Juror Decision Making in Hate Crime Cases

Relatively little empirical research has been conducted on hate crimes. An issue that has previously remained almost entirely unexplored is what factors are likely to influence jurors' guilt determinations in hate crime cases. This article describes a mockjuror study that was conducted with 190...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Criminal justice policy review 2003-06, Vol.14 (2), p.193-213
Main Author: Gerstenfeld, Phyllis B.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Relatively little empirical research has been conducted on hate crimes. An issue that has previously remained almost entirely unexplored is what factors are likely to influence jurors' guilt determinations in hate crime cases. This article describes a mockjuror study that was conducted with 190 participants. Participants were given a hate crime vignette in which the ethnicity of the victim and offender were varied. Contrary to the original hypotheses, it was found that at least with this particular vignette, the offender's and victim's ethnicity did not usually affect the juror decisions. Furthermore, participants' level of racism was not related to their decisions on the juror task. The implications of the results are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research in this area.
ISSN:0887-4034
1552-3586
DOI:10.1177/0887403403014002003