How defendants’ legal status and ethnicity and participants’ political orientation relate to death penalty sentencing decisions.

Abstract

Increases in U.S. immigration and the growth in the Latino population highlight the importance of understanding the influence of ethnicity and legal status on participants' decision-making. Furthermore, immigration is a politically charged topic, which suggests participants' political orientation might relate to their decisions in cases involving immigrant defendants. Using the justification-suppression model of prejudice, this study investigated the influence of a defendant's ethnicity and legal status in the context of a death penalty trial. Results demonstrate that the defendant's ethnicity did not influence participants' punishment decisions, but legal status did. Specifically, participants were generally more punitive toward both undocumented and documented immigrant defendants, compared to U.S.-born defendants. Punitiveness toward documented immigrants was qualified by an interaction with participants' political orientation, such that middle-of-the-road and more liberal participants reported greater punitiveness toward a documented immigrant defendant, compared to a U.S.-born defendant, but more conservative participants reported no differences in punitiveness between documented immigrant defendants and U.S.-born defendants. This effect was mediated by participants' evaluation of mitigators and aggravators but only among more liberal and middle-of-the-road participants. Implications for policy and future directions are discussed. What is the significance of this article for the general public?In the context of a simulated death penalty trial, this study found that liberal and moderate mock jurors were more punitive toward documented immigrants compared to American citizens. Conservative mock jurors did not demonstrate this bias. This finding suggests that under certain circumstances, political orientation can bias jurors' perceptions of defendants who are immigrants. This bias would unfairly impact the right to a fair trial of defendants who are immigrants.

The Role of Intergroup Threat in Support of Punitive Policies Toward Mexican Immigrants

“…Social dominance orientation was measured with Pratto et al’s (1994) 16-item SDO scale (Cronbach’s α = .94), which assesses reactions to statements such as, “Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups,” and “Sometimes other groups must be kept in their place” (1 = Very Negative to 7 = Very Positive ). A single-item measure (Alvarez & Miller, 2017) assessed political attitudes: “How would you describe your political attitudes?” (1 = Very Liberal to 7 = Very Conservative ). To assess intergroup contact, participants estimated the percentage of their close family members and friends who are Mexican immigrants (0%–100%).…”

Political behavior inside and outside the lab: Bringing political research to the real world.

“…To that end, the present issue contains six primary articles that interface research with real-world political problems. These include articles on the consequences of system justification to one’s belief in economic prospects (Jost et al, 2017), applying the underlying causes of why people support torture to modern torture debates (Houck & Repke, 2017), parsing implications of a tipping point model of radicalization for ongoing political policies (Bal & van den Bos, 2017), investigating applications of a disgust sensitivity model to the 2012 U.S. presidential election (Shook, Oosterhoff, Terrizzi, & Brady, 2017), considering policy implications of the justification-suppression model of immigration attitudes (Alvarez & Miller, 2017), and understanding modern political polarization through asymmetrical partisan-selective exposure (Rodriguez, Moskowitz, Salem, & Ditto, 2017).…”

A social prospect theory of intergroup relations explains the occurrence of incremental progressive social change

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