Essay On Jury Decision Making

Words: 509
Pages: 3

• It is important that stereotypes are understood because they impact upon crucial decision making such as juror decision making (ref). Jurors need to be impartial in order to provide a fair trial therefore understanding factors that may lead to bias is crucial (ref)
• Talk about formation impression and how representative heuristics impact upon final verdict
• Talk about current study and why it is important to conduct a study about stereotypes associated with type of crime, gender and potential likelihood of guilt
• Dean suggest that men are typically found to be guilty compared to women, men always seem to pertain to a schema and women are more likely to be found guilty of committing gender stereotypical crimes

The analysis of other research undertaken by separate studies about gender bias and stereotyping on jury decision making is therefore appropriate. The first analysis was conducted by Dean (2000). This study required the 41 student participants to read mock police reports and deliver a verdict. This verdict was based upon the dependent variable (being likelihood of guilt) and independent variables which were; defendant’s ethnic group, gender of individual juror’s and crime type. Dean et al. (2000) noted that irrespective of ethnic
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Partaking in this study were 56 undergraduate university students posing as mock jurors, each of which were given one of four crime scenarios and asked to hand down a verdict, deliver a sentence and set the bail amount deemed fit. The dependant variable was the likelihood of guilt whereas the independent variables were type of crime; burglary (considered ‘blue collared’) or embezzlement (‘white collared’). Results indicated that a longer sentence was given when the race of the criminal matched the stereotypical crime type, such as the white defendant facing charges for