Juror Gender Research Articles

모의 배심원의 성별, 피해자의 저항 여부와 지적장애 유무가 성폭력 처벌 판단에 미치는 영향

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of mock juror's gender, the resistance and intellectual disability of victim on punishment judgments in a sexual assault case, this study is designed with between subjects 2(resistance: do vs do not) X 2(intellectual disability: present vs absent). Participants, aged 20 to 59 eligible for jury duty nationwide, were presented with manipulated trial scenarios and narratives regarding the resistance and intellectual disability of victim. Subsequently, they were asked to provide judgments on guilty/not guilty, probability of guilt, sentencing, as well as to provide Korean Hostile Sexism ratings. Although there was no interaction effect between the victim resistance and intellectual disability of victim on the probability of guilt and sentencing, the probability of guilt was higher when resistance was present and when there was an intellectual disability. Additionally, sentencing was higher when there was an intellectual disability. The study findings indicated that female were more likely than male to render guilty verdicts. Further analysis revealed a sequential mediating effect between gender and sentencing judgments, mediated by hostile sexism ratings and judgment of consent to sexual intercourse. In other words, men had a higher level of hostile sexism ratings than women, and the higher hostile sexism ratings, the higher the degree of sexual consent. The higher the degree of sexual consent, the lower the punitive judgment.

Juror decision-making within domestic sex trafficking cases: do pre-trial attitudes, gender, culture and right-wing authoritarianism predict believability assessments?

PurposeThis study aims to examine whether country of residence, sex trafficking attitudes, complainant gender, juror gender and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) influenced juror decision-making within a sex trafficking case.Design/methodology/approachJury-eligible participants from the USA and the UK participated in an online juror experiment in which an independent group design was used to manipulate the complainant’s gender. Participants completed the juror decision scale, the sex trafficking attitudes scale and the RWA scale.FindingsSex trafficking attitudes predicted the believability of both the defendant and complainant. Greater negative beliefs about victims predicted greater defendant believability and lower complainant believability. US jurors reported greater believability of both the complainant and defendant, and RWA was associated with greater defendant believability. However, none of the other factors, including complainant and juror gender, predicted participants’ verdicts. The findings suggest juror verdicts in sex trafficking cases may be less influenced by extra-legal factors, although further research is needed, especially with a more ambiguous case.Originality/valueThis is one of the few cross-cultural comparison studies in the area of jury decision-making, specifically regarding sex trafficking cases. The findings indicated that US participants held more problematic attitudes about sex trafficking than their UK counterparts, although all participants held problematic attitudes about sex trafficking. However, those attitudes did not affect verdict formation about either a male or female complainant. Participants who were more knowledgeable about sex trafficking reported greater complainant believability, suggesting that educational interventions may provide greater support for victims in court.

Juror gender and influence in a domestic violence trial

In two online mock jury deliberation studies (N1 = 326, N2 = 531), I investigate how a juror's gender and emotion expression impacts how influential they are perceived to be and how much influence they actually have in deliberation. Participants perceived a female juror to be less influential than a male juror, but were actually influenced by this juror equally regardless of gender. Neither form of influence was affected by the juror's emotion expression. I argue that because the trial depicted domestic violence, which is culturally associated with female victims, women have more influence in this situation than they typically would. These findings suggest that even when women are influential in interaction, they may not be acknowledged as such. Further, they highlight the importance of task content both theoretically in studies of status and gender and practically in contexts such as jury selection, particularly when that content includes gender-based violence.

The Attractive Criminal: Do Defendants' Attractiveness, Crime, and Juror Gender Affect Punitiveness and Verdict?

The Attractive Criminal: Do Defendants' Attractiveness, Crime, and Juror Gender Affect Punitiveness and Verdict?

Factors that Influence Mock Jurors’ Perceptions of Child Credibility

ABSTRACT Child sexual abuse (CSA) remains a significant societal problem; however, few CSA cases are actually brought to trial. The cases that do proceed to trial typically involve little evidence, therefore, it is imperative that legal professionals become more aware of possible factors that may contribute to jurors’ perceptions of child complainants and in turn influence their case decisions. The goal of this study was to investigate the influence of jury instructions, child complainant age, child’s level of sexual knowledge, and preexisting beliefs about CSA on mock jurors’ child credibility ratings. Participants (N = 388) evaluated a mock CSA trial transcript and answered questions related to the child’s credibility. Results indicated that child credibility was dependent on mock jurors’ knowledge about CSA, which in turn, differed by mock juror gender. Pre-evidence jury instructions also influenced mock jurors’ CSA misconception endorsements. Child sexual knowledge level did not influence credibility, nor did it interact with child age. Our study suggests that specialized pre-evidence jury instructions may educate legal fact finders about alleged CSA victims and in turn may enhance their views of children in this specific legal context.

The Effects of Victim Gender Identity, Juror Gender, and Judicial Instructions on Victim Blaming, Crime Severity Ratings, and Verdicts in Sexual Assault Trials

ABSTRACT Transgender individuals may experience social discrimination and unfair legal considerations as crime victims. The current purpose was to investigate the relationship between the participant/jurors’ gender, the victims’ gender identity, and judge’s instructions to ignore the gender identity of the victim on perceptions of the victim and the crime and verdicts rendered in a sexual assault case. Overall, crime severity ratings were significantly lower for the trans male victim compared to the cisgender female victim. Male participants reported lower crime severity ratings for trials involving transgender victims compared to cisgender victims. However, victim blaming, likelihood that the defendant committed the crime, sentencing recommendations, verdict confidence, and conviction rates did not vary by the victim’s gender identity, the participant’s gender identity, nor the judge’s instructions. Participant gender as a predictor of verdict approached significance, indicating a trend for males to render more not guilty verdicts and females to render more guilty verdicts. In summary, male jurors perceived the crimes involving transgender victims as less severe and this may have impacted the rate of not guilty verdicts.

Lady Injustice: The Moderating Effect of Ambivalent Sexism in a Mock Case of Intimate Partner Homicide

Extra-legal biases have an undue effect on legal proceedings, warranting explorations of gender bias in the courtroom to promote and maintain just verdicts. We used an experimentally manipulated mock court transcript of an intimate partner homicide, in which the defendant has been victimized by intimate partner violence. We explore whether hostile and benevolent sexism moderate the decisions of mock jurors. Men and women mock jurors ( N = 220) responded to the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory before being randomly allocated to read a transcript of either a female or male defendant, and then responding to five sentence outcome variables. Hostile and benevolent sexism moderated several sentencing outcome variables, across a range of male and female juror and defendant gender combinations, suggesting these forms of sexism are consequential in driving forensic gender biases. This study also contributes to the literature suggesting that male victims of female-perpetrated intimate partner violence are systemically disadvantaged in courtroom processes.

The impact of anti-gay bias on verdicts and sentencing with gay defendants

Previous research has documented conviction bias against gay men in stereotype-consistent crimes driven by moral outrage, stereotype consistency, and anti-gay bias. However, research has not demonstrated this conviction bias in stereotype inconsistent crimes. Other research has shown that jurors high in right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) are lenient toward perpetrators of anti-gay hate crimes. However, authoritarianism and anti-gay bias have not been used to predict verdicts for gay defendants. This article examines the impact of juror gender, authoritarianism, sexual orientation, and anti-gay bias on verdicts for gay defendants in a stereotype consistent and stereotype inconsistent crime. Anti-gay bias and authoritarianism predicted convictions for gay defendants in both stereotype consistent and stereotype inconsistent crime scenarios, and the constructs were correlated. These findings add to the research base by showing that anti-gay bias and authoritarianism can predict verdicts for gay defendants in stereotype inconsistent cases.

Juror gender and confession evidence: an exploratory study of effects on empathy and trial outcomes for juvenile defendants

We explored how relations among juror gender, confession evidence, and empathy impacted verdicts for a juvenile defendant accused of a serious crime. Jury-eligible women and men (N = 132) participated in a mock trial involving a girl defendant who had either maintained her innocence, confessed voluntarily, or confessed under coercion. Participants reviewed case materials, received juror instructions, and reported their verdict and empathy for the girl defendant. A manipulation check ensured participants attended to details surrounding the confession and participants were grouped by whether they perceived the confession as voluntary or coerced. A logistic regression analysis examined main and interactive effects of juror gender and perceived-confession condition on jurors’ verdicts, and the PROCESS regression macro-examined whether effects revealed therein could be explained by empathy toward the juvenile. Juror gender did not have a significant indirect effect on verdicts in either the no-confession, B = .05, 95% CI [− .005, .85], or perceived-coerced-confession conditions, B = − .12, 95% CI [− .36, .02]. However, women’s lower levels of empathy translated into a higher conviction rate among women versus men for the juvenile who was perceived as confessing voluntarily, B = − .28, 95% CI [− .75, − .02]. Women and men differ in ways that may sometimes produce outcomes that are less favorable to juvenile defendants. Implications for jury practice and process are considered.

Elder sexual abuse and implicit agism: examining the warm-incompetent bias among mock jurors

ABSTRACTImplicit ageist beliefs about the warmth and incompetence of older adults may influence jurors’ perceptions and judgments of an older adult’s competence in legal cases hinging on capacity and consent, including elder sexual abuse. However, little is known about the nuances of implicit agism in elder sexual abuse cases, and if it can be attenuated. The current study proposed to address these gaps via a randomized vignette design administered to a community sample of 391 US adults. Mock juror participants evaluated an elder sexual abuse case involving an older married couple, in which the victim had dementia. Results suggest that implicit agism was present among mock jurors, consistent with a warm-incompetence bias, and was predictive of mock jurors’ guilt ratings. Age- and dementia-relevant jury instructions and mock juror gender were not found to be predictive of guilt ratings. Implicit agism among jurors should be addressed to reduce the potential for implicit age bias to affect elder sexual abuse cases.

Examining Mock Jurors' Perceptions of Intimate Partner Violence Factors

The purpose of the current study was to examine whether juror gender, male-to-female or female-to-male abuse, eyewitness age (8, 12, and 16 years old), and type of intimate partner violence witnessed (physical, sexual, and emotional) influenced mock jurors' decision-making. Mock jurors (N = 1,162) read a trial transcript where the child of a married couple witnessed one of the three types of intimate partner violence, perpetrated by the husband against his wife or the wife against her husband, and answered related questions. Mock jurors were asked to render a dichotomous verdict, continuous guilt rating, and rate their perceptions of the victim, defendant, and eyewitness. Male jurors were more likely to find the defendant guilty when the defendant was female and the witness was 16 years old; additionally, female mock jurors assigned higher guilt ratings for the male defendant compared to the female defendant. Mock jurors also assigned higher guilt ratings when the abuse was physical compared to both sexual and emotional; abuse also influenced perceptions of the defendant, victim, and eyewitness. Mock jurors also were more likely to hold positive perceptions of the eyewitness when she was 16 years old compared to 8 years old. The results of the current study suggest that gender of the defendant and victim may combine to influence mock jurors' perceptions of a case involving intimate partner violence; moreover, the type of abuse witnessed by a child also may impact the child's perceived credibility.

An examination of aversive heterosexism in the courtroom: Effects of defendants’ sexual orientation and attractiveness, and juror gender on legal decision making.

An examination of aversive heterosexism in the courtroom: Effects of defendants’ sexual orientation and attractiveness, and juror gender on legal decision making.

Jurors’ perceptions of scientific testimony: The role of gender and testimony complexity in trials involving DNA evidence

AbstractWith continuous advancements in forensic science, expert testimony has become more common in criminal proceedings. This study (N = 170) sought to examine the combined influence of mock juror gender, expert gender, and testimony complexity in a case involving DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) evidence. Findings revealed that testimony complexity interacted with expert gender to influence verdict judgments. Participants were unaffected by testimony complexity when the expert was a man, but were more likely to convict when complex testimony was presented by a woman. In support of the heuristic-systematic model, expert gender elicited an effect only in high-complexity conditions—interestingly, this was exclusively the case for male mock jurors. Understanding how jurors cognitively process legal and extra-legal information may help legal actors (e.g., evidence experts, lawyers) communicate evidence and its legal relevance more effectively.

Juror decision making in not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder trials: Effects of defendant gender and mental illness type

This study sought to examine the potential impact of defendant gender and mental illness type on Canadian juror decision making by manipulating the gender (man, woman) and mental illness (substance abuse disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar, depression) of the defendant in a second-degree murder case involving an insanity plea. Participants read a trial transcript that included definitions of second-degree murder and the not criminally on account of mental disorder (NCRMD) defense. Participants then provided a verdict (guilty or NCRMD) and completed various scales measuring attributional judgments, perceptions of the defendant, and perceived dangerousness. Contrary to expectations, NCRMD was chosen over a guilty verdict in the majority of cases. Findings also indicated that participant decisions and perceptions regarding defendants diagnosed with substance abuse disorder differed from the other mental illness groups. The gender of the defendant had an influence on participants' perceptions of internal attributions, and the perceived stability of criminal behaviors. Results suggest that perceptions of mental illness influence verdicts in NCRMD cases, and that defendant gender plays a role in participants' perceptions of defendants. These findings contribute to the scarce literature on mental illness in the Canadian court system. Future research should examine the interaction between juror gender, defendant gender, and mental illness in insanity cases.

Who Is the Rotten Apple? Mock Jurors' Views of Teacher-Student Sexual Contact.

The present study investigated mock jurors' ( N = 541) perceptions of a hypothetical case of teacher-student sexual contact. Mock jurors read a brief vignette describing an alleged sexual encounter where the gender and age of both the teacher and student were manipulated. Participants rendered legal decisions (i.e., verdict, degree of guilt, and sentence length), as well as culpability judgments pertaining to both the teacher and the student (i.e., blame, cause, and desire for the sexual contact). In addition, the effects of mock juror gender and attitudes regarding both rape myth acceptance and homophobia were investigated. Teacher gender and both teacher and student age predicted mock jurors' recommended sentences, with male teachers, older teachers, and younger students leading to greater sentences. Overall, student age was most consistently related to multiple culpability judgments, and the culpability judgments regarding the victim were the most consistently predicted by the independent variables. We did not find any evidence of homosexist attitudes, meaning that same-gender teacher-student contact was not judged any differently than opposite-gender contact. Worth noting, we found an interaction such that male students victimized by female teachers were judged to have wanted the contact more than any other gender combination, especially by male participants. The authors discuss these findings in the context of the child sexual abuse (CSA) literature concluding that many of the findings of more prototypical CSA cases extend to the teacher-student context. We also discuss the implications of these findings in terms of gendered judgments of adolescents who are victimized by teachers, possibly decided by legal professionals, school administrators, and jurors themselves. In particular, the three-way gender interaction can be interpreted in the context of stereotypes regarding sexual development marking sexual contact between adolescent males and older females as a "rite of passage" into adulthood.

The Power of the First-Person Narrative: Ericka Huggins and the Black Panther Party

In 1971 Black Panther Party (BPP) members Ericka Huggins and Bobby Seale were tried for kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy. In a fury, one juror picked up a chair in the deliberation room and threatened, Let these defendants go. You know you don't have any evidence. If you want to confine them to prison for the rest of their lives go on and try it, but I swear I will kill you to death.1 In recalling this moment leading up to her release, Huggins described how this juror's remarks had a no-nonsense, don't cross tone, making note of the female juror's gender, her whiteness, and her occupation as a nurse. She learned about this critical information at the completion of the trial, admitting, Thank God with everything in me because when it came to declaring a verdict, the women were the ones said, ?You know there's no evidence. Why are we trying these people?' Huggins's account illustrates the key role she believes women played in granting her freedom. She also claimed one white male juror held out to the very end. After two hung juries, she stated, judge said, ?Let them go, we cost the taxpayers of Connecticut too much money. The defendants are free to go.' Evoking her feelings of triumph, she continued, So Bobby and I out day (Interview by the author, April 16, 2010). Her words walked out, represent a feeling of liberation from the bars of injustice. The silence black women revolutionaries so often encounter became part of Huggins's experience at the trial. Huggins's account of her trial and imprisonment responds to her invisibility in the face of official record keeping, and it serves as an example of the marginalization many female activists experienced during the civil rights and black power eras of the 1960s and 1970s. Her first-person narratives depict the direct impact of governmental repression similarly shared by Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, Mabel Robinson Williams, and others, whose voices most often remained distorted and excluded from the official public record.Reframing history through her personal experience, Huggins challenges hegemonic practices of power and knowledge. At the center of the historical record she serves as a critical player in the black radical protest movement. Her stories as a living Black Panther Party member recognize her agency and allow for a new kind of history invokes passion and feelings. Interviews play a critical role in reconstructing black womens lives and they capture the importance of affect in history making. They offer a way to unpack emotions and provide intimate views of the experiences of BPP members. Black women's personal writing and reflections are important sources for helping us better understand the black power era and notions of gender, feminism, history, and motherhood. Huggins agreed to talk with me on the condition I produce research that goes beyond a scholarly approach (interview by the author, February 20, 2010). As a case study, Huggins's personal account became critical in the political enfranchisement of women in the BPP. It is a radical intervention captures an important subjective point of view and functions as a feminist methodological praxis privileges personal experience. Her story provides an alternative political discourse for understanding the implications of history, allowing Huggins to move from the background to the foreground of the BPP.The Black Panther Party, one of the most well-known organizations during the black power movement, functioned as a grassroots political coalition-building organization founded in Oakland, California, in 1966. The BPP practiced their cofounder Huey P. Newton's theory of intercommunalism, which transformed over time to meet the changing needs of black and poor communities. Judson Jeffries explains, Newton suggested the stage of Intercommunalism will come about when the world's nonruling class seizes the means of production (presumably of the entire imperialist system) and distributes the wealth in an equitable fashion to the many communities of the world (2002, 80). …

Explaining gender differences in jurors' reactions to child sexual assault cases.

In three experiments, we investigated the influence of juror, victim, and case factors on mock jurors' decisions in several types of child sexual assault cases (incest, day care, stranger abduction, and teacher-perpetrated abuse). We also validated and tested the ability of several scales measuring empathy for child victims, children's believability, and opposition to adult/child sex, to mediate the effect of jurors' gender on case judgments. Supporting a theoretical model derived from research on the perceived credibility of adult rape victims, women compared to men were more empathic toward child victims, more opposed to adult/child sex, more pro-women, and more inclined to believe children generally. In turn, women (versus men) made more pro-victim judgments in hypothetical abuse cases; that is, attitudes and empathy generally mediated this juror gender effect that is pervasive in this literature. The experiments also revealed that strength of case evidence is a powerful factor in determining judgments, and that teen victims (14 years old) are blamed more for sexual abuse than are younger children (5 years old), but that perceptions of 5 and 10 year olds are largely similar. Our last experiment illustrated that our findings of mediation generalize to a community member sample.

Effects of child interview tactics on prospective jurors' decisions.

Although decisions in child sexual abuse (CSA) cases are influenced by many factors (e.g., child age, juror gender), case and trial characteristics (e.g., interview quality) can strongly influence legal outcomes. In the present study, 319 prospective jurors read about a CSA investigation in which the alleged victim was interviewed at a child advocacy center (CAC) or traditional police setting. The prospective jurors then provided legally relevant ratings (e.g., child credibility, interview quality, defendant guilt). Structural equation modeling techniques revealed that child credibility predicted greater confidence in guilt decisions and also mediated all associations with such decisions. Having fewer negative prior opinions and rating the interview as of better quality were associated with higher child credibility ratings. Mitigating factors (e.g., interview quality), as opposed to proxy indicators (e.g., participant gender), better predicted CSA case outcomes. Similar associations across groups (e.g., CAC interviews did not make child victims more or less credible) permit a tentative conclusion that CACs do not positively or negatively affect decisions made in hypothetical CSA cases. Ideas for future studies examining factors influencing decisions in CSA cases are discussed.

Mock Juror Gender Biases and Perceptions of Self-Defense Claims in Intimate Partner Homicide

Findings are reported from an experiment that examined mock jurors’ gender biases regarding intimate homicide case adjudications. Mock jurors were more likely to convict a man than a woman who had killed an abusive partner, which was partially mediated by sympathy toward both the victim and defendant. Analyses revealed an abuser height and abuser gender interaction such that conviction rates for women defendants were higher when her abuser was taller compared to when he was shorter than she; abuser height did not influence conviction rates for men. Findings also suggested that when given information about a child being present, mock jurors perceived the killing of the abusive partner as an act to protect that child. The results are discussed in relation to how extra-legal factors impact juror perceptions of domestic violence cases in the courtroom.

The Observed Witness Efficacy Scale: a measure of effective testimony skills

AbstractDespite advances in the scientific methodology of witness testimony research, no sound measure currently exists to evaluate perceptions of testimony skills. Drawing on self‐efficacy and witness preparation research, the present study describes development of the Observed Witness Efficacy Scale (OWES). Factor analyses of a mock jury sample yielded a two‐factor structure (poise and communication style) consistent with previous research on witness self‐ratings of testimony delivery skills. OWES subscales showed differential patterns of association with witness credibility, witness believability, agreement with the witness, and verdict decision. Juror gender moderated the impact of communication style, but not poise, on belief of and agreement with the witness. Results are discussed with attention to application of the OWES to witness research and preparation training.