Impact of juror attitudes about the death penalty on juror evaluations of guilt and punishment: A meta-analysis.

Abstract

This literature review summarizes the existing research examining how the attitude a potential juror has toward the death penalty impacts on the probability of favoring conviction. The summary of 14 investigations indicates that a favorable attitude toward the death penalty is associated with an increased willingness to convict (average r = .174). Using the binomial effect size display, this favorable attitude towards the death penally translates into a 44% increase in the probability of a juror favoring conviction.

Victim Impact Testimony and Juror Judgments: The Effects of Harm Information and Witness Demeanor1

“…Most noteworthy is the fact that participants were not death qualified. As we indicated previously, death penalty attitudes (e.g., Allen et al, 1998;Luginbuhl & Middendorf, 1988), as well as the death-qualification process itself (e.g., Haney, 1984), can significantly impact on jurors' decisionmaking process in capital crime cases. Our findings must therefore be qualified by the fact that we presented all participants with the trial scenario, rather than limiting our participant pool to those most likely to hear a death-penalty case.…”

“…The research on juror decision making in capital cases is substantial (Allen, Mabry, & McKelton, 1998). However, the majority of this research has focused either on the role of jury instructions (Diamond, 1993;Luginbuhl, 1992;Luginbuhl & Howe, 1995;Wiener et al, 1998;Wiener, Pritchard, & Weston, 1995) or on how the death qualification process might influence decisions (Cowan, Thompson, & Ellsworth, 1984;Haney, 1984;Haney, Hurtado, & Vega, 1994;Robinson, 1993).…”

A Field Study of the Presumptively Biased: Is There Empirical Support for Excluding Convicted Felons from Jury Service?

“…; Moran and Comfort 1982a), race (King ; Mills and Bohannon ), native language (Hsieh ), occupational status (Cowan, Thompson, and Ellsworth ; Bridgeman and Marlowe ; Simon ), religion (Miller et al. ; Seltzer ; Eisenberg, Garvey, and Martin T. Wells ), socioeconomic status (Adler ; Reed ), level of education (Mills and Bohannon ; Bridgeman and Marlowe ; Simon ), history of victimization (Culhane, Hosch, and Weaver ), political affiliation (Kravitz, Cutler, and Brock ), and view of the death penalty (Allen, Mabry, and McKelton ; Horowitz and Seguin ; Bernard and Dwyer ; Cowan, Thompson, and Ellsworth ; Moran and Comfort 1982b).…”

An Empirical Comparison of the Old and Revised Jury Instructions of California: Do Jurors Comprehend Legal Ease Better or Does Bias Still Exist?

“…Though attitudes towards the justice system have been widely investigated in areas such as the death penalty [23], influences of gender and race on juror decision making [24] [25] [26], and insanity [27], there have been no studies to date that relate attitudes towards the criminal system and comprehension of legal terminology [16]. If we are to accurately define how juror instructions contribute to accurate decision making by juror members, then we must rule out other possible explanations, namely the attitudes towards the legal system a juror brings with them in the first place.…”