The Effect of Defendant SES on Decisions Made Research Paper

The Effect of Defendant SES on Decisions Made - Research Paper Example Group data was analyzed using T - test. Results did not show any significant difference (p> 0.05) deviated from the null hypothesis of equal chance at the level of significant 0.05. There is no significant difference between ratings of guilt, responsibility and length of sentences proposed by participants in the two groups. Many persons look to the court or judicial system for justice. In lands where common law legal system prevails, juries are part of the judicial process. Possibly, it is the 'single most defining feature' (Decaire, n.d.) of this kind of legal system. A jury, composed of average citizens, hears the evidence and determines guilt or innocence. Then, depending on the type of case, the judge may sentence the guilty parties. Over the last decades, however, exploratory evidence implies that the jury system has been infiltrated by prejudice. Decaire (n.d.) noted the following: In a perfect, just world, the jury system would provide a fair and elaborate procedure through which a defendant's potential guilt in the violation of criminal laws would be determined in an unbiased manner. However, empirical evidence suggests that this "fair and unbiased" procedure is failing. Baldwin and McConville (1979) found that as many as 5 percent of jury trials in England came up with disturbingly questionable convictions. And this conclusion is not limited to investigators, Kalven and Zeisal (1966) noted that judges and jurors disagreed regarding the verdicts in as many as 20 percent of cases. An ever growing body of evidence suggests that juries may be, both consciously and unconsciously, using a number of extra-evidential factors in order to come to their decisions. Several psychological studies gave evidence that "extra-evidential factors" such as race or ethnicity, halo and devil effect and socioeconomic status of the defendant can influence jury's decision processes. Race or Ethnicity The connection between race and jury decision making has raved great controversy in recent years (Sommers, 2007). Researches, however, do not have an exclusively consistent result on how defendant's race and jury's decisions are linked. Surprisingly, though, 'several studies in the past two decades reveal evidence of White juror bias against Black defendants' (Sommers & Ellsworth, 2003). For instance, statistical review of fourteen studies by Sweeney and Haney (1992 as quoted in Sommers & Ellsworth, 2003) showed that White mock jurors advocated Black defendants with longer sentences than White defendants. Halo and Devil Effect Affect heuristic, 'the subjective impressions of goodness/badness act as a heuristic - a source of fast, perceptual