Stereotypes Of A Jury Essay

The foremost goal of every legal system is justice. This holds especially true in America as every precaution is taken to make sure each person accused of a crime receives the fairest trial possible. There is extensive screening before every jury is produced to make sure that there is no potential bias in any of the members that would hinder the objectivity and integrity of the case. Additionally, judges are intensely trained and sworn to carry out justice as impartially as possible. With that being said, time and time again juries and judges are frequently dispensing differing prison lengths for the same crime. While judges and juries may try to be as fair as they can, there are sometimes certain factors that can have an effect on their decision
Beautiful or very attractive, attractive, about average, unattractive, and ugly or unattractive. (Mocan and Tekin, 2010). In society today, the benefits of being physically attractive or beautiful are countless. Beauty is an active stereotype not just in today’s society, but since the beginning of time that cannot be ignored. Beauty is naturally associated with all things good (Papenbrook, 2013). Take cinema as an example. The actors casted to be the heroes in movies are typically attractive and beautiful while the actors casted to play the villains are typically the opposite and portrayed to be ugly and unattractive. This stereotype of beauty plays a huge effect in society on the day to day basis. When someone sees another person that they deem attractive or beautiful they see that person as desirable. As a result, they innately assume that the other characteristics of that person such as intelligence for example are also desirable and at a high level (Frevert and Walker, 2014). Essentially, even though attractiveness may have no role in the task at hand, it still subliminally plays a
A study done by Naci Mocan and Erdal Tekin concluded that, “unattractive individuals are more likely to commit crimes and attractive individuals are less likely to commit crimes in comparison to average-looking individuals” (Mocan and Tekin, 2010). Fundamentally, what this indicates is that being beautiful or very attractive decreases a person’s chance of committing crimes, such as robbery, burglary or selling drugs. While the opposite proved true for people deemed unattractive or ugly. This study expounded upon the socioeconomic factors behind attractiveness to explain this phenomenon. Attractive individuals, it states, have better communication skills than unattractive individuals. These enhanced communication skills, says Mobius and Rosenblatt, stem from preferential treatment from their teachers in school as children. These enhanced communication skills correlate directly with higher wages making attractive people more likely to stay out of trouble. The ramifications of this is that unattractive people tend to be less successful than attractive people and more likely to commit crimes as a result (Mobius and Rosenblatt, 2006). Consequently, the judge or jury may see potential in this physically attractive person to bounce back from this incident and be successful giving them even further reason to grant leniency (Sigall and Ostrove,