Black Defendants Research Articles

The Decision to Shoot Black Suspects in Brazil: The Police Officer’s Dilemma

Reports of Amnesty International (2015) indicate that Brazilian police are among the most violent in the world, and that such violence victimizes, above all, black citizens. Using the “First Person Shooter Task” (FPST), developed by Correll et al. (2002), we analyzed in three studies the impacts of suspect skin color on the Brazilian civilian and military police decision to shoot. The first study involved 97 white college students. The results indicated the presence of racist shooter bias: participants shot a black armed suspect faster than a white one and took longer to shoot an unarmed black suspect than a white one, and also made more mistakes not shooting the armed white man than the armed black man. In the second study, 60 male military police officers (MP) participated, 10 of them were white, 41 brown and 9 black. All police officers had 3 months of police service. The results indicated again the presence of racist shooter bias, but only in the response times. There was no effect of the participant’s skin color. The third study was conducted with 58 male MPs, 11 of them were white, 37 brown and 10 black, all with more than 10 years of police service. The same pattern of study 2 was found. The general results demonstrate that levels of racist shooter bias of police officers are not higher than that of civilians. The data are discussed considering the risk of racism in making extreme life and death decisions.

Fairness in the Exceptions: Trusting Juries on Matters of Race

Implicit bias research indicates that despite our expressly endorsed values, Americans share a pervasive bias disfavoring Black Americans and favoring White Americans. This bias permeates legislative as well as judicial decision-making, leading to the possibility of verdicts against Black defendants that are tainted with racial bias. The Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in Peña-Rodriguez v. Colorado provides an ex post remedy for blatant racism that impacts jury verdicts, while jury nullification provides an ex ante remedy by empowering jurors to reject convicting Black defendants when to do so would reinforce racially biased laws. Both remedies exist alongside a trend limiting the role of the jury and ultimately indicate that we trust juries to keep racism out of the courtroom in the exceptions to our normal procedures.

An Examination of the Impacts of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity on the Judicial Processing of Offenders in Family Violence Cases

Using the focal concerns perspective, the present study examined possible gender, race, and ethnic disparities on judges’ pretrial release, incarceration, and sentence length decisions in family violence cases. The results indicate that males were more likely to receive an order of bail (as opposed to release on own recognizance), received higher bail amounts, were less likely to make bail, were more likely to receive prison opposed to jail, and were incarcerated for significantly longer periods of time than women. Hispanic defendants were more likely than White defendants to receive higher bail amounts and were more likely to be detained until sentencing. Black defendants, on the other hand, were more likely to receive prison as opposed to jail than White offenders.

A Social Scientific Approach toward Understanding Racial Disparities in Police Shooting: Data from the Department of Justice (1980–2000)

AbstractWe analyze data from 213 metropolitan areas over a 21‐year period, and examine two possible reasons for the disproportionately high number of Black suspects killed in police officer‐involved shootings. One account suggests that such shootings reflect racial bias on the part of police. A second account suggests that Black suspects behave differently (perhaps more aggressively) than White suspects, and that police respond to suspects’ behavior (but not race). Our analysis statistically controls for racial differences in criminal activity (a proxy for behavior) and provides a statistical test of the effect of race on police shootings. Results suggest that officers are more likely to shoot Black suspects, even when race‐based differences in crime are held constant.

A Postconviction Mentality: Prosecutorial Assistance in Exoneration Cases

Prosecutors’ broad discretionary power has long been of interest to scholars, yet little is known about discretionary choices after conviction. This study addresses the gap by exploring prosecutors’ willingness to assist with exonerations. Using data from the National Registry of Exonerations (N = 1,610), the author identifies factors that influence prosecutorial assistance. Results from generalized ordered logistic regression models demonstrate that avoiding uncertainty and maintaining workgroup relationships drives decision-making. Findings indicate that prosecutors are less likely to support exonerations involving law enforcement or forensic misconduct, violent offenses, and inadequate legal defense and more likely to support exonerations involving innocence organizations, guilty pleas, and black and Hispanic defendants. These findings suggest that prosecutors’ interest in protecting professional reputations, maintaining relationships, and optimizing efficiency influences discretion in the postconviction stage just as in earlier stages of case processing.

Race–Crime Congruency Effects Revisited: Do We Take Defendants' Sexual Orientation Into Account?

Decades ago, social psychologists documented a juror decision-making bias called the race–crime congruency effect: a tendency to condemn Black men more than White men for stereotypically Black crimes but to do the reverse for stereotypically White crimes. We conducted two high-powered experiments (N = 2,520) to see whether this pattern replicates and to examine whether it is attenuated when the defendant is gay. When participants reported on what the average American juror would do (Experiment 1), we observed greater harshness toward Black defendants accused of stereotypically Black crimes but not the previously documented reversal for stereotypically White crimes. Defendant sexual orientation did not moderate this pattern. When participants reported their own judgments about the same criminal cases (Experiment 2), they expressed greater harshness toward White (vs. Black) defendants and toward heterosexual (vs. gay) defendants. These effects were not moderated by crime type. Implications for the race–crime congruency effect are discussed.

Quick to the draw: How suspect race and socioeconomic status influences shooting decisions

AbstractWe examined the role of both suspect race and socioeconomic status (SES) on shooting decisions during a first‐person shooter task. Two studies revealed that both suspect race and SES influenced shooting decisions. Non‐Black participants shot armed high‐SES Black suspects faster than armed high‐SES White suspects and responded “don't shoot” faster for unarmed high‐SES White suspects than unarmed high‐SES Black suspects. No race differences appeared in the low‐SES conditions—responses resembled high‐SES Black suspect. Signal detection, misses, and false alarm analyses revealed participants erred toward not shooting high‐SES White suspects. The current studies draw attention to considering both race and SES during shooting decisions.

Race and Perceptions of Police: Experimental Results on the Impact of Procedural (In)Justice

Procedural justice theory posits that people will view law and legal institutions as more legitimate and will be more willing to cooperate and comply with these institutions and their agents when treated in a procedurally just manner. While research supports this basic premise, questions remain about the influence of race on this process, especially in the wake of several recent highly publicized and controversial deadly force incidents involving white officers and black suspects. In this study, 546 participants were randomly assigned to view one of six videos depicting a simulated traffic stop. The videos featured three procedural justice conditions (positive, negative, and neutral) and two driver race conditions (white and African American). The findings showed that procedural justice improved encounter-specific assessments of police. Furthermore, black respondents assessed police less favorably than non-black respondents. In addition, the positive effect of procedural justice was larger when the driver was white.

Racial bias in judgments of physical size and formidability: From size to threat.

Black men tend to be stereotyped as threatening and, as a result, may be disproportionately targeted by police even when unarmed. Here, we found evidence that biased perceptions of young Black men's physical size may play a role in this process. The results of 7 studies showed that people have a bias to perceive young Black men as bigger (taller, heavier, more muscular) and more physically threatening (stronger, more capable of harm) than young White men. Both bottom-up cues of racial prototypicality and top-down information about race supported these misperceptions. Furthermore, this racial bias persisted even among a target sample from whom upper-body strength was controlled (suggesting that racial differences in formidability judgments are a product of bias rather than accuracy). Biased formidability judgments in turn promoted participants' justifications of hypothetical use of force against Black suspects of crime. Thus, perceivers appear to integrate multiple pieces of information to ultimately conclude that young Black men are more physically threatening than young White men, believing that they must therefore be controlled using more aggressive measures. (PsycINFO Database Record

Defendant and juror race in a necessity case: An ultimate attribution error

ABSTRACTThis study investigated whether Black and White mock jurors would commit the ultimate attribution error (i.e., over-rely on dispositional explanations to understand the negative actions of out-group members) in a necessity defense case. Participants (N = 97) read a fictional looting case, in which the race of the defendant varied. Mock jurors were expected to show out-group severity through more guilty verdicts and blame attributions. Mock juror and defendant race were not significantly related to verdicts, but for the Black defendant, White mock jurors attributed more control to him, and believed he was likely to reoffend more so than did Black mock jurors. This study adds to the literature on the mechanism by which racial bias interferes with juror decisions.

FACIAL PROFILING: RACE, PHYSICAL APPEARANCE, AND PUNISHMENT*

We investigate the associations among physical appearance, threat perceptions, and criminal punishment. Psychological ideas about impression formation are integrated with criminological perspectives on sentencing to generate and test unique hypotheses about the associations among defendant facial characteristics, subjective evaluations of threatening appearance, and judicial imprisonment decisions. We analyze newly collected data that link booking photos, criminal histories, and sentencing information for more than 1,100 convicted felony defendants. Our findings indicate that Black defendants are perceived to be more threatening in appearance. Other facial characteristics, such as physical attractiveness, baby‐faced appearance, facial scars, and visible tattoos, also influence perceptions of threat, as do criminal history scores. Furthermore, some physical appearance characteristics are significantly related to imprisonment decisions, even after controlling for other relevant case characteristics. These and other findings are discussed as they relate to psychological research on impression formation, criminological theories of court actor decision‐making, and sociological work on race and punishment.

“Racial bias in mock juror decision-making: A meta-analytic review of defendant treatment”: Correction to Mitchell et al. (2005).

Reports an error in "Racial Bias in Mock Juror Decision-Making: A Meta-Analytic Review of Defendant Treatment" by Tara L. Mitchell, Ryann M. Haw, Jeffrey E. Pfeifer and Christian A. Meissner (Law and Human Behavior, 2005[Dec], Vol 29[6], 621-637). In the article, all of the numbers in Appendix A were correct, but the signs were reversed for z' in a number of studies, which are listed. Also, in Appendix B, some values were incorrect, some signs were reversed, and some values were missing. The corrected appendix is included. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2006-00971-001.) Common wisdom seems to suggest that racial bias, defined as disparate treatment of minority defendants, exists in jury decision-making, with Black defendants being treated more harshly by jurors than White defendants. The empirical research, however, is inconsistent--some studies show racial bias while others do not. Two previous meta-analyses have found conflicting results regarding the existence of racial bias in juror decision-making (Mazzella & Feingold, 1994, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24, 1315-1344; Sweeney & Haney, 1992, Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 10, 179-195). This research takes a meta-analytic approach to further investigate the inconsistencies within the empirical literature on racial bias in juror decision-making by defining racial bias as disparate treatment of racial out-groups (rather than focusing upon the minority group alone). Our results suggest that a small, yet significant, effect of racial bias in decision-making is present across studies, but that the effect becomes more pronounced when certain moderators are considered. The state of the research will be discussed in light of these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record

Race and the Death Penalty in Louisiana: An Actuarial Analysis

This analysis of race and the death penalty in Louisiana looks at death-eligible cases, half of which were reduced to non-murder final charges, in addition to death penalty cases. It finds that black-on-black cases are under-represented in every category of outcome, and black-on white cases over-represented, leading all variances, at every outcome; whereas white defendant cases are mixed, over or under depending on outcome severity. Odds of a death sentence for a black defendant are eleven times greater if the victim is white rather than black. Death-eligible cases in five jurisdictions that are disparate in race mix and population density are found to have these same race category traits of variance in each, traits also shared by the death penalty cases. The hypothesis of race neutrality must be rejected in every jurisdiction, and a new hypothesis of uniformity of variance patterns, even with the death penalty group, is found viable. Felony aggravator homicide data is gathered inconsistently by jurisdictions, and the only sure aggravators, the 41% of aggravators coming from a coroner, show white-on-white over-representation leading the variance. Thus, race-of-victim analysis masks extreme differences between white victim cases, such as the fact that 31% of black-on-white homicides result in overcharged cases (death eligible cases finishing with non-murder charges), whereas only 11% of white-on-white cases do.

Show Me What Happened

Objectives: Using temporal sequencing of unedited police body-worn camera (BWC) footage of use of force incidents, we test four hypotheses to understand how incident-characteristics influence use of force, duration of that force, and the type and severity of force used by police. Method: We code and analyze using data visualization techniques and regression analysis unedited BWC footage involving use of force in a single police agency in the United States. Results: Use of force occurs relatively early in most interactions, though gender, race, and behavioral factors partially explain when and how much force is used. Regression results indicate that force is used more quickly against Black suspects and males. Suspect resistance predicts both time to force (TtF) and the duration of force applied. Finally, police are more likely to use greater levels of force in longer, more drawn-out interactions. Conclusions: Our results appear to support existing theories for disproportionate use of force, though we caution restraint in generalizing our results. We find support only at our temporal level (TtF) and do not find support for the duration or severity of that force used. These temporal variables provide additional context toward better understanding and further contextualizing use of force by police.

Are “Stand Your Ground” Laws Racist and Sexist? A Statistical Analysis of Cases in Florida, 2005–2013*

ObjectiveI test for racial and gender bias in the enforcement of “stand your ground” (SYG) laws, controlling for potential confounders often invoked to reject claims of racism and sexism.MethodsRegressions, simulations, and genetic matching are conducted using case‐level data from 237 incidents in the U.S. state of Florida between 2005 and 2013.ResultsControlling for potential confounders, the probability of conviction for a white defendant against a white victim is estimated to be 90 percent with much error; for a black defendant it is nearly 100 percent with little error. For a male defendant in a domestic case, the probability is 40 percent, whereas for a female defendant it is 80 percent.ConclusionsEnforcement of SYG laws appears biased against people of color in general and women specifically in the home. Policy implications are especially stark because these findings contradict recent research conducted for the U.S. Senate.

Studying Guilt Perception in Millennials

The present study explored mock jurors’ guilt judgments with a 2 (Jurors’ Race: Black vs. White) × 2 (Suspects’ Race: Black vs. White) × 2 (Suspects’ Attractiveness: High vs. Low) design in a group of Millennials ( N = 331). Black jurors were more lenient; all jurors were more lenient toward Black suspects; and White jurors were less lenient toward Black unattractive suspects. The current study contributes the following novel findings to the literature: documentation of a possible Black experimenter effect in mock jurors; an interaction among suspects’ race, suspects’ attractiveness, and jurors’ race, suggesting that racial bias exhibited by White jurors may be masking itself as an unattractiveness bias; and additive empathy by Black jurors toward persons who fall within more than one underprivileged group.

Using a Ratio Test to Estimate Racial Differences in Wrongful Conviction Rates

We show that under arguably plausible assumptions regarding the DNA exoneration process, in expectation, the ratio of DNA exoneration rates across races among defendants convicted for the same crime in the same state provides an upper bound on the ratio of wrongful conviction rates across races among these defendants. Our estimates of this statistic reveal that among those sentenced to incarceration for rape in the United States between 1983 and 1997, the wrongful conviction rate among white defendants was less than two-thirds of what it was for black defendants. Our results with respect to murder are inconclusive.

Privileged protection? Effects of suspect race and mental illness status on public perceptions of police use of force

This study experimentally examined the joint influence of suspect race and mental illness status on the public’s support for police use of force, and whether participants’ race and social attitudes moderated these findings. A diverse sample of community members (n = 259) from Portland, OR completed a survey with an imbedded experiment. Participants read a case file describing a police officer using force against a suspect who varied in race (Black vs. White) and mental illness status (history of mental illness vs. not), and indicated their level of support for the officer’s use of force. While overall support for use of force was low, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) confirmed a significant interaction between suspect mental illness status and race on the public’s support for police force. Mental illness was a mitigating factor against support for police use of force, but only for White suspects. For Black suspects, mental illness instead increased support for police force, although support remained relatively low. These results were not influenced by participants’ race. Instead, effects were moderated by participants’ pre-existing affect about Blacks, such that positive affect decreased support for force against mentally ill Black suspects. Mental illness status provides different protections based on suspect race, leading to racial bias in public support for police force. The results suggest that it may be relatively harder for the public to enact change against police force when it is directed against mentally ill racial minorities, as it is perceived less negatively by the public compared to White mentally ill individuals.

A Multilevel Test of the Racial Threat Hypothesis in One State’s Juvenile Court

Noting the paucity of research on the racial threat hypothesis in the juvenile courts, this study examined the interplay of defendant characteristics and country-level characteristics on dispositions. Data were retrieved from the Department of Juvenile Justice files in South Carolina and were analyzed using multinomial logistic hierarchical linear modeling. Results revealed support for the racial threat hypothesis, as racial inequity operated in a different manner (more punitively) for Black defendants. Larger Black populations in counties also led to an increased use of punitive sanctions. In addition, concentrated disadvantage effects were found, and heightened levels of teenage population led to higher incarceration rates for Black defendants. Limitations of this study, implications for stakeholders/practitioners, and directions for future research are discussed.

Do White Police Officers Unfairly Target Black Suspects?

Using a unique data set we link the race of police officers who kill suspects with the race of those who are killed across the United States. We have data on a total of 2,699 fatal police killings for the years 2013 to 2015. This is 1,333 more killings by police than is provided by the FBI data on justifiable police homicides. When either the violent crime rate or the demographics of a city are accounted for, we find that white police officers are not significantly more likely to kill a black suspect. For the estimates where we know the race of the officer who killed the suspect, the ratio of the rate that blacks are killed by black versus white officers is large — ranging from 3 to 5 times larger. However, because the media may under report the officer’s race when black officers are involved, other results that account for the fact that a disproportionate number of the unknown race officers may be more reliable. They indicate no statistically significant difference between killings of black suspects by black and white officers. Our panel data analysis that looks at killings at the police department level confirms this. These findings are inconsistent with taste-based racial discrimination against blacks by white police officers. Our estimates examining the killings of white and Hispanic suspects found no differences with respect to the races of police officers. If the police are engaged in discrimination, such discriminatory behavior should also be more difficult when body or other cameras are recording their actions. We find no evidence that body cameras affect either the number of police killings or the racial composition of those killings.