NCJ Number
229223
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 37 Issue: 1 Dated: January 2010 Pages: 47-63
Date Published
January 2010
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This study investigated the effects and interactions of victim gender, defendant gender, and defendant age on mock jurors' decisions in a child sexual abuse case.
Abstract
Highlights of study findings include: 1) female mock jurors gave higher guilt ratings, rated the victim as more credible, and attributed more responsibility to the defendant, compared to males; 2) male mock jurors rated the defendant as more credible and assigned more responsibility to the victim for the alleged crime than female mock jurors; 3) mock jurors were more likely to give higher guilt ratings when the defendant was male compared to when the defendant was female; 4) defendant age did influence participants' ratings of the victim's responsibility for the alleged crime; and 5) defendant age and victim gender interacted to influence the degree to which the defendant was rated to have desired the alleged crime. Study limitations are outlined and discussed. With prior research focused primarily on the influence of legal influences on juror decisionmaking, this study was primarily concerned with extralegal influences on juror decisionmaking and specifically with the treatment of boy victims relative to girl victims. The study also examined whether female perpetrators of child sexual abuse were evaluated differently than male perpetrators in terms of accountability, guilt, and sentencing, and the potential influence of defendant age was considered. A sample of undergraduate male and female students was recruited from a university in Canada to participate as mock jurors. Tables, notes, and references