case-by-case decisionmaking to which juries were thought to be well-suited. Virginia was the first state to adopt jury sentencing. The state's first constitution was enacted in 1776, and shortly thereafter, in 1779, Thomas Jefferson proposed to the Virginia General Assembly a revised criminal code that would have eliminated pardons and benefit of clergy, abolished capital punishment for most offenses, and allowed juries to decide punishments when the penalty was discretionary. This bill failed, however, both in 1779 and 1786, after James Madison had reintroduced it while Jefferson was in France. Sentencing by jury was, however, successfully enacted in Virginia's 1796 penal code, which like the 1779 bill replaced capital punishment with terms of imprisonment for most felony offenses. Kentucky adopted a penal reform bill introduced by John Breckenridge that implemented sentencing by jury in 1798. While in Virginia, magistrates continued to have misdemeanor sentencing power (possibly because of the political influence of magistrates who served in the General Assembly), in Kentucky, this power was given to juries. Kentucky juries tried and sentenced slaves and free blacks, and even decided cases involving prison discipline, imposing punishments such as flagellation or solitary confinement for infractions. Georgia and Tennessee adopted sentencing by jury in 1816 and 1829, respectively. In contrast, northern states such as Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York allowed judges to determine penalties, with Pennsylvania also allowing judges to pardon prisoners who, in their view, had evidenced sincere reformation. One hypothesis is that Virginia opted for jury sentencing because Federalists like George Keith Taylor distrusted the Republican district court judges; while in Pennsylvania, the Constitutionalists sought (over the objections of Republicans) to put sentencing power in the hands of the judges because the bench was populated by Constitutionalists. North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida, which did not establish penitentiaries until after the American Civil War, also left sentencing to judges' discretion. The adoption of jury sentencing happened at the same time that the movement for an elective judiciary gathered speed, with at least four states, Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, and North Dakota switching to judicial elections around the same time