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Race Colors Judgement: the Affect Race Has on Juries in Decisions of Guilt and Innocence

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Race Colors Judgement: the Affect Race Has on Juries in Decisions of Guilt and Innocence
Race Colors Judgment:
The Affect Race Has On Juries in Decisions of Guilt and Innocence

Heather N. Josey

Chestnut Hill College

Abstract
The following review will focus on jury decision-making of guilt or innocence in a criminal court room. Focus will be made on the effect the race of jurors and defendants has on a jury’s decision-making process and verdict. The proposition put forth in this paper is that having majority White juries is one of the causes of the disproportionate overrepresentation of the minority population in the criminal justice system. Theoretical origins to be conceptualized are aversive racism, race salience (racially charged vs. racially neutral) in trials, jury composition, in group/out-group bias, systematic information processing (cognitive theory) and heuristic information processing (cognitive theory).

Keywords: African-American, aversive racism, race salience, systematic information processing, heuristic information processing

Race Colors Judgment:
The Affect Race Has On Juries in Decisions of Guilt and Innocence

The criminal justice system in the United States is one of the many places that I believe stereotypes are formed. For example, African-Americans make up only 13% of the U.S. population but represent 46% of the inmate population who have received sentences of more than one year (Hart, 2006, p.1). Another example of a racial disparity can be seen the percentage of African-Americans who are drug users (14%) and those sentenced for drug offenses (53%) (Sentencing Project, 2009 p.3). “More African-American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole then were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” (Alexander, 2010). However, this is not just a problem within the African-American community. More than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities and three-fourths of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color (www.sentencingproject.org). The Bureau of Justice


References: Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) Brennan, P Hart, M. (2006) Race, sentencing and the pretrial process. Criminology & Criminal Justice Thesis and Dissertations UM Theses and Dissertations, p. 1 Pettigrew, T.F Sommers, S.R., Warp, L.S., & Mahoney, C.C. (2008). Cognitive effects of racial diversity: White individuals’ information processing in heterogeneous groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, p. 44, 1129-1136 Sommers, S Sommers, S. R., & Ellsworth, P.C. (2000). Race in the courtroom: Perceptions of guilt and dispositional attributions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, p. 26, 1367-1379. Sommers, S.R. (2006). On racial diversity and group decision-making: Identifying multiple effects of racial composition on jury deliberations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, P. 90, 597-612 Sommers, S.R., Ellsworth, P.C Tamborini, R. Huang, R, Mastro, D, & Nabashi-Nakahara, R. (2007) The Influence of race, heuristics, and information load on judgments of guilt or innocence. Communications Studies, p. 341-358 Thomas, C., & Balmer, N
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