Wrongful Conviction Rates and Death Penalty Support: Acceptability Hypothesis in Japan

Abstract

This study tested the hypothesis that presenting people with information about wrongful convictions that are considered an unacceptable cost of administering justice lowers support for the death penalty. We recruited 815 participants using an online crowdsourcing service in Japan, randomly assigned them to eight groups with varying combinations of presence or absence of information emphasizing losses caused by wrongful convictions and asked them to answer questions on the death penalty. Results of the preregistration experiment showed no effect of loss emphasis, but the groups provided with information on wrongful conviction rates were less likely to support the death penalty than those with no information; the higher the wrongful conviction rate, the lower was the support. This study’s findings, which replicated a previous study’s findings with non-U.S. participants, support the acceptability hypothesis and confirm the institutional and cultural universality of the effect of wrongful conviction information on public attitude toward capital punishment.