Ethnicity of Defendants and Jurors as Influences on Jury Decisions 1

Hispanics are now the largest minority group in the United States, yet research examining the impact this will have on the American legal system is limited. The first purpose of this article was to synthesize the studies that have been conducted, which have found that Hispanics have a perspective toward the police, the courts and the law, and jury decision making that is unique from those of Caucasians and other ethnic groups. The second purpose of this article was to analyze whether psychology and law research has been conducted in a manner conducive to identifying this unique Hispanic perspective. An analysis of 800 articles published in five psychology and law journals revealed that, while Hispanics were typically conceptualized properly, the proportion of articles devoted to the Hispanic perspective is disturbingly low. To increase understanding of the Hispanic perspective, psychology and law researchers must increase the amount of empirical attention given to Hispanics.

Section: Jury Decision Making: Hispanics Compared With Caucasiansmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Jury Decision Making: Hispanics Compared With Caucasiansmentioning

confidence: 96%

Analysis of hispanic representation and conceptualization in psychology and law research

Padilla

Miller

Broadus

2008

“…Studies have documented the influence of a host of extralegal factors on juror decisions, mainly focusing on characteristics of the defendant. Relevant external extralegal factors have included the defendant's race (Sargent & Bradfield, 2004;Sommers & Ellsworth, 2001), age (Bergeron & McKelvie, 2004;Mueller-Johnson, Toglia, Sweeney, & Ceci, 2007;Warling & Badali-Peterson, 2001), religious conviction (Johnson, 1985), gender (DeSantis & Kayson, 1997;Fisher, 1997;McCoy & Gray, 2007), physical attractiveness (Stewart, 1985), occupation (Loeffler & Lawson, 2002), and ethnicity (Perez, Hosch, Ponder, & Trejo, 1993).…”

Section: Extralegal Influencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

When emotionality trumps reason: A study of individual processing style and juror bias

Gunnell

Ceci

2010

''Cognitive Experiential Self Theory'' (CEST) postulates that information-processing proceeds through two pathways, a rational one and an experiential one. The former is characterized by an emphasis on analysis, fact, and logical argument, whereas the latter is characterized by emotional and personal experience. We examined whether individuals influenced by the experiential system (E-processors) are more susceptible to extralegal biases (e.g. defendant attractiveness) than those influenced by the rational system (R-processors). Participants reviewed a criminal trial transcript and defendant profile and determined verdict, sentencing, and extralegal susceptibility. Although Eprocessors and R-processors convicted attractive defendants at similar rates, Eprocessors were more likely to convict less attractive defendants. Whereas R-processors did not sentence attractive and less attractive defendants differently, E-processors gave more lenient sentences to attractive defendants and harsher sentences to less attractive defendants. E-processors were also more likely to report that extralegal factors would change their verdicts. Further, the degree to which emotionality trumped rationality within an individual, as measured by a novel scoring method, linearly correlated with harsher sentences and extralegal influence. In sum, the results support an ''unattractive harshness'' effect during guilt determination, an attraction leniency effect during sentencing and increased susceptibility to extralegal factors within E-processors.

“…For example, there have been studies on the influence of the defendant's race (Chadee, 1996;Sommers, 2007), ethnicity (Perez, Hosch, Ponder, & Trejo, 1993), socioeconomic status (Esqueda, Espinoza, & Culhane, 2008), and foreign nativity (Frumkin, 2007) on juror decision-making. Some of these studies have found that defendants who are members of an outgroup are more harshly treated than majority groups, while others have found that some additional negative characteristic of the defendant or uncertainty about the facts of the case must be present for the prejudicial behavior to manifest.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 98%

Stranger at the Gate: The Effect of the Plaintiff's use of an Interpreter on Juror Decision‐Making

Shuman

Stokes

Martinez

2011

There exists a substantial literature examining the effect on juror decision-making of extraneous demographic characteristics of plaintiffs and defendants. In most of these studies, members of groups that are perceived as being minorities or as belonging to one of a variety of outgroups (lower socioeconomic status, immigrants) are treated more harshly by jurors, or are perceived as being less deserving or credible. In this study, the authors examine treatment by jurors of a relatively less well investigated outgroup: that of the non-English speaker. An experiment was conducted in which actual jurors in a large urban county were randomly assigned to view a videotape of a civil case. Three versions of the videotapes were identical except that, on one, the plaintiff required an interpreter to communicate and it is approximately three minutes longer than the other two. On the other two versions, the plaintiff spoke English, but differed in ethnicity (Hispanic or Anglo). The findings showed that the non-English-speaking plaintiff did not fare worse than the English speakers, and, in fact, was awarded higher mean damages than either of the English speakers.