Guilty until proven innocent: conviction orientation, racial attitudes, and support for capital punishment

Abstract

A long-standing objection to the death penalty is that it has been applied disproportionately to African Americans. A more recent objection centers on concern that standards for selecting death qualified juries bias these juries in the favor of the prosecution. This research investigates the empirical connections between these two objections by analyzing the structure of attitudes and beliefs that connect support for the death penalty with attitudes suggesting racial prejudice on the one hand and a conviction-prone orientation on the other. Multivariate analysis of data from the 1990 and 1996 General Social Surveys suggest that those who are more likely to be allowed to serve on death penalty cases are not only more likely to harbor racially prejudiced attitudes, but also are more likely to favor the conviction of innocent defendants over letting guilty ones go free. The results also show punishment orientation to be influenced by a negative view of human nature and belief in a rigid adherence to law.