The effects of deliberations and religious identity on mock jurors’ verdicts (original) (raw)

Racial Bias in Juridic Judgment at Private and Public Levels

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2006

Mock jurors (college students and prospective jurors) made individual decisions regarding liability and damages (before and after deliberation) in response to a case of sexual harassment. There were no significant differences in damage awards from college students and prospective jurors. There was evidence of racial bias among White mock jurors against plaintiffs who accused a Black supervisor of sexual harassment: Lower damages were recommended for plaintiffs who accepted an offer to meet for drinks in a Black supervisor's room than for plaintiffs who accepted the same offer from a White supervisor. There was also evidence of racial bias among White mock jurors against Black plaintiffs: Lower damages were recommended for Black plaintiffs than for White plaintiffs. These effects were present in the individual judgments of college students and prospective jurors. However, these forms of racial bias did not carry over into the decisions made by juries comprised of college students or prospective jurors. Subtle racial biases operating primarily at a subconscious level may get washed out in the complex task of coming to agreement on an appropriate award. The effects of manipulated variables on damage awards probably are overestimated in general in mock juror studies that do not examine group verdicts. Public opinion surveys paint a rosier picture of the attitudes of Whites toward Blacks than in the past (Schuman, Steeh, Bobo, & Krysan, 1997). Nevertheless, discrimination against Blacks still prevails in many facets of life that have a negative impact on quality of life (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), and a substantial proportion of Whites still may be opposed to full racial equality (

Race and the decision making of juries

The relationship between race and jury decision making is a controversial topic that has received increased attention in recent years. While public and media discourse has focused on anecdotal evidence in the form of high-profile cases, legal researchers have considered a wide range of empirical questions including: To what extent does the race of a defendant affect the verdict tendencies of juries? Is this influence of race comparable for jurors of different races? In what ways does a jury's racial composition affect its verdict and deliberations? The present review examines both experimental and archival investigations of these issues. Though the extant literature is not always consistent and has devoted too little attention to the psychological mechanisms underlying the influence of race, this body of research clearly demonstrates that race has the potential to impact trial outcomes. This is a conclusion with important practical as well as theoretical implications when it comes to ongoing debates regarding jury representativeness, how to optimize jury performance, jury nullification and racial disparities in the administration of capital punishment.

Bias in Jurors vs Bias in Juries: New Evidence from the SDS Perspective

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1999

Prior research by Kaplan and Miller (1978) suggested that juries are generally influenced less by extralegal, biasing information than individual jurors are. A social decision scheme (SDS) analysis of this question by Kerr, MacCoun, and Kramer (1997) suggested (a) that Kaplan and Miller's conclusion should hold only for relatively extreme legal cases (i.e., cases where the probability of conviction, without biasing information, was either very high or very low) and (b) that the opposite pattern should hold for moderate cases (with moderate conviction rates)-i.e., juries should show even greater sensitivity to biasing information than should individual jurors. An experiment is reported that compared juror vs jury sensitivity to biasing information (viz., prejudicial pretrial publicity) for versions of a legal case with a moderate and an extreme conviction rate. Consistent with the SDS analysis, juries were more biased than jurors for the moderate-case version, but the reverse was true for the extreme-case version. The implications of these findings and the more general utility of the SDS model for studying group processes are discussed.

How Much Do We Really Know about Race and Juries? A Review of Social Science Theory and Research

Chicago-Kent} Law Review, 2003

S INTERNATIONAL 52 (1992). 27. Robert W. Hymes et al., Acquaintance Rape: The Effect of Race of Defendant and Race of Victim on White Juror Decisions, 133 J. SOC. PSYCHOL. 627 (1993). 28. Laura T. Sweeney & Craig Haney, The Influence of Race on Sentencing: A MetaAnalytic Review of Experimental Studies, 10 BEHAV. SCI. & L. 179 (1992). 29. Andrea DeSantis & Wesley A. Kayson, Defendants' Characteristics of Attractiveness, Race, and Sex and Sentencing Decisions, 81 PSYCHOL. REP. 679 (1997). [Vol 78:997 2003] HOWMUCH DO WE REALLY KNOWABOUT RACE AND JURIES? 1007 of inadmissible evidence at trial as one such determining factor. 30 White mock jurors in this study were presented with the written summary of a bank robbery trial in which the defendant was either White or Black. In the baseline control version of the trial, the prosecution's case was circumstantial and ambiguous. In two experimental versions, the prosecution introduced a wiretap that suggested that the defendant had lie...

Defendant-juror similarity and mock juror judgments

Law and Human Behavior, 1995

It was hypothesized that juror-defendant similarity would lead to greater leniency toward a criminal defendant when the evidence against that defendant was weak or inconclusive; but when evidence was strong, it was expected that this relationship would be reversed. In Study l, religious similarity was found to be simply and positively related to evaluation of the defendant and leniency, a relationship unaffected by the strength of evidence. This pattern of results was attributed to (a) insufficiently strong evidence against the defendant and (b) the lack of anticipated jury deliberation, problems addressed in Study 2. In that study, when evidence was strong against the defendant, juror-defendant racial similarity did increase the likelihood of conviction, but only when jurors anticipated being in the racial minority in their jury. Implications of the findings for psychological theory and for voir dire were discussed. By exercising peremptory challenges, attorneys in civil and criminal jury trials may influence the composition of juries. They naturally have been interested in identifying any juror characteristics that may be reliably associated with a favorable or unfavorable verdict. Extant research suggests very few reliable and general relationships between juror demographic characteristics (e.g.

Defendant-Juror Juror Judgments* Similarity and Mock

1995

It was hypothesized that juror-defendant similarity would lead to greater leniency toward a criminal defendant when the evidence against that defendant was weak or inconclusive; but when evidence was strong, it was expected that this relationship would be reversed. In Study l, religious similarity was found to be simply and positively related to evaluation of the defendant and leniency, a relationship unaffected by the strength of evidence. This pattern of results was attributed to (a) insufficiently strong evidence against the defendant and (b) the lack of anticipated jury deliberation, problems addressed in Study 2. In that study, when evidence was strong against the defendant, juror-defendant racial similarity did increase the likelihood of conviction, but only when jurors anticipated being in the racial minority in their jury. Implications of the findings for psychological theory and for voir dire were discussed. By exercising peremptory challenges, attorneys in civil and crimin...

Race and jury selection: Psychological

The legal system is a domain of potential relevance for psychologists, whether in the capacity of expert witness or citizen juror. In this article, the authors apply a psychological framework to legal debate surrounding the impact of race on the process of jury selection. More specifically, the authors consider race and the peremptory challenge, the procedure by which attorneys may remove prospective jurors without explanation. This debate is addressed from a psychological perspective by (a) examining traditional justifications for the practice of the peremptory challenge, (b) reviewing research regarding the influence of race on social judgment, (c) considering empirical investigations that examine directly race and peremptory challenge use, and (d) assessing current jury selection procedures intended to curtail racial discrimination. These analyses converge to suggest that the discretionary nature of the peremptory challenge renders it precisely the type of judgment most likely to be biased by race. The need for additional psychological investigation of race and jury selection is emphasized, and specific avenues for such research are identified.

Justice, Juries, and Convictions: The Relevance of Race in Jury Verdicts

Journal of crime & justice, 2008

Previous research has suggested that the racial composition of a jury plays a role in the likelihood of conviction of certain defendants. In general, it has been supported that White jury members are more likely to vote to convict Black defendants, while Black jury members are more likely to vote to acquit Black defendants. Prior research has suffered from flaws that could possibly affect these outcomes. For instance, the use of mock juries to examine jury behavior creates artificiality and may not adequately reflect real jury decision-making. Additionally, research on real juries either focuses on certain types of cases (i.e., capital cases) or suffers from problems relating to insufficient or incomplete trial or jury data. As a result, existing jury research has failed to folly capture or explain the factors that are related to jury decision-making in non-capital felony trials. The current research examined case outcomes in real jury trials of defendants charged with non-capital felonies. In particular, the current study analyzed the relationship between the racial composition of the jury and conviction of black defendants. Results indicated a significant relationship between these two variables.

Juror sensitivity to the cross-race effect

Law and Human Behavior, 2003

Eyewitness identifi cations are one of the main factors that jurors use to formulate their verdicts (Cutler & Penrod, 1995), and misidentifi cations at the trial stage can mean the difference between imprisonment and freedom (Scheck, Neufeld, & Dwyer, 2000; Wells et al., 1998). Much of the reason for juries' erroneous convictions based on faulty eyewitness identifi cations is that jurors are not very sensitive to the factors that determine eyewitness accuracy. For example, Cutler, Penrod, and Dexter (1990) conducted a study of mock jurors' sensitivity to issues in eyewitness identifi cation. The participants were presented with police descriptions of identifi cation conditions that included 10 independent variables related to issues in eyewitness identifi cation. Some of these factors (e.g., weapon presence, retention interval) are known to have a signifi cant and often considerable impact on eyewitness accuracy, whereas others, such as eyewitness confi dence, are at best weakly predictive of accuracy (Cutler & Penrod, 1995). Of the 10 factors, the only manipulation that affected participants' verdicts was the level of