Personal Stereotypes Affecting Jury's Decisions

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Possible EPQ idea Title: A report to show an investigation into whether the defendant’s characteristics influence the jury’s decision. Abstract: The Purpose of our experiment is to determine whether defendants characteristic in court influence the jury`s decision. Jury`s role in court is to decide the facts of the case only, take directions relating to law from the trial judge, whether or not they agree with him/her. Also the jury must remain impartial and independent and uninfluenced by any person. They also must keep statements made in the jury room confidential. Our aim is to find out whether personal stereotypes affect the jury`s judgement. We want to show if racial, gender and scruffiness (attractiveness) of the defendant are a…show more content…
One of these features is attractiveness, attractive people are seen as more intelligent, friendly and honest, and we are less likely to judge an attractive person guilty of a crime. Another is who they work for. This can be seen in a previous example where the jury sentenced the wrong person for their characteristics. Michael Graham spent 14 years on death row in Louisiana for a crime he did not commit. Graham was convicted of murder in 1987, after 14 yrs of wrongful imprisonment; the state gave Graham a £10 check and a coat that was 5 times too big. Whereas David Williams, Pride of the Canadian forces, Williams was set free, until further digging found that he had murdered and assaulted many women, he was finally convicted, after writings and photographic records were found. Additional research has found that accents can affect whether the defendant is seen as innocent or guilty. Mahoney and Dixon (2002) found that `Brummies` were more likely to be found guilty of armed robbery than cheque fraud compared to a defendant with a posh accent. Race of the defendant and jury`s play a massive part in the courtroom. Studies by Skolnick and Shaw, found that white juries are more likely to find a black defendant guilty compared to a white one. Also that black defendants also receive harsher sentences than a white person for the same crime. Characteristics involving appearance can be…show more content…
There were many witnesses at the scene of the crime. Please could you from these five pictures say who you think is guilty and what punishment you would give them? Shoplifting carries varying sentences varying from: Prison sentence up to 7 years, Tagging and banning from shops and area, Community service and Fines.” While reading this to our participants we showed them five mug shot pictures: Our Independent variable was controlled by us the experimenters always reading out the same crime scenario and showing the same mug shots. The Participants would then answer who they thought was guilty and what punishment they would give, we recorded the results in a table like this: Participant: | Male or Female | Who was guilty ? | Punishment given: | | | | | We used a table so we could record all the data evenly and it allows us to see and similarities or differences easily. This is how we recorded the dependent variable, of who was guilty and what punishment they gave. We collected the results the same for each participant. They we all asked separately and not part of a group, as we wanted individual answers not a collaborated ones. Which Sherif showed with the Autokinetic effect, that when participants are asked together they will form a group answer. Once we had asked all 15 of our participants we went back to study our data and see if there were any correlations,
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