Courts III

Question 1

an extra-legal factors.

Answer 1

• are factors not relevant to the decision making process.

- Defendant characteristics: Race, socioeconomic

Question 2

Socio-economic status:

Answer 2

• Mazzella & Feingold (1994): meta-analysis.
• Mock jurors were more likely to find low socioeconomic status defendants guilty than higher socioeconomic status defendants
• But… the findings from individual studies were mixed

Question 3

Attractiveness:

Answer 3

• Mazzella & Feingold (1994): meta-analysis.
• Mock jurors were less likely to find physically attractive defendants guilty compared to physically unattractive defendants

Question 4

unfair discrimination

Answer 4

• being convicted or acquitted on the basis of information that is not relevant to the judgement criteria.
  
  • Such irrelevant information might be the accused person’s racial identity, their gender, age or any number of other extraneous factors.

Question 5

Nemeth and Sosis (1973)

Answer 5

• Same race of juror and defendant may lead to perceived similarity, sympathy, and resulting leniency. Different race… may lead to bias and resulting harshness of sentence”
• Results showed that race did not influence sentence severity, although social attractiveness did.
• Socially unattractive individuals sentenced more severely and presumed to feel less remorse for their crime

Question 6

Duncan (1976)

Answer 6

• Effect of racial stereotypes on the process of attributing cause to an ambiguous behaviour.
• Required to resolve a dilemma faced by an electrical engineer.
• Results showed that participants interpreted the shove as being more violent when it was initiated by a black aggressor against a white victim.
• Duncan (1976) suggested that these findings were not too surprising in light of the current stereotype of African Americans held by white Americans.
• African Americans were generally considered to be impulsive and more likely to be violent and/or criminal.
• Given this stereotype, the concept of violence would be more accessible when observing an African American, thereby reducing “the threshold for labelling an act as violent” (Duncan, 1976, p591).

Question 7

Ugweugbu (1979)

Answer 7

• When trial evidence clearly indicates guilty or innocence, jurors render the appropriate verdict of guilty or innocent.
• When the appropriate verdict to deliver is unclear and the situation is ambiguous, jurors are more likely to use stereotypes as a basis for decision making.
• “when evidence is not strong enough for a conviction, a white juror ascribes a white accused the benefit of the doubt, but not a black accused.”
• These findings were consistent with those of Duncan (1976) and strongly suggest that the weight of trial evidence moderates the effect of race on the outcome of a criminal trial.

Question 8

Pfeifer and Ogloff (1991)

Answer 8

• Experimental materials lack external validity and face validity.
• If judicial instruction is included, the race of the accused fails to influence the outcome of a criminal trial.
• If judicial instruction is excluded, a native Canadian accused of raping a white Canadian woman is found guilty significantly more often than any other racial combination

Question 9

Henry then examined in an Australian context.

Answer 9

• An accused is more likely to be found guilty when he is described as Anglo.
• An accused (regardless of race) is more likely to be found guilty when the victim is Asian.
• explanations for these findings
  
  • Contemporary society does not discriminate unfairly against those of Asian origin. But- stats show migrant populations are over-represented at each stage of the justice system process.
  • The stereotype of a typical Asian crime did not fit. Methodological issue.
  • Participants exhibited features associated with Modern Racism.
  • Anglo participants assumed that the task of identifying an Anglo offender would be more simple than that of identifying an Asian offender.
  • Participants perceived Asians to have a greater likelihood of being victims