Psychiatric Labelling and the Imputation of Mental Illness by Jurors

Abstract

Abstract Previous research suggests that jurors in defense-of-insanity trials are influenced significantly more by defendent behavior than by professional psychiatric diagnoses. This finding would appear to refute labelling theory's emphasis on societal reaction as equally or more important in the development of a deviant career. These earlier studies of jury decision making, however, were not designed as tests of the labelling perspective and the results must therefore be regarded as inconclusive. The study reported here represents an attempt to reassess the issue of the relative influence of defendent behavior and psychiatric labelling on jurors while allowing for conflicting testimony and operationalizing behavior in terms of residual rule-breaking. Defendent behavior again emerges as the variable with the greatest explanatory power, but the findings do provide evidence of a significant labelling effect as well. Implications for labelling theory and defense-of-insanity trials are discussed.