How Much Do We Really Know about Race and Juries? A Review of Social Science Theory and Research

S INTERNATIONAL 52 (1992). 27. Robert W. Hymes et al., Acquaintance Rape: The Effect of Race of Defendant and Race of Victim on White Juror Decisions, 133 J. SOC. PSYCHOL. 627 (1993). 28. Laura T. Sweeney & Craig Haney, The Influence of Race on Sentencing: A MetaAnalytic Review of Experimental Studies, 10 BEHAV. SCI. & L. 179 (1992). 29. Andrea DeSantis & Wesley A. Kayson, Defendants' Characteristics of Attractiveness, Race, and Sex and Sentencing Decisions, 81 PSYCHOL. REP. 679 (1997). [Vol 78:997 2003] HOWMUCH DO WE REALLY KNOWABOUT RACE AND JURIES? 1007 of inadmissible evidence at trial as one such determining factor. 30 White mock jurors in this study were presented with the written summary of a bank robbery trial in which the defendant was either White or Black. In the baseline control version of the trial, the prosecution's case was circumstantial and ambiguous. In two experimental versions, the prosecution introduced a wiretap that suggested that the defendant had lied to police about his whereabouts at the time of the crime; this evidence was ruled either admissible or inadmissible. Results indicated that White mock jurors ignored this incriminating evidence when the defendant was White but not when he was Black. Jeffrey Pfeifer and colleagues have suggested that judicial instructions also determine whether or not White jurors exhibit racial bias.31 In one such study, mock jurors were given a rape trial transcript in which the defendant's race, as well as the presence or absence of jury instructions was varied. In the absence of jury instructions, White mock jurors gave higher guilt ratings to the Black defendant than the White defendant. Other White jurors were given instructions that emphasized the importance of juror impartiality and the requirement that jurors be "free from sympathy or prejudice. '32 These instructions eliminated any evidence of juror bias. Lynch and Haney came to similar conclusions regarding the influence of judicial instructions: the poorer their mock jurors' comprehension of judicial instructions, the more likely they were to demonstrate racial bias in a capital sentencing decision. 3 In addition to inadmissible evidence and judicial instructions, crime type has also been found to affect the likelihood of White juror bias. Sunnafrank and Fontes concluded that jurors have stereotypes about the types of crimes that people of different races tend to commit. 34 For example, they found that White jurors viewed white30. James D. Johnson et al., Justice is Still Not Colorblind: Differential Racial Effects of Exposure to Inadmissible Evidence, 21 PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. BULL. 893 (1995). 31. See, e.g., Erick L. Hill & Jeffrey E. Pfeifer, Nullification Instructions and Juror Guilt Ratings: An Examination of Modern Racism, 16 CONTEMP. SOC. PSYCHOL. 6 (1992); Jeffrey E. Pfeifer & James R. Ogloff, Ambiguity and Guilt Determinations: A Modern Racism Perspective, 21 J. APPLIED SOC. PSYCHOL. 1713 (1991). 32. Pfeifer & Ogloff, supra note 31, at 1718. 33. Mona Lynch & Craig Haney, Discrimination and Instructional Comprehension: Guided Discretion, Racial Bias, and the Death Penalty, 24 LAW & HUM. BEHAV. 337 (2000). 34. See Michael Sunnafrank & Norman E. Fontes, General and Crime Related Racial Stereotypes and Influence on Juridic Decisions, 17 CORNELL J. Soc. REL. 1 (1983). For further evidence of the influence of racial stereotypes on the information processing of jurors, see also Galen V. Bodenhausen, Stereotypic Biases in Social Decision Making and Memory: Testing CHICAGO-KENT LAW REVIEW collar crimes-such as counterfeiting and embezzlement-as consistent with a stereotype of White criminals. On the other hand, more violent crimes such as assault and robbery were associated with a Black criminal stereotype. These data led Sunnafrank and Fontes to suggest that the stereotypicality of a crime influences whether or not jurors demonstrate racial bias. In a direct test of this hypothesis, Gordon found that White mock jurors were indeed more likely to demonstrate racial bias when a Black defendant committed a stereotypic (i.e., violent) crime. 35 B. Studies Failing To Indicate White Juror Bias However, not all mock juror studies have found that White jurors demonstrate bias against Black defendants. Some researchers have arrived at the surprising conclusion that White jurors are biased against White defendants. In one such study, McGowen and King varied the race and socioeconomic status ("SES") of the defendant in a written assault case. 36 The mock jurors, all of whom were White, recommended significantly longer sentences for the White defendant than the Black defendant. Unfortunately, the manipulation in this study confounded the variables of race and SES: the defendant was depicted as either a high-SES White or a low-SES Black. It is therefore impossible to separate the effects of defendant race and SES on mock jurors. Poulson arrived at a similar result in an investigation of the insanity defense. 37 He presented mock jurors with an audiotaped summary of a murder trial in which the defendant's race was conveyed using a photograph slide show. When their individual verdict preferences were assessed, White mock jurors were found to be more likely to acquit the Black defendant by reason of insanity than the White defendant. However, this study's focus on the insanity defense makes it difficult to generalize these results to other, more typical Process Models of Stereotype Use, 55 J. PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. 726 (1988); Galen V. Bodenhausen & Meryl Lichtenstein, Social Stereotypes and Information-Processing Strategies: The Impact of Task Complexity, 52 J. PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. 871 (1987). 35. Randall A. Gordon, The Effect of Strong Versus Weak Evidence on the Assessment of Race Stereotypic and Race Nonstereotypic Crimes, 23 J. APPLIED SOC. PSYCHOL. 734 (1993). 36. Ramsey McGowen & Glen D. King, Effects of Authoritarian, Anti-Authoritarian, and Egalitarian Legal Attitudes on Mock Juror and Jury Decisions, 51 PsYCHOL. REP. 1067 (1982). 37. Ronald L. Poulson, Mock Juror Attribution of Criminal Responsibility: Effects of Race and the Guilty But Mentally III (GBMI) Verdict Option, 20 J. APPLIED SOC. PSYCHOL. 1596 (1990). [Vol 78:997 2003] HOW MUCH DO WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT RACE AND JURIES? 1009 trials. To the extent that White jurors view mental illness or "insanity" as more consistent with their stereotype of Black versus White defendants, Poulson's finding of same-race bias becomes less surprising. Still other researchers have concluded that a defendant's race has no reliable influence on White mock jurors. For example, Skolnick and Shaw presented Whites with a murder trial summary in which the defendant's race was varied.38 They found that White mock jurors' guilt ratings were about the same for the White and Black defendants. Again, though, the generalizability of these findings is dubious. This study was conducted for a special journal issue devoted to the O.J. Simpson trial, and Skolnick and Shaw designed their trial materials to resemble the Simpson case. Furthermore, the study was run in Southern California while Simpson's civil trial was ongoing, and the authors cautioned against interpreting their results outside of this unique context. In general, it is difficult to judge the persuasiveness of individual mock juror studies that have reported no evidence of White juror bias because their conclusions are based upon statistically nonsignificant, null results.39 The most rigorous social science support for the claim that White jurors' individual judgments are not influenced by a defendant's race is provided by Mazzella and Feingold's metaanalysis of over eighty studies with more than 6,000 participants. 40 However, only ten of the studies included in this analysis (which also investigated the attractiveness, gender, and SES of defendants) actually examined the influence of race on jurors' guilt judgments, and only two of them were published after 1990. Once again, the authors themselves caution against overinterpretation of these results regarding defendant race, writing that "the finding of no general effects of race.., was misleading because race apparently interacted complexly with other factors in influencing jurors' judgments of