Opinion ID: 1407576
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: The Wilson Study [66]

Text: The subjects of Wilson's study were 187 junior and senior college students at the University of Texas. They were given one-half page written descriptions of the facts presented to the jury in five criminal court cases. ( Wilson, supra, at p. 2; the written descriptions are set forth at pp. 10-12 of the study.) Four of these cases involved homicide charges, and one of the four (a robbery murder) involved two defendants. The fifth described case was a rape charge. Four of the case descriptions included brief jury instructions. The subject/jurors were asked to assume that you are a member of the jury before whom each of these cases is being tried.... On the basis of these facts and your interpretation and evaluation of them, decide whether you feel the defendant is guilty or innocent and indicate your feelings on the answer sheet provided. ( Id., at p. 9.) Wilson used the total number of guilty verdicts rendered by each subject/juror as an index of [that juror's] tendency to say guilty. ( Id., at p. 2.) Thus, because one case involved two defendants, the maximum number of guilty or not guilty verdicts was six. Wilson then compared the percentage of guilty votes cast by the subject/jurors who indicated they had conscientious scruples against the death penalty, or capital punishment, for crime with the percentage of guilty votes cast by subject/jurors without such scruples. The results he reported are illustrated by the following graph. Wilson found that a majority of both groups voted guilty on three or four occasions. However, 22 percent of the subject/jurors with conscientious scruples against the death penalty voted guilty on two or less occasions, as compared to only 9 percent of the subject/jurors without such scruples. At the other end of the spectrum, 30 percent of the jurors without conscientious scruples against capital punishment voted guilty in five or six cases, as compared to 17 percent of the jurors with such scruples. These results were statistically significant; the p value was less than .02. As the testimony below indicated, the Wilson study, like Goldberg, was certainly not a very sophisticated study. It had generally the same shortcomings as Goldberg. It was useful primarily to suggest there may be some relationship between attitudes toward the death penalty and propensity to vote guilty in criminal cases.