To assess the influence of ethnicity on jury decisions, 480 subjects viewed a videotaped trial of an Anglo or Hispanic defendant. Anglo or Hispanic majority 6‐person juries deliberated until a unanimous verdict was reached. The juries that convicted the defendant were asked to determine sentence length and to provide a probation/ parole recommendation. Anglo majority juries convicted the defendant significantly more (M= 79%) than did the Hispanic majority juries (M= 52%), x2= 5.45, p < 0.02. No main effect of defendant ethnicity was obtained, but there was an interaction between the defendant and the jury's ethnicity, x2= 5.41, p < 0.02. Anglo majority juries were more lenient with the Anglo defendant, but the Hispanic majority juries did not differ in their conviction rates. No significant effects were obtained for sentence length. Differences in probation/parole recommendations were a function of jury ethnicity, F(l, 15) = 4.74, p < 0.05. Anglos were more likely to recommend that the defendant serve the full term of the sentence. These results are interpreted in terms of stereotyping and are discussed regarding their implications for a defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial.

Hispanic jurors' verdicts and whether these decisions were related to jurors' judgments of the credibility of the witness were the focus of this experiment. A prosecution witness testified in English or in Spanish with interpretation in English. Witnesses' speaking style systematically included hedges and hesitations or did not. Guilty verdicts were independent of language of testimony. Within Spanish‐interpreted conditions, jurors convicted the defendant 47% of the time in the absence of hedges and hesitations. When he hedged and hesitated, they convicted 34% of the time. This effect was complicated by a reliable Witness Hesitation × Juror Language Dominance interaction. These results are interpreted in the context of the courtroom impact of non‐English‐speaking witnesses and the impact of interpretation.